Compilation Film
A portrait is a film dealing with personalities. The most prevalent portraits are those of personalities from the arts and popular entertainment. Other films are about world figures of political and cultural importance.
Before the 1960s, nonfiction filmmakers tended to be more interested in world events that in the people who played a role in those events. This began to change as the decade of the 1960s gave birth to a new cult of personality in which rock stars replaced movie stars, and politicians were elected on the basis of their charisma rather than their ideas. This cult was fostered by television audiences, which seemed to have an insatiable appetite for biographies of successful and powerful people, both notorious and celebrated.
SOURCES:
Richard Barsam. Nonfiction Film. A Critical History. p. 321