Bill Nichols stated that there are two kinds of film, the documentaries of wish fulfilment and the documentaries of social representation. documentaries of social representation are referred to as non fiction and represent the world we live in, making social reality visible and audible.
Nichols said that in non fiction, people are treated as "social actors", where they conduct their lives in more or less the same way as they would without the presence of the camera, so this essentially means that the film maker is nothing more than an observer, who's soul purpose is to capture the events that unfold with little to no interference. This however can raise some ethical issues as the film maker is forced to allow certain events to unfold, events that they could have stopped or changed the outcome, yet this would go against the idea of realistically representing the world.
"March of the Penguins" is a 2005 feature length documentary directed by Luc Jacquet and narrated by Morgan Freeman. The film follows a colony of Emperor penguins as they try to cross the south pole to get to their breeding grounds at the end of the Antarctic summer, and the struggles they face, whether that being environmental factors or predators like the leopard seal.
In one scene, several young penguin chicks perish during a storm, eventually leading to some of the mothers trying to steal chicks from each other, and some parents die while searching for food, dooming their chicks back at the breading grounds.
Director Luc Jacquet and the other members of production had to observe and refrain from interfering as this was the natural struggle the penguins went through on a yearly basis, and interfering would be disrupting the natural cycle of life for these animals and the predators that hunted them.
