Documentary Books: Exploring the Relationship Between Film and Photography
What is a Documentary Book Called?
Taking an intermedial approach, this book explores documentary film’s complex relationship to photography. Examining art documentaries that address painting, sculpture, and photography, it reveals how film reframes other visual arts in order to articulate new experiences of reality and history.
Beyond Bias identifies the hysterical discourse prolific in conservative documentary film and media more generally. It shows how this discourse conflates form with content and reduces complex political issues to moral dichotomies.
Definitions
A valuable reference for understanding documentary filmmaking and activism, this book addresses the complex relationship between political ideas and documentary production. It uses film studies, cultural theory and social change to understand how documentary media articulates new forms of collective struggle.
Bringing together an international range of scholars and filmmakers, this book explores the rich variety of contemporary art documentaries. It shows how a medium such as film can reframe other visual arts and opens up critical issues of global art worlds, the discourse of the artist and intermediality.
Rather than a Griersonian paradigm of representation, this collection explores the ways in which documentaries may offer composed transformative experiences that remind us of our mortality – and therefore the importance of living our lives well. With contributions ranging from celebrity voice over to ventriloquism, from posthumanist politics to rockumentary screams, this book offers a groundbreaking approach to documentaries and their voices.
Origins
Many documentary filmmakers draw inspiration from books. These include books based on true events and novels that are a combination of fiction and nonfiction. This genre is sometimes called docufiction.
This book examines the ways in which documentary films rely on rhetoric to construct their arguments and point of view. It also explores the role of images and voices in these films.
Drawing on detailed onsite observation and analysis of film production and circulation practices, this study demonstrates how independent documentary has evolved into a tactic that contests dominant definitions of cinema and media culture and offers an alternative model of social change. It argues that the emergence of independent documentary is a response to neoliberal economic systems and globalising cultural flows. It is a strategy that is informed by and embedded within an ethical premise.
Functions
In a media culture suffused with competing truth claims, documentary is uniquely positioned to challenge and inspire. This book explores the diverse functions of documentary film, from Robert Flaherty’s pioneering ethnographic film Nanook of the North to Michael Moore’s anti-Iraq War polemic Fahrenheit 9/11, from Dziga Vertov’s artful Soviet propaganda Man with a Movie Camera to Luc Jacquet’s heart-tugging wildlife epic March of the Penguins.
Drawing on a range of research fields, including cinema studies, social history and cultural theory, this book offers fresh perspectives on documentary’s many aesthetic, industrial, geographic and historiographical dimensions. It also examines the changing roles of the documentarian and argues that documentary is a form of activism.
Techniques
Documentaries about the visual arts are increasingly prevalent yet receive little scholarly attention. This book offers new insights into the rich variety in form and content of contemporary art documentary.
Using a transdisciplinary approach, it examines the ways in which film can reframe other media practices such as painting, sculpture, photography and performance art. It also provides new perspectives on intermediality and the role of the viewer in the process of interpreting the visual arts through film.
In addition to providing a detailed overview of the documentary filmmaking process, this book offers pragmatic advice for the creation of successful documentary works. It outlines the process of finding, sourcing and licensing third-party materials, and discusses the complex issues of rights management for media makers. It is a must-read for documentary producers, scholars and students.
Media
The contributions in this collection seek new formulations for ideas and practices within documentary media that respond critically to recent political, socio-historical, environmental, and representational shifts. They explore a wide range of topics, including documentary exhibitions, night photography, drone imagery, art documentaries, mobile media, nonhuman creative practices, and sound art.
This book charts the development of independent documentary in India, analyzing practices and discourses that challenge prevailing definitions and functions. It examines the role of filmmakers, audiences and institutions, and highlights how independent documentary is reorganising cultural production in neoliberal economies.
Using a range of film analyses and concepts drawn from philosophy, sociology, history and political theory, this study shows how documentary forms a unique nexus between aesthetics and politics. It demonstrates how activists can leverage documentary film as a means of communicating their concerns to wider society.