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Book SynopsisWhat does it mean to be a documentary filmmaker in today''s world? How are new technologies changing documentary filmmaking? What new forms of documentary are emerging? Recent technological developments have made the making and distribution of documentary films easier and more widespread than ever before. Creative Documentary: Theory and Practice is an innovative and essential guide that comprehensively embraces these changing contexts and provides you with the ideas, methods, and critical understanding to support successful documentary making. It helps the aspiring ''total filmmaker'' understand the contemporary contexts for production, equipping you also with the understanding of creativity and visual storytelling you''ll need to excel. Bridging the gap between theory and practice, it outlines the contemporary, institutional, practical and financial contexts for production - always encouraging innovation and originality.Key features: <

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Book SynopsisSherry B. Ortner explores how the nonprofit film production company Brave New Films deploys documentary film's commitment to truth and realism to cultivate progressive political activism.Trade Review"[A] fascinating ethnographic study of a nonprofit production company. . . . Ortner provides extensive research on the history of activist documentary filmmaking. The book’s compelling exploration of the documentary Suppressed: The Fight To Vote reveals how it evokes various emotions during a film screening and examines its call to action. Ortner’s deep dive is so effective in describing the film’s storytelling method that it may inspire readers to seek out Suppressed and other Brave New Films works." -- Anjelica Rufus-Barnes * Library Journal *"Ortner’s analysis encourages readers to critically assess media accounts and consider the ethical implications of documentary activity. Focusing on bold new films, the book offers valuable insight into the production process, the challenges faced by activist filmmakers, and the strategies they use to effectively convey their message." -- Kaniphnath Malhari Kudale * Social Identities *Table of ContentsPreface ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction 1 1. Brave New Films in the Mediascape 19 2. Critical Agency: The Power of Truth 31 3. Networked Agency: The Power of the Social 52 4. Affective Agency: The Power of the Film 73 5. The Impact Question, and Conclusions 97 Notes 113 Filmography 121 References 127 Index

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Book SynopsisDocumentary has never attracted such audiences, never been produced with such ease from so many corners of the globe, never embraced such variety of expression. The very distinctions between the filmed, the filmer and the spectator are being dissolved. The Act of Documenting addresses what this means for documentary's 21st century position as a genus in the class cinema; for its foundations as, primarily, a scientistic, eurocentric and patriarchal discourse; for its future in a world where assumptions of photographic image integrity cannot be sustained. Unpacked are distinctions between performance and performativy and between different levels of interaction, linearity and hypertextuality, engagement and impact, ethics and conditions of reception. Winston, Vanstone and Wang Chi explore and celebrate documentary''s potentials in the digital age.Trade ReviewThe Act of Documenting is a first work of its kind (barring anthologies) that I have come across in the last five years that eclectically distills scholarship in … [multiple] areas to effectively map and analyze the field of contemporary documentary studies. * Rahul Mukherjee, Film Quarterly *Fiercely argued, urgently rendered, and rigorously researched, The Act of Documenting whacks through the ethical, political, moral, evidentiary, and argumentative acts undergirding documentary production and reception. This gutsy, vital book cuts to the core of documentary: it interrogates the place of documentary in the world and how it engages people and ideas in ways that truly matter. Moving adroitly between the histories of analog documentary and the promising landscapes of digital forms, this substantial, sage book irrefutably shows that ethics, politics, and philosophical inquiry override formats, interfaces, and technologies. Polemical yet lyrical, forceful yet inviting, this book leaves the reader exhilarated with new ways of thinking about and through documentary. The opening chapter précis could be assembled as an intellectual toolkit for all us in the act of documentary—theorists, historians, practitioners, programmers, or offered as a manifesto cracking open the most salient issues demanding our attention and action. * Patricia R. Zimmermann, Professor of Screen Studies, Ithaca College, USA *By shifting emphasis from the category of documentary to the diverse practices of documenting, Winston and his co-authors exchange the generic preoccupations of many past approaches for a more open exploration