book
Documenting the documentary : close readings of documentary films and video / edited by Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski, forward by Bill Nichols Detroit MI: Wayne State University Press, 1998.
Call No: 761 DOCAuthor: Grant, Barry Keith ; Sloniowski, Jeanette Place: Detroit MIPublisher: Wayne State University PressPubDate: 1998PhysDes: 488 p. ; 23 cmSubject: DOCUMENTARY FILMS ; FLAHERTY, ROBERT ; VERTOV, DZIGA ; EISENSTEIN, SERGEI M. ; BUNUEL, LUIS ; WRIGHT, BASIL ; RIEFENSTAHL, LENI ; NANOOK OF THE NORTH (US, Robert Flaherty, 1922) ; CELOVEK S KINOAPPARATOM (UR, Dziga Vertov, 1929) ; QUE VIVA MEXICO! (UR, Sergei Eisenstein, [prod. 1932]) ; HURDES, LAS (SP, Luis Bunuel, 1933) ; SONG OF CEYLON, THE (UK, Basil Wright, 1934) ; TRIUMPH DES WILLENS (G, Leni Riefenstahl, 1935) ; PLOW THAT BROKE THE PLAINS, THE (US, Pare Lorentz, 1936) ; CITY, THE (US, Ralph Steiner and Willard Van Dyke, 1939) ; SPANISH EARTH, THE (US, Joris Ivens, 1937) ; LISTEN TO BRITAIN (UK, Humphrey Jennings/Stewart McAllister, 1942) ; BLOOD OF THE BEASTS (FR, Georges Franju,1949) ; SANG DES BETES, LE (FR, Georges Franju,1949) ; MAITRES FOUS, LES (FR, Jean Rouch, 1955) ; NUIT ET BROUILLARD (FR, Alain Resnais, 1955) ; DONT LOOK BACK (US, D.A. Pennebaker, 1967) ; TITICUT FOLLIES (US, Frederick Wiseman, 1967) ; HORA DE LOS HORNOS, LA (AG, Fernado E. Solanos, 1968) ; ACT OF SEEING WITH ONE'S OWN EYES, THE (US, Stan Brakhage, 1971) ; AMERICAN FAMILY, AN [TV](US, 1973) ; DAISY, THE STORY OF A FACELIFT (CN, Michael Rubbo, 1982) ; THIS IS SPINAL TAP (US, Rob Reiner, 1984) ; SHERMAN'S MARCH (US, Ross McElwee, 1986 [prod. 1981]) ; I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS I AM LIKE (US, Bill Viola, 1986) ; JOURNEY, THE (CN, Peter Watkins, 1987) ; THIN BLUE LINE, THE (US, Errol Morris, 1988) ; ROGER AND ME (US, Michael Moore, 1989) ; TONGUES UNTIED (US, Marlon Riggs, 1989) ; PARIS IS BURNING (US, Jennie Livingston, 1990) ; FINDING CHRISTA (US, Camille Billops/James Hatch, 1991) Summary: Documenting the Documentary features essays by twenty-seven film scholars from a wide range of critical and theoretical perspectives. Each essay focuses on one or two important documentaries, engaging in questions surrounding ethics, ideology, politics, power, race, gender, and representation -- but always in terms of how they arise out of or are involved in the reading of specific documentaries as particular textual constructions. By closely reading documentaries as rich visual works, this anthology fills a void in the critical writing on documentaries, which tends to privilege production over aesthetic pleasure. As we perceive and comprehend the world through visual media increasingly, understanding the textual strategies by which individual documentaries are organized has become critically important. Together, the essays cover the significant developments in the history of the documentary, from the first commercially released feature, Nanook of the North (1922), to modern independent productions, such as An American Family (1973), Tongues Untied (1989), and Finding Christa (1991), and including important national and stylistic movements and various production contexts from the mainstream to the avant-garde. Seth Feldman places Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929) within the context of constructivism and futurism; Vivian Sobchack discusses the strategies of Bunuel's Las Hurdas (Land without Bread, 1931) in relation to surrealism; and Joanne Hershfield explores Que viva Mexico! (1932) as the presentation of an exotic culture by a European director. Documenting the Documentary offers clear, serious, and insightful analyses of documentary films, and is a welcome balancebetween theory and criticism, abstract conceptualization and concrete analysis. --FROM PUBLISHER'S SITENotes: includes bibliiographic references and indexISBN: 0814326390Contents: Filmmaker as hunter / William Rothman -- Peace between man and machine / Seth Feldman -- Paradise regained / Joanne Hershfield -- Synthetic vision / Vivian Sobchack -- Art of national projection / William Guynn -- Mass psychology of fascist cinema / Frank P. Tomasulo -- American documentary finds its voice / Charlie Keil -- Men cannot act before the camera in the presence of death / Thomas Waugh -- Poetics of propaganda / Jim Leach -- It was an atrocious film / Jeannette Sloniowski -- Dialogic imagination of Jean Rouch / Diane Scheinman -- Documenting the ineffable / Sandy Flitterman-Lewis -- Don't you ever just watch? / Jeanne Hall -- Ethnography in the first person / Barry Keith Grant -- Two avant-gardes / Robert Stam -- Seeing with experimental eyes / Bart Testa -- Bastard union of several forms / Jeffrey K. Ruoff -- Documentary of displaced persona / Joan Nicks -- Gender, power, and a cucumber / Carl Plantinga -- Documentary film and the discourse of hysterical/historical narrative / Lucy Fischer -- Subjectivity lost and found / Catherine Russell -- Filmmaker as global circumnavigator / Scott MacDonald -- Mirrors without memories / Linda Williams -- Documentaphobia and mixed modes / Matthew Bernstein -- Silence and its opposite / Sheila Petty -- Containing fire / Caryl Flinn -- Contested territory / Julia Lesage
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