Somewhere between fact and fiction

Pinched budgets and taxed resources are the sorrowful lot of the documentary filmmaker. While most face a struggle to get their dream to the screen, history producers face the added challenge of sometimes having to recreate the past in order to record it. It doesn't help that by blurring the line between fact and fiction they invite unfair comparisons to Hollywood - and no doc-maker can hold serious hope of going explosion for explosion with the latest Schwarzenegger flick. Laine Drewery of Toronto's Fastlane Productions sums it up: 'I don't think there's any trick to what Hollywood does. It's organization and money...' To put it another way, Mark Samels of WGBH's American Experience contends, 'If documentary filmmakers or television producers had 'big' available to them, I think almost everybody would grab for 'big'. 'Big' protects you. You seldom have 'big' available to you.'