of what is going on audio-visually around ‘the real’. Their provocative appraisal takes our understanding of international media culture to new places. * John Corner, Visiting Professor in Communication Studies, University of Leeds, UK *Recognising that documentary, or ‘documedia’ as the authors’ prefer, is on new terrain in the digital 21st Century, this book offers up fresh ideas that we will be debating in classrooms, in conferences, and in films and online for decades to come. Taking seriously, and at times, seriously debunking, the claims of documentary’s new challenges and affordances in the 21st Century, The Act of Documenting offers a fresh perspective on this dynamic and ever-changing thing we still call (for better or worse) documentary. * Alisa Lebow, Producer/Director of Filming Revolution, University of Sussex, UK *The Act of Documenting, by Brian Winston, Gail Vanstone, and Wang Chi, is an elegantly argued, complex investigation of the ethics of each phase of documentary media making. It is in this context that they take on the ethics of The Act of Killing. Once I found that they would implicitly challenge even the ethics of my relation to my subjects (not villains but people I admire) in my own media making, the whole book became totally engrossing. -- Julia Lesage, Professor Emerita, University of Oregon * Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media *The text is thorough and does a fine job of clearly defining terms and laying out, and supporting, arguments. The work represents high-quality scholarship that most likely will appeal to advanced students and professionals, though it is definitely accessible to beginners, who will find here a tool that will help them expand their intellectual horizons. * Journal of Folklore Research *A volume from which film students can explore informative, clearly structured, and detailed content, while practitioners and scholars can appreciate its thought-provoking and challenging nature. * Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media *Table of ContentsAN AGENDA 1. “A Much Hailed Triumph” 2. “The Shakiest of Foundations” 3. The Act of Documenting PART ONE: DIGITAL POTENTIALS 1. “A Walk in the Woods” Image: AUTHENTICITY: Indexing -- Evidence TRUST: Manipulation -- Judgment SAVVY: Inferences -- Probability 2. “A breath of fresh air for documentary” Kit: CONTRADICTION: Digitization -- Standards GLOBALIZATIONi: Proliferation-- Resistance 3. “Life as narrativized” Story: INTERPASSIVITY: Navigation -- Feedback -- Intervention HOMO NARRANS: Texts -- Stories SCRIPTRIX NARRANS: Challenge --Paths PART TWO: ACTUAL EFFECTS…. …. on THE FILMED 4. “To thine own self be true” Performing: APPEARING: Distrust -- Presentational Acting -- Representational Being BEHAVING: Performativity -- Casting 5. “Giving Voice” Co-creating: CONTROL: Engagement -- Empowerment CHANGE: Facilitating -- Embedding …. on THE FILMER 6. “To Make Space For The Un-Thought” Subjectivities: GENDER: Narcissism -- Auto/Biography EMANCIPATION: Exclusions -- “Facts” 7. “Nous somme dans le bain”/”We are implicated” Care: HARM: Involvement -- Consequences RIGHTS: Protocols -- Control …. on THE SPECTATOR 8. "You have to make up your own mind” Perception: EXPECTATIONS: Truth -- Omission ASSUMPTONS: Wow! -- Ostranenie 9. “When the lights go up” -- Reception OUTCOMES: Impact -- Engagement -- Research CONDITIONS: Autonomy -- Hazards MINUTES: THE ACT OF DOCUMENTING Considerations

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Book SynopsisA New History of Documentary Film includes new research that offers a fresh way to understand how the field began and grew. Retaining the original edition's core structure, there is added emphasis of the interplay among various approaches to documentaries and the people who made them. This edition also clearly explains the ways that interactions among the shifting forces of economics, technology, and artistry shape the form.New to this edition:- An additional chapter that brings the story of English language documentary to the present day- Increased coverage of women and people of color in documentary production- Streaming- Animated documentaries- List of documentary filmmakers, organized chronologically by the years of their activity in the fieldTrade ReviewClearly written, rich with well-researched, historical details, and contemporary critical insights, Betsy A. McLane’s A New History of Documentary Film, 3rd ed., informs and analyzes (primarily) English language, nonfiction film, including recent works by women and non-white documentarians. Enhancing understanding and increasing enjoyment, McLane expands our knowledge, placing works within social and cultural, political and personal contexts, illuminating technical and aesthetic elements alike with well-chosen examples. This book is a joy to read with ample illustrations, text, and film recommendations and a useful index. * Diane Carson, Professor Emerita and Past President, St. Louis Community College and University Film and Video Association, USA *Documentary film is all around us. Cinema was born non-fictional but the history of