Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video, New and Expanded EditionOriginally released in 1998, Documenting the Documentary responded to a scholarly landscape in which documentary film was largely understudied and undervalued aesthetically, and analyzed instead through issues of ethics, politics, and film technology. Editors Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski addressed this gap by presenting a useful survey of the artistic and persuasive aspects of documentary film from a range of critical viewpoints. This new edition of Documenting the Documentary adds five new essays on more recent films in addition to the text of the first edition. Thirty-one film and media scholars, many of them among the most important voices in the area of documentary film, cover the significant developments in the history of documentary filmmaking from Nanook of the North (1922), the first commercially released documentary feature, to contemporary independent film and video productions like Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man (2005) and the controversial Borat (2006). The works discussed also include representative examples of many important national and stylistic movements and various production contexts, from mainstream to avant-garde. In all, this volume offers a series of rich and revealing analyses of those "regimes of truth" that still fascinate filmgoers as much today as they did at the very beginnings of film history. As documentary film and visual media become increasingly important ways for audiences to process news and information, Documenting the Documentary continues to be a vital resource to understanding the genre. Students and teachers of film studies and fans of documentary film will appreciate this expanded classic volume. |
Contents
1 | |
19 | |
35 | |
The Dialectical Imperative of Luis Buñuels Las Hurdes | 51 |
Basil Wrights Song of Ceylon | 64 |
Leni Riefenstahls Triumph of the Will | 81 |
Persuasion and Expression in The Plow That Broke the Plains and The City ... | 103 |
Joris Ivenss The Spanish Earth | 122 |
Michael Rubbos Daisy The Story of a Facelift | 322 |
Satirizing Masculinity in This Is Spinal Tap | 339 |
Ross McElwees Shermans March | 356 |
Bill Violas I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like | 368 |
Truth History and The Thin Blue Line | 385 |
Michael Moores Roger Me | 404 |
Expressions of Race in Tongues Untied | 424 |
Performance in Paris Is Burning | 438 |
Humphrey Jennings and Listen to Britain | 141 |
Georges Franjus Blood of the Beasts | 159 |
Covert Conversations in Les maîtres fous | 178 |
Terror and Memory in Alain Resnaiss Night and Fog | 196 |
Peter Watkinss Culloden | 217 |
American Cinema Verité and Dont Look Back | 237 |
Frederick Wisemans Titicut Follies | 253 |
Solanas and Getinos The Hour of the Furnaces | 271 |
Stan Brakhages The Act of Seeing with Ones Own Eyes | 287 |
Style and Narrative in An American Family | 305 |
Camille Billops and James Hatchs Finding Christa | 456 |
The Politics of the Documentary Interview | 475 |
The Radical Modesty of Agnès Vardas Les glaneurs et la glaneuse | 494 |
Lessons on Sound Cinema and Mortality from Werner Herzogs Grizzly Man ... | 507 |
31 Cultural Learnings of Borat for Make Benefit Glorious Study of Documentary | 522 |
543 | |
Contributors | 549 |
557 | |
BackCover | 572 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic American argues audience avant-garde black gay Borat Buñuel Camille Christa cinema verité close-up critics Culloden culture Daisy death direct cinema docu document documentary film Dont Look Back Dylan editing effect Eisenstein essay ethnographic example fiction films film’s filmmaker Flaherty Flaherty’s footage frame Franju Gleaners Hauka Herzog Hitler human ideological images interview Ivens Las Hurdes Lee’s Listen to Britain look male McElwee mentary mode montage Moore Moore’s Movie Camera Nanook narration narrative Nichols Night and Fog nonfiction One’s onscreen Paris Paris Is Burning performance poetic political present Que viva México reality representation Resnais reveal Riggs Rouch Rubbo scene screen sequence shot social Song of Ceylon Spanish Earth spectator Spinal Tap story strategies structure style suggests television tion Titicut Follies tradition truth University Press Varda Vertov viewer Viola visual voice voice-over Watkins Wiseman women York