Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video, New and Expanded Edition

Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video, New and Expanded Edition

ISBN-10:
0814339719
ISBN-13:
9780814339718
Pub. Date:
12/16/2013
Publisher:
Wayne State University Press
ISBN-10:
0814339719
ISBN-13:
9780814339718
Pub. Date:
12/16/2013
Publisher:
Wayne State University Press
Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video, New and Expanded Edition

Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video, New and Expanded Edition

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Overview

Essays on important documentary films from a wide range of critical and theoretical perspectives.

Originally 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.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814339718
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Publication date: 12/16/2013
Series: Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 600
Sales rank: 712,681
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Barry Keith Grant is professor of film studies in the Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he is the author or editor of numerous books, including Voyages of Discovery: The Cinema of Frederick Wiseman, 100 Documentary Films (with Jim Hillier) and Shadows of Doubt: Negotiations of Masculinity in American Genre Films (Wayne State University Press, 2011).

Jeannette Sloniowski is associate professor in the Department of Communication, Popular Culture and Film and the graduate program in popular culture at Brock University. Her publications include Canadian Communications: Issues in Contemporary Media and Culture, Detecting Canada: Essays on Canadian Detective Fiction, Candid Eyes: Essays on Canadian Documentaries, and Slippery Pastimes: A Canadian Popular Reader.

Table of Contents

Foreword to New and Expanded Bill Nichols ix

Preface to First Edition xvii

Acknowledgments xix

Introduction xxiii

1 The Filmmaker as Hunter: Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North William Rothman 1

2 "Peace between Man and Machine": Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera Seth Feldman 19

3 Paradise Regained: Sergei Eisenstein's Que viva México! as Ethnography Joanne Hershfield 35

4 Synthetic Vision: The Dialectical Imperative of Luis Buñuel's Las Hurdes Vivian Sobchack 51

5 The Art of National Projection: Basil Wright's Song of Ceylon William Guynn 64

6 The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema: Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will Frank P. Tomasulo 81

7 American Documentary Finds Its Voice: Persuasion and Expression in The Plow That Broke the Plains and The City Charlie Keil 103

8 "Men Cannot Act before the Camera in the Presence of Death": Joris Ivens's The Spanish Earth Thomas Waugh 122

9 The Poetics of Propaganda: Humphrey Jennings and Listen to Britain Jim Leach 141

10 "It Was an Atrocious Film": Georges Franju's Blood of the Beasts Jeannette Sloniowski 159

11 The "Dialogic Imagination" of Jean Rouch: Covert Conversations in Les maítres fous Diane Scheinman 178

12 Documenting the Ineffable: Terror and Memory in Alain Resnais's Night and Fog Sandy Flitterman-Lewis 196

13 Making the Past Present: Peter Watkins's Culloden John R. Cook 217

14 "Don't You Ever Just Watch?": American Cinema Verité and Dont Look Back Jeanne Hall 237

15 "Ethnography in the First Person": Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies Barry Keith Grant 253

16 The Two Avant-Gardes: Solanas and Getino's The Hour of the Furnaces Robert Stam 271

17 Seeing with Experimental Eyes: Stan Brakhage's The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes Bart Testa 287

18 "A Bastard Union of Several Forms": Style and Narrative in An American Family Jeffrey K. Ruoff 305

19 The Documentary of Displaced Persona: Michael Rubbo's Daisy: The Story of a Facelift Joan Nicks 322

20 Gender, Power, and a Cucumber: Satirizing Masculinity in This Is Spinal Tap Carl Plantinga 339

21 Documentary Film and the Discourse of Hysterical/Historical Narrative: Ross McElwee's Sherman's March Lucy Fischer 356

22 Subjectivity Lost and Found: Bill Viola's I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like Catherine Russell 368

23 Mirrors without Memories: Truth, History, and The Thin Blue Line Linda Williams 385

24 Documentaphobia and Mixed Modes: Michael Moore's Roger & Me Matthew Bernstein 404

25 Silence and Its Opposite: Expressions of Race in Tongues Untied Sheila Petty 424

26 Containing Fire: Performance in Paris Is Burning Caryl Flinn 438

27 Contested Territory: Camille Billops and James Hatch's Finding Christa Julia Lesage 456

28 Spike Lee's 4 Little Girls: The Politics of the Documentary Interview Paula J. Massood 475

29 The Gleaners and "Us": The Radical Modesty of Agnès Varda's Les glaneurs et la glaneuse Virginia Bonner 494

30 "You Must Never Listen to This": Lessons on Sound, Cinema, and Mortality from Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man David T. Johnson 507

31 Cultural Learnings of Borat for Make Benefit Glorious Study of Documentary Leshu Torchin 522

Bibliography 543

Contributors 549

Index 557

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