Richard,

To start with, your post foregrounds what is perhaps _the_ central problem
with Nichols' notion of the reflexive documentary:

>The reflexive type foregrounds aesthetics so as
>to highlight the representational strategies that more conventional, and
>politically conservative, docos employ.

This notion that reflexive form is somehow _inherently_ progressive or
enlightening is something Nichols has inherited from marxist theory, and
while there were certainly a lot of directors in the  70s & 80s who were
operating under much the same assumptions (see the work of Chris Marker and
Harun Farocki, or Peter Krieg during this period), you will be hard pressed
to find contemporary films that evince the same pedantic conviction that by
employing self-reflexive techniques they can expose other modes of
constructing audio-visual documents as vehicles of "false consciousness" or
deception.  Virtually every recent documentary I can think of contains some
measure of self-reflexivity, and the myriad political ends to which it has
been employed of late the best refutation I can think of that there is _no_
inherent political valence to reflexivity, either "retrograde," or
"progressive."

Even if we have to recognize that the politics of documentary lie elsewhere,
this still leaves us with a consideration of radical cinematic form. One of
the other posters mentioned the mockumentary. You would do well to read
Hight & Roscoe's _Faking It_, which contains an excellent discussion of how
_every_ mockumentary contains at least an implicit reflection on the
documentary means it has hijacked, while some even engage in outright
critique qua parody (their first chapter also runs through Nichols' modes &
their relation to mockumentary).  In my opinion, one of the most critical
media-reflexive documentaries ever made was _David Holzman's Diary_ -- it
was also the first feature-length mockumentary ever made (1967).  For more
recent examples, Roscoe & Hight also discuss _Man Bites Dog_ (1990) and
_Forgotten Silver_ (1996), both of which are outstanding films which I'd
recommend seeing in their own right.

Nichols' modes are useful as a broad heuristic tool, but I'd be careful with
his periodizations and mindful of the ideological assumptions that underlie
his characterizations thereof (for a rather harsh, but not entirely
unwarranted critique of Nichols' modes, see Stella Bruzzi's _New
Documentary: A Critical Introduction_ -- Bruzzi's book also contains
numerous examples of reflexive contemporary productions).

Good luck with your search!
Matthew Niednagel
Princeton University

PS -- you might also search the Film-Philosophy archives for past threads on
Nichols' notion of the "performative" mode, where I've developed some of my
objections to what I regard as the least tenable of his 6 modes. MN