The animated documentary is a genre of film which combines animation and documentary. This genre should not be confused with documentaries about movie and TV animation history that feature excerpts.

History

The first recognized example of this genre is Winsor McCay's 1918 12-minute-long film The Sinking of the Lusitania, which uses animation to portray the 1915 sinking of RMS Lusitania after it was struck by two torpedoes fired from a German U-boat; an event of which no recorded film footage is known to exist. Since the 1920s, animation has been used in educational and social guidance films, and has often been used to illustrate abstract concepts in mainly live-action examples of these genres. Early examples of fully animated educational films are The Einstein Theory of Relativity (1923) and Evolution (1925) by Max and Dave Fleischer.Walt Disney used it in films such as Victory Through Air Power (1943), How to Catch a Cold (1951) and Our Friend the Atom (1957).

In 1953, Norman McLaren's "Neighbours" won the Academy Awards for Best Documentary (Short Subject). The award is somewhat considered a mistake, but the fact that it was not only indicated into that category, but also won, shows that, somehow, the animated images spoke to the judges almost like a documentary.