The Documentary: Politics, Emotion, Culture

by B. Smaill

Overview

Belinda Smaill proposes an original approach to documentary studies, examining how emotions such as pleasure, hope, pain, empathy, nostalgia or disgust are integral both to the representation of selfhood in documentary, and to the way documentaries circulate in the public sphere.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781349314911
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/01/2010
Edition description:	1st ed. 2010
Pages:	221
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

BELINDA SMAILL is a Lecturer in Film and Television Studies in the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Part I Documentary and Pleasure

1 Introduction: Representation and Documentary Emotion 3

2 Pleasure and Disgust: Desire and the Female Porn Star 26

Part II Pain and the Other

3 Injury, Identity and Recognition: Rize and Fix: The Story of an Addicted City 53

4 Women, Pain and the Documentaries of Kim Longinotto 71

Part III The Labour of Authorship: Caring and Mourning

5 Loss and Care: Asian Australian Documentary 97

6 Civic Love and Contemporary Dissent Documentary 114

Part IV Past, Present and Future: Hope and Nostalgia

7 Children, Futurity and Hope: Born into Brothels 139

8 Nostalgia, Historical Time and Reality Television: The Idol Series 161

Epilogue 182

Notes 189

Bibliography 200

Index 210

Editorial Reviews

'Smaill's excellence lies in knowing what she's doing: examining how emotion is both presented and evoked in and by documentary for political ends. This fluid conception of politics is deeply imbricated with feminist and other movement politics that assume affect is part of political motion, something that incorporates the agenda of change. That movement might be uncertain, in need of constant correction, but it is also affirmative and embodied, in the maker, in the film, and in the audience and social world.' Chuck Kleinhans, Jump Cut

'Smaill covers very diverse subject material in an engaging and accessible manner. Her references extend far beyond the world of the big screen: rather than furrow through documentary film theory, the author draws on multidisciplinary sources to explore the idea of emotion, including the psychoanalytical perspectives of Melanie Klein and the linguistic articulations of Elaine Scarry.' - New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 8.1

From the Publisher