"I am making a film on the misunderstanding of documentary as a genre"(Ruiz). Commissioned by French television as a personal view of the 1978 elections, Of GreatEvents...functions as both the commentary of an "outsider" on internal French politics and as a capsulehistory/critique of the forms and uses of documentary. Ruiz began by dutifully interviewing his friends andneighbors as to their reactions to the elections; during the course of the shoot, however, questons wereraised about such interviews, what they reveal and what they conceal, and how they are conducted. A LatinAmerican refugee discusses Montesquieu's Persian Letters; a Canadian filmmaker complains that "it'seasier to make documentaries in the Third World than in Europe." The voiceover commentary, written byRuiz in Spanish and sightread by another Chilean refugee into French-with its inevitable hesitations,repetitions, and mistakes-becomes a constant reminder of the filmmaker as foreign observer. Richard Pe-a