film for too long did not devote to documentary the due attention. It was a global shortsightness, not restricted to the anglophile world. Fortunately those days are gone. Building from the groundbreaking work of Erik Barnouw and her own partnership with Jack S. Ellis for the first version of A New History of Documentary Film (2005), Betsy A. McLane regales us with a third, brand new edition, reviewing and updating a book that was already unique and prodigious when last appeared one decade ago. In a single volume here is the evolution of the documentary cinema, introducing the pioneer production of Robert Flaherty and Western European and Soviet documentarists and focusing especially on the USA, UK and Canada experiences, from its first steps to our 21st Century in all its diversity of voices and formats. Elegantly written and full of insights about an ever changing landscape, it is an essential guide for moviegoers, film students, filmmakers and any reader interested in a better understanding of one of the fundamental artistic expressions of an increasingly complex world. * Amir Labaki, Founder and director, É Tudo Verdade/It’s All True International Documentary Film Festival, Brazil, and author of A Verdade de Cada Um - O Documentário na Visão de Seus Principais Realizadores (2015) and Introdução ao Documentário Brasileiro (2006) *Table of ContentsForeword Introduction 1. Considering Documentary 2. Visual Anthropology-Humanities Studies/Exploitation 3. Soviet Formalism 4. Propaganda Definitions & Making Judgments 5. Government Agencies and WWII 6. Newsreels 1910-1955 7. Free Cinema 8. New Left in Europe, Canada and US 9. US Public Television/Corporation for Public Broadcasting 10. Early Cable and Satellite Television 11. Theatrical Documentary 12. New Subjects at the Turn of the Century 13. Streaming 14. Animation in Documentary Conclusions and Future Possibilities Documentary Filmmakers Biography Index

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Book SynopsisThe art of the observer is a personal guide to documentary filmmaking, based on the author’s years of pioneering work in the fields of ethnographic and documentary cinema. It stands in sharp contrast to books of academic film criticism and handbooks on visual research methods, being based extensively on concrete examples from the author’s own filmmaking experience. The book places particular emphasis on observational filmmaking and the ways in which this approach is distinct from other forms of documentary. It offers both practical insights and reflections on what it means, in both emotional and intellectual terms, to attempt to represent the lives of others. The book makes clear that documentary cinema is not simply a matter of recording reality, but of artfully organising the filmmaker’s observations in ways that reveal the complex patterns of social life.Trade Review'Particularly gratifying are the author's explorations of the work of his amateur collaborators, as in the chapter on films children in his video workshops made between 2011 and 2016. He respects their work and points of view and seems to have genuinely meditated on their insights without being patronizing. Mixing memory and analysis, this engaging book helps readers see the filmmaker and his craft anew.'ChoiceReprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association. -- .Table of ContentsPart I1: The practice of documentary 2: How the visual makes sense 3: Observational Cinema: A Unique Practice4: Ethnographic film: evolution of a conceptPart II5: Structuring nonfiction films6: Filming in a closed community7: Seven types of collaboration8: Microstructures of film editingPart III9: Films and feelings10: The life of others11: The strangers within us12: How children seePart IV13: An encounter with Robert Gardner 14: The percentage of disaster15: Clearing customsFilmography BibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThe first comprehensive account of one of the darkest and mostly forgotten episodes of the Troubles.

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Book SynopsisVoyages of Discovery is the definitive account of Frederick Wiseman’s career, offering a comprehensive analysis of the work of the leading documentary filmmaker in the United States. In this updated edition, Barry Keith Grant adds new material exploring the documentarian’s works since the 1990s.Trade ReviewBarry Keith Grant provides an updated version of his own singularly authoritative study of documentarian Frederick Wiseman’s astonishing range of films—from the controversial Titicutt Follies through such diverse examples as Meat, Missile, Model, Deaf, Blind, Public Housing, Ballet, and Belfast, Maine, to name a few. In his deeply informed study, Grant creates his own meticulous, yet accessible, “tapestry” of inquiry worthy of the same approach he credits Wiseman with adopting. Grant’s insightful readings of Wiseman’s carefully wrought compositions—and the happy accidents that sometimes occur—highlight colorful thematic threads woven to create the “reality fictions” Wiseman, in his own words, is producing. At