A STRONG documentary programme has been an impressive, highly enjoyable element of this year's Dublin Film Festival, demonstrating the enormous possibilities of the form, which is too often equated solely with factually informative, pedagogical or polemical work. As Douglas Keeve, director of the exuberant Un zipped, has said: "Most documentaries are more concerned with being informational than with capturing the spirit and excitement of their subject. My approach was less literal; I couldn't care less about the truth." His film, an affectionate portrait of New York fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, is full of humour and life, capturing the highs and the angst behinds the scenes in the months of preparation for the unveiling of Mizrahi's 1994 autumn collection.

Director of photography Ellen Kuras brings fantastic flair to the piece, using a variety of formats, including super 8 and super 16 mm, in black and white, with splashes of colour for the finale, and is helped by the fact that Mizrahi is a born performer, utterly at home with the camera as he delivers his one- liners - "It's almost impossible to have style nowadays without the right dogs" - and has histrionic crises of confidence. Unzipped will be screened at the IFC, Dublin in late April.

There was more ego on display in Video Fool For Love. Shot over 10 years with a hand held video camera, carefully edited and transferred to film, this video diary is the attempt by an Australian film editor, Robert Gibson, to chronicle with complete candour the vicissitudes of his personal life, exposing himself, and his girlfriends who participate willingly, to an extraordinary degree, as they turn the camera on each other to capture scenes of intimacy.

While Robert seems unattractively self deluding and spineless at the beginning, we watch, fascinated, as the woman he has fallen for becomes increasingly distant from him, pulling back at the last minute from their planned wedding. We see them squabbling over "custody" of the expensive engagement ring, and finally Robert breaking down, sobbing uncontrollably. Initially his voyeurism seems repellent, but as we are drawn into his world, our sympathy for him increases. An intriguing, sometimes infuriating film, which despite its espousal of formlessness, has a clear narrative structure.