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The Last Snapshot of the British Intelligentsia: Documentary, Mass-Observation, and the Fate of the Liberal Avant-Garde

Thomas S. Davis

in The Extinct Scene: Late Modernism and Everyday Life

This chapter argues that documentary aesthetics turn to everyday life in order to create works that promoted the norms and values of the British liberal state during its period of greatest distress.

Constructing an Intimate Sphere Through Her Own Female Body: Naomi Kawase’s Documentary Films

Wakae Nakane

in Female Authorship and the Documentary Image: Theory, Practice and Aesthetics

The majority of Naomi Kawase’s documentary films are based on her own life experiences, leading to conclusions that they are entirely self-reflexive. The author argues that ‘they instead show an ... More

The majority of Naomi Kawase’s documentary films are based on her own life experiences, leading to conclusions that they are entirely self-reflexive. The author argues that ‘they instead show an alternative way of constructing relationships among people’. She also claims that indicate a possibility to ‘go beyond the binarism between ‘individual’ and ‘society’’ by creating an ‘intimate sphere’ which transcends the general idea of societal discourse.Less

Profession: Documentarist: Underground Documentary Making in Iran

Lidia Merás

in Female Agency and Documentary Strategies: Subjectivities, Identity and Activism

Using Profession: Documentarist and its diary-style format as a case study, this essay revolves around the practices, aesthetics and narrative interests of contemporary female documentarists in Iran. ... More

Using Profession: Documentarist and its diary-style format as a case study, this essay revolves around the practices, aesthetics and narrative interests of contemporary female documentarists in Iran. Exploring the professional barriers involved in documentary film making in the country today, the author discusses female authorship also in relation to the hard censorship laws, the menace of political retaliations as well as gender discrimination. The extent to which these women documentarists are forced to perform their work as a form of underground activism have widespread repercussions on their practice, and merges the personal with the political.Less

Sherman’s March: Romantic Love in Documentary Films

David L. Paletz

in Understanding Love: Philosophy, Film, and Fiction

Romantic love, the heart of many fiction films, is rare in documentary films. This essay begins by explaining its absence and shows that, when it appears, romantic love is usually depicted ... More

Romantic love, the heart of many fiction films, is rare in documentary films. This essay begins by explaining its absence and shows that, when it appears, romantic love is usually depicted unfavorably: pleasure turns into pain, possession into loss or a marriage of misery and make do. Then the focus turns to “Sherman’s March,” the documentary that best reveals romantic love in all its aspects, as we (the viewers) accompany Ross McElwee or, rather, his persona, in a quest for romantic love from one after another engaging and distinctive Southern woman. The analysis shows the film’s remarkable construction, sound track and voiceovers, its images and camera movements; and finds that, as it celebrates the women’s uniqueness, originality and style, the film is a droll tale of a search marked more by frustration and failure than success.Less

The Beginning: Towards a Mass Entertainment

Dong Hoon Kim

in Eclipsed Cinema: The Film Culture of Colonial Korea

This chapter examines early film culture prior to the 1920s in order to offer a detailed historical background for the book’s exploration of the major advancement of Joseon cinema since the late ... More

This chapter examines early film culture prior to the 1920s in order to offer a detailed historical background for the book’s exploration of the major advancement of Joseon cinema since the late 1910s. The first half of the chapter critically scrutinizes socio-political and cultural conditions that influenced the formation of early film culture in pre-colonial and colonial Korea. Equal attention is given to the collective efforts of early film entrepreneurs and exhibitors in creating film exhibition sites, including movie theatres, defining social and cultural functions of theatre space for a society devoid of theatrical tradition, and cultivating film audiences. The second half traces the activities of the first film production entity of colonial Korea: the Moving Picture Unit (MPU) of the colonial government. The author’s attempt to uncover the forgotten history of the MUP ultimately reveals the problematic of Japanese