the same time, Grant presents a capacious “mosaic,” placing Wiseman’s films in textured dialogue, not only with each other, but also with works of literature, art, theater, music, and dance, along with other films and Hollywood genres, that inform them. Grant explores Wiseman’s penetrating vision of institutional operations—the human interactions that sustain them and the ideological underpinnings beneath the “rules” that govern them. As Grant compellingly claims, Wiseman avoids providing viewers with easy answers. Voyages of Discovery powerfully uncovers the ambiguities inviting viewers to democratically, actively, and reflexively assess their own participation in, contributions to, and complicity within the cultural conditions Frederick Wiseman so evocatively observes. -- Cynthia Lucia, Rider UniversityVoyages of Discovery is one of the very best books of film analysis and scholarship that I've ever read. It is certainly the essential work about a major film-maker, whose films require special tools and sensitivities to discuss, which Grant possesses in abundance. This is a most useful work both for those just discovering Wiseman and those who think they know him. Great ideas abound on every page, and Grant's organization of the films is original and helpful. Exemplary as well are the carefully selected frame enlargements, which nicely support his close analysis of visual issues. Grant's ability to bring in relevant ideas from both film study and beyond it is the mark of an eminent scholar. That Grant discusses the entirety of Wiseman's prodigious output, in depth and entertainingly, is also quite an accomplishment. -- Stephen Mamber, author of Cinema Verite in America: Studies in Uncontrolled DocumentaryThis is the new edition we have been waiting for. Barry Keith Grant provides an essential companion to Frederick Wiseman, one of the most distinctive and prominent voices in US documentary. Voyages of Discovery offers perceptive and in-depth analyses of Wiseman's vast catalogue, ranging from the 1960s to his most recent work. Grant foregrounds the ways Wiseman's films have not only documented institutions but have challenged their established practices, encouraging audiences to meaningfully engage with and question the hierarchies and fraught political dynamics encountered in everyday life. This study matches the subtlety and resistance to reductive narratives found in Wiseman's own films, revealing why his work remains compelling and necessary viewing that continues to speak to the present day. -- Jeffrey Geiger, author of American Documentary Film: Projecting the NationThis revised edition of Voyages of Discovery is updated and expanded to cover Wiseman’s prodigious output over the decades since the original appeared. Supplemented and supported by a range of secondary sources from diverse fields spanning film studies, sociology, art history, and political science (among so many others), Grant develops a portrait of a working filmmaker that is informed and definitive. -- Michael Baker, Sheridan CollegeThe time is right for a second edition, and this year's 'revised and expanded' version rises to the occasion. * Journal of American Culture *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsPrefaceIntroduction1. Man with a Movie Camera2. American Madness: Titicut Follies (1967), High School (1968), Law and Order (1969), Hospital (1970), Juvenile Court (1974), Welfare (1975)3. The Big Parade: Basic Training (1971), Manoeuvre (1979), Missile (1988)4. Blood of the Beasts: Primate (1974), Meat (1976), Racetrack (1985), Zoo (1993)5. When Worlds Collide: Canal Zone (1977), Sinai Field Mission (1978), Model (1980), The Store (1983)6. The Bad and the Beautiful: The Cool World (1963), Seraphita’s Diary (1982)7. You and Me: Essene (1972), Blind (1987), Deaf (1987), Adjustment and Work (1987), Multi-Handicapped (1987), Aspen (1991)8. Love and Death: Near Death (1989)9. The Never-Ending Story: High School II (1994), Public Housing (1997), Domestic Violence (2001), Domestic Violence 2 (2002)10. Playtime: Ballet (1995), La Comédie-Française, ou L’amour joué (1996), The Last Letter (2002), La Danse—Le Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris (2009), Boxing Gym (2010), Crazy Horse (2011), National Gallery (2014), A Couple (2022)11. Our Town: Central Park (1989), Belfast, Maine (1999), State Legislature (2007), At Berkeley (2013), In Jackson Heights (2015), EX-LIBRIS: The New York Public Library (2017), Monrovia, Indiana (2018), City Hall (2020)FilmographyIndividual AwardsRetrospective ScreeningsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewDocumentary film has never been more popular - nor creatively complex - and Bill Nichols's book gives a concise over-view of the genre while tackling the important ideas, issues, and conundrums that we as filmmakers all face. -- Mark Lewis * Filmmaker *This new edition of Introduction to Documentary is incisive and magisterial, a brilliantly organized and ambitious analysis of that enigmatic, open-ended, and vital are of cinema in which reality is not so much documented as transformed. Nichols