In 1977, Vivian Sobchack (1940–) published an article entitled “No Lies: Direct Cinema as Rape,” an earthshaking emblem for documentariness signifying the inception of phenomenology as a uniquely influential philosophical trend, or vector, within the domain of documentary scholarship. In this chapter I argue that if we presented Bill Nichols’s foundational role in pioneering the field of documentary studies during the mid-1970s, it is equally justifiable, mutatis mutandis, to regard the present chapter’s definiens, along with its author, Sobchack, on comparable grounds. I further argue that Sobchack’s radical trope “Direct Cinema as Rape” expresses a fierce intellectual and political response to the nearly two-decades-long overarching male reign over Cinéma Vérité and Direct Cinema grounds. Her 1977 phenomenological methodology was poised to exert a significant influence on academic documentary discourse in the ensuing decades. Sobchack’s definiens epitomizes an ethically explosive response—a moral “punctum”—a metaphysical and ethical backlash to the nearly two-decade surge and reign of Cinéma Vérité’s and Direct Cinema’s modes of reasoning since the early 1960s.