addresses with ambition and humility all the key questions about what happens — ethically, aesthetically, and politically — when real people agree to play themselves, and collaborate with the filmmaker to transform their lives for the screen. -- Joshua Oppenheimer * Director, Producer, Filmmaker *Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. How Can We Define Documentary Film?2. Why Are Ethical Issues Central to Documentary Filmmaking?3. What Gives Documentaries a Voice of Their Own?4. What Makes Documentaries Engaging and Persuasive?5. How Did Documentary Filmmaking Get Started?6. How Can We Differentiate among Documentary Models and Modes? What Are the Poetic, Expository, and Reflexive Modes?7. How Can We Describe the Observational, Participatory, and Performative Modes of Documentary Film?8. How Have Documentaries Addressed Social and Political Issues?9. How Can We Write Effectively about Documentary?10. I Want to Make a Documentary. Where Do I Start?Appendix A: Sample Film Project Proposal: Sex with SamNotes on Source MaterialIndex

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Book SynopsisIn the 1940s and 1950s, hundreds of art documentaries were produced, many of them being highly personal, poetic, reflexive and experimental films that offer a thrilling cinematic experience. With the exception of Alain Resnais’s Van Gogh (1948), Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Mystère Picasso (1956) and a few others, most of them have received only scant scholarly attention. This book aims to rectify this situation by discussing the most lyrical, experimental and influential post-war art documentaries, connecting them to contemporaneous museological developments and Euro-American cultural and political relationships. With contributors with expertise across art history and film studies, Art in the Cinema draws attention to film projects by André Bazin, Ilya Bolotowsky, Paul Haesaerts, Carlo Ragghianti, John Read, Dudley Shaw Aston, Henri Storck and Willard Van Dyke among others.Trade ReviewThis remarkable book charts the development, as well as the public and critical acceptance, of the art film documentary at the mid-point of the 20th century. In a series of elegantly written and deeply perceptive essays by some of the most respected authorities in the field, such classic films as The Mystery of Picasso (1956), Henry Moore (1951), and the experimental feature film Pictura (1951) are brought back to public attention in a volume that is an essential text for both cinema historians and art lovers as well. A dazzling volume in every respect – bravo! -- Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan Professor of Film Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USAIt is not well-known today that in the aftermath of World War II, emerging trends in media and international alliances, ideas about mass communication and the democratization of culture, and representation of national identity converged to produce a "golden age" of films about art and artists in Europe and the U.S. Art in Cinema is an invaluable resource on the mid-century heyday of the art documentary. -- Susan Felleman, Professor, Art History & Film and Media Studies, University of South Carolina, USATable of ContentsPreface and Acknowledgements Introduction: The Mid-Century Celluloid Museum, Steven Jacobs (Ghent University & Antwerp University, Belgium) & Dimitrios Latsis (Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada) 1. The Institutional Breeding Grounds of the Postwar Film on Art, Birgit Cleppe (Ghent University, Belgium) 2. American Art Comes of Age: Documentaries and the Nation at the Dawn of the Cold War, Dimitrios Latsis (Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada) 3. Art History with a Camera: Rubens (1948) and Paul Haesaerts’s Concept of Cinéma Critique, Steven Jacobs (Ghent University & Antwerp University, Belgium) & Joséphine-Charlotte Vandekerckhove (Ghent University, Belgium & Verona University, Italy) 4. Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti’s Critolfims and Beyond: From Cinema to Information Technology, Emanuele Pellegrini (IMT School for Advanced Studies, Italy) 5. André Bazin’s Art Documentary in Saintonge, Angela Dalle Vacche (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA) 6. Projecting Cultural Diplomacy: Cold War Politics, Films on Art, and Willard Van Dyke’s The Photographer, Natasha Ritsma (Loyola University Museum of Art, USA) 7. Henry Moore and A Sculptor’s Landscape: Modernity, the Land and the Bomb in Two Television Films by John Read, John Wyver (University of Westminster, UK) 8. Creative Process, Material Inscription and Dudley Shaw Ashton’s Figures in a Landscape (1953), Lucy Reynolds (University of Westminster, UK) 9. Neoplasticism and Cinema: Ilya Bolotowsky’s Experimental Films on Art, Henning Engelke (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany) Mid-Twentieth-Century Art Documentaries: A Selected Bibliography About the Authors Index

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Book SynopsisShannon Winnubst is Professor of Philosophy at Southwestern University and author of Queering Freedom (IUP, 2006).

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Book SynopsisThe extraordinary true story of the first Girl Scout troop designated for homeless girls - from the homeless families it brought together in Queens, New York, to the amazing citywide and countrywide responses it sparked.Giselle Burgess, a young mother of five, and her children, along with others in the shelter, become the catalyst for Troop 6000. Having worked for the Girl Scouts earlier on, Giselle knew that these girls, including her own daughters, needed something they could be a part of, where they didn''t need to feel the shame or stigma of being homeless, but could instead develop skills and build a community that they could be proud of.New York Times journalist Nikita Stewart embedded with Troop 6000 for more than a year, at the peak of New York City''s homelessness crisis in 2017, spending time with the girls and their families and witnessing both their triumphs and challenges. Stewart takes the reader with her as she paints intimate portraits o

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Book SynopsisOver the past fifty years, a unique hybrid genre of nonfiction cinema called the avant-doc has emerged in the world of independent film. Combining the unconventional techniques of avant-garde auteurs like Stan Brakhage with the verisimilitude of traditional documentaries, the avant-doc expands the way cinema captures and chronicles events. Drawing on firsthand interviews with nineteen of the form''s chief practitioners and participants, Avant-Doc constructs an oral history that provides the first insider''s perspective on the phenomenon.Trade ReviewA compelling achievement, Avant-Doc diagrams a new fluid geography of cinema, where traditional categories such as experimental,"documentary," and "fiction" dissolve. The insightful, probing conversations assembled so deftly here vaporize fixed cinematic modes. These filmmakers describe cinema as a living organism, pulsating in networks of politics, arts, philosophies, teachers, literature, communities, technologies, and aesthetics. * Patricia R. Zimmermann, author of States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracy *Scott MacDonald's groundbreaking and seminal new volume, Avant-Doc, illuminates correspondences between avant-garde cinema and documentary through a series of compelling interviews with major independent filmmakers and noted scholar Annette Michelson. This intimate and probing follow-up to MacDonald's Critical Cinema series creates a lively and deeply personal oral history. Avant-Doc broadens our understanding of connections between avant-garde and documentary film, while providing a rich treasure trove of research material that current and future scholars will find invaluable. * J.J. Murphy, author of The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol *Table of ContentsTable of Contents: ; Introduction ; Annette Michelson ; Robert Gardner ; Ed Pincus (and Jane Pincus, Lucia Small) ; Alfred Guzzetti ; Ross McElwee ; Nina Davenport ; Leonard Retel Helmrich ; Jonathan Caouette ; Pawel Wojtasik ; Michael Glawogger ; Susana de Sousa Dias ; Alexander Olch (on The Windmill Movie) ; Amie Siegel (on DDR/DDR) ; Arthur and Jennifer Smith (on Ice Bears of the Beaufort) ; Betzy Bromberg (on Voluptuous Sleep) ; Jen Proctor (on A Movie by Jen Proctor) ; Jane Gillooly (on Suitcase of Love and Shame) ; Godfrey Reggio (on Visitors) ; Todd Haynes ; Sensory Ethnography ; Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (on In and Out of Africa and Sweetgrass) ; Lucien Castaing-Taylor (on his installation work and on Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab) ; Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel (on Leviathan) ; Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez (on Manakamana) ; Filmographies ; Bibliographies

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Book SynopsisThe Documentary Film Reader brings together an expansive range of writing by scholars, critics, historians, and filmmakers to provide a stimulating foundational text for students and others who want to undertake study of nonfiction film. While documentary has long been a mainstay of universities and cinematheques, its popularity of late has grown tenfold as reality television has flourished and as the ranks of novice filmmakers have swelled. There are now dozens of film festivals dedicated exclusively to documentaries. This reader presents an international perspective on the most significant developments and debates from several decades of critical writing about documentary. It integrates historical and theoretical approaches, offering a collection that is particularly well suited to meet the needs of large undergraduate survey courses on nonfiction film, as well as providing sufficient depth for graduate classes.Trade ReviewThe volume offers a rich and varied corpus of works that includes scholarly essays, film criticism, manifestos, interviews, letters, and personal recollections ... [the editors] have performed tremendous acts of scholarly service ... [presenting] a rich mosaic of writing on film form, politics, and practice that order the discursive field while still allowing the unruly documentary construct room to breathe. * Tanya Goldman, Cinema Journal *Table of ContentsForeword by Charles Musser ; Introduction ; I. Early Documentary: From the Illustrated Lecture to the Factual Film ; Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section I ; Rick Altman, "From Lecturer's Prop to Industrial Product: The Early History of Travel Films" (2006) ; Anonymous, "Burton Holmes Pleases a Large Audience at the Columbia" (1905) ; Kristen Whissel, "Placing the Spectator on the Scene of History: Modern Warfare and the Battle Reenactment at the Turn of the Century" (2008) ; Dai Vaughan, "Let There Be Lumiere" (1999) ; Boleslas Matuszewski, "A New Source of History" (1898) ; Tom Gunning, "Before Documentary: Early Nonfiction Films and the 'View' Aesthetic" (1997) ; Edward Curtis et al., "The Continental Film Company" (1912) ; W. Stephen Bush, "In The Land of the Head Hunters" (1914) ; Catherine Russell, "Playing Primitive" (1999) ; Anonymous, "Movies of Eskimo Life Win Much Appreciation" (1915) ; Anonymous, "Nanook of the North" (1922) ; John Grierson, "Flaherty's Poetic Moana" (1926) ; John Grierson, "Flaherty" (1931-32) ; Hamid Naficy, "Lured by the East: Ethnographic and Expedition Films about Nomadic Tribes; The Case of Grass" (2006) ; Bela Balazs, "Compulsive Cameramen" (1925) ; Anonymous, "New Films Make War Seem More Personal" (1916) ; Nicholas Reeves, "Cinema, Spectatorship, and Propaganda: Battle of the Somme (1916) and Its Contemporary Audience" (1997) ; II. Modernisms: State, Left, and Avant-Garde Documentary Between the Wars ; Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section II ; Robert Allerton Parker, "The Art of the Camera: An Experimental 'Movie'" (1921) ; Siegfried Kracauer, "Montage" (1947) ; Annette Michelson, "The Man with the Movie Camera: From Magician to Epistemologist" (1972) ; Seth Feldman, "Cinema Weekly and Cinema Truth: Dziga Vertov and the Leninist Proportion" (1973) ; Dziga Vertov, "WE: Variant of a Manifesto" (1922) ; Jay Leyda, "Bridge" (1964) ; Mikhail Iampolsky, "Reality at Second Hand" (1991) ; Joris Ivens, "The Making of Rain" (1969) ; Joris Ivens, "Reflections on the Avant-Garde Documentary" (1931) ; Tom Conley, "Documentary Surrealism: On Land Without Bread" (1986) ; John Grierson, "The Documentary Producer" (1933) ; John Grierson, "First Principles of Documentary" (1932-34) ; Otis Ferguson, "Home Truths from Abroad" (1937) ; Charles Wolfe, "Straight Shots and Crooked Plots: Social Documentary and the Avant-Garde in the 1930s" (1995) ; Samuel Brody, "The Revolutionary Film: Problem of Form" (1934) ; Leo T. Hurwitz, "The Revolutionary Film: Next Step" (1934) ; Ralph Steiner and Leo T. Hurwitz, "A New Approach to Filmmaking" (1935) ; Willard Van Dyke, Letter from Knoxville (1936) ; Ralph Steiner, Letter to Jay Leyda (1935) ; John T. McManus, "Down to Earth in Spain" (1937) ; Charles Wolfe, "Historicizing the 'Voice of God': The Place of Voice-Over Commentary in Classical Documentary" (1997) ; Steve Neale, "Triumph of the Will: Notes on Documentary and Spectacle" (1979) ; Richard Griffith, "Films at the Fair" (1939) ; III: Documentary Propaganda: World War II and the Post-War Citizen ; Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section III ; James Agee, Review of Iwo Jima newsreels (1945) ; James Agee, Review of San Pietro (1945) ; Thomas Cripps and David Culbert, "The Negro Soldier (1944): Film Propaganda in Black and White" (1979) ; Andre Bazin, "On Why We Fight: History, Documentation, and the Newsreel" (1946) ; Jim Leach, "The Poetics of Propaganda: Humphrey Jennings and Listen to Britain" (1998) ; George C. Stoney, "Documentary in the United States in the Immediate Post-World War II Years" (1989) ; Zoe Druick, "Documenting Citizenship: Reexamining the 1950s National Film Board Films about Citizenship" (2000) ; Srirupa Roy, "Moving Pictures: The Films Division of India and the Visual Practices of the Nation-State" (2007) ; Jennifer Horne, "Experiments in Propaganda: Reintroducing James Blue's Colombian Trilogy" (2009) ; Peter Watkins with James Blue and Michael Gill, "Peter Watkins Discusses His Suppressed Nuclear Film The War Game" (1965) ; IV. Aesthetics of Liberation: Free, Direct, and Verite Cinemas ; Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section IV ; Jean Painleve, "The Castration of Documentary" (1953) ; Jean Cocteau, "On Blood of the Beasts" (1963) ; Lindsay Anderson, "Free Cinema" (1957) ; Tom Whiteside, "The One-Ton Pencil" (1962) ; Edgar Morin, "Chronicle of a Film" (1962) ; Jonathan Rosenbaum, "Radical Humanism and the Coexistence of Film and Poetry in The House is Black" (2003) ; Jean Rouch with Dan Georgakas, Udayan Gupta, and Judy Janda, "The Politics of Visual Anthropology" (1977) ; Ricky Leacock, "For an Uncontrolled Cinema" (1961) ; Bruce Elder, "On the Candid-Eye Movement" (1977) ; Jonas Mekas, "To Mayor Lindsay / On Film Journalism and Newsreels" (1966) ; Jeanne Hall, "Realism as a Style in Cinema Verite: A Critical Analysis of Primary" (1991) ; Margaret Mead, "As Significant as the Invention of Drama or the Novel" (1973) ; V: Talking Back: Radical Voices and Visions After 1968 ; Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section V ; Robert Stam, "Hour of the Furnaces and the Two Avant Gardes" (1981) ; Juan Carlos Espinosa, Jorge Fraga, Estrella Pantin, "Toward a Definition of the Didactic Documentary: A Paper Presented to the First National Congress of Education and Culture" (1978) ; Marilyn Buck, Norm Fruchter, Robert Kramer, and Karen Ross, "Newsreel" (1969) ; Frederick Wiseman with Alan Westin, "'You Start Off With a Bromide': Conversation with Film Maker Frederick Wiseman" (1974) ; David MacDougall, "Beyond Observational Cinema" (1973/1992) ; Pauline Kael, "Beyond Pirandello" (1970) ; Pearl Bowser, "Pioneers of Black Documentary Film" (1999) ; Michael Chanan, "Rediscovering Documentary: Cultural Context and Intentionality" (1990) ; Santiago Alvarez with the editors of Cineaste, "'5 Frames Are 5 Frames, Not 6, But 5': An Interview with Santiago Alvarez" (1975) ; Abe Mark Nornes, "The Postwar Documentary Trace: Groping in the Dark" (2002) ; Emile de Antonio with Tanya Neufeld, "An Interview with Emile de Antonio" (1973) ; Annette Michelson, Reply to de Antonio (1973) ; Bill Nichols, "The Voice of Documentary" (1983) ; James Roy MacBean, "Two Laws from Australia, One White, One Black: The Recent Past and the Challenging Future of Ethnographic Film" (1983) ; Lee Atwell, Review of Word is Out (1979) ; Julia Lesage, "The Political Aesthetics of the Feminist Documentary Film" (1978) ; E. Ann Kaplan, "Theories and Strategies of the Feminist Documentary" (1983) ; Jill Godmilow, "Paying Dues: A Personal Experience with Theatrical Distribution" (1977) ; Coco Fusco, "A Black Avant-Garde? Notes on Black Audio Film Collective and Sankofa" (1988) ; Renee Tajima, Letter to Scott MacDonald (1995) ; John Greyson, "Strategic Compromises: AIDS and Alternative Video Practices" (1990) ; VI. Truth Not Guaranteed: Reflections, Revisions, and Returns ; Editor's section introduction ; Robert Sklar, "Documentary: Artifice in the Service of Truth" (1975) ; Jonas Mekas, "The Diary Film (A Lecture on Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania)" (1972) ; Chick Strand, "Notes on Ethnographic Film by a Film Artist" (1978) ; Michael Renov, "Toward a Poetics of Documentary" (1993) ; Trinh T. Minh-ha, "Mechanical Eye, Electronic Ear and the Lure of Authenticity" (1984) ; Brian Winston, "The Tradition of the Victim in Griersonian Documentary" (1988) ; J. Hoberman, "Shoah: The Being of Nothingness" (1985-86) ; Claude Lanzmann with Marc Chevrie and Herve Le Roux, "Site and Speech: An Interview with Claude Lanzmann about Shoah" (1985) ; Linda Williams, "Mirrors without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary" (1993) ; Peter Bates, "Truth Not Guaranteed: An Interview with Errol Morris" (1989) ; Harlan Jacobson with Michael Moore, "Michael & Me" (1989) ; Thomas Waugh, "'Acting to Play Oneself': Notes on Performance in Documentary" (1990) ; Phillip Brian Harper, "Marlon Riggs: The Subjective Position of Documentary Video" (1995) ; Paula Rabinowitz, "Melodrama/Male Drama: The Sentimental Contract of American Labor Films" (2002) ; Marsha Orgeron and Devin Orgeron, "Familial Pursuits, Editorial Acts: Documentaries After the Age of Home Video" (2007) ; Vivian Sobchack, "Inscribing Ethical Space: 10 Propositions on Death, Representation, and Documentary" (1984) ; Paul Arthur, "Jargons of Authenticity (Three American Moments)" (1993) ; VII: Documentary Transformed: Transnational and Transmedial Crossings ; Jonathan Kahana, Introduction to Section VII ; Harun Farocki and Jill Godmilow with Jennifer Horne and Jonathan Kahana, "A Perfect Replica: An Interview with Harun Farocki and Jill Godmilow" (1998) ; Rachel Gabara, "Mixing Impossible Genres: David Achkar and African Autobiographical Documentary" (2003/2013) ; Jean-Marie Teno, "Writing on Walls: The Future of African Documentary Cinema" (2010) ; Chris Berry, "Getting Real: Chinese Documentary, Chinese Postsocialism" (2007) ; Wu Wenguang, "DV: Individual Filmmaking" (2006) ; Richard Porton, "Weapon of Mass Instruction: Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11" (2004) ; Scott MacDonald, "Up Close and Political: Three Short Ruminations on Ideology in the Nature Film" (2006) ; Amy Villarejo, "Bus 174 and the Living Present" (2006) ; Barbara Klinger, "Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Meditations on 3D" (2012) ; Index

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Trade Review“Animentaries are an excellent subject for pragmatic research projects, and Animated Documentary offers a wealth of ideas to embark upon them.” (Charles Forceville, Journal of Pragmatics, Vol. 89, 2015)Table of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Representational Strategies 2. Digital Realities 3. Animated Interviews 4. The World in Here 5. Animated Memories Afterword Notes Bibliography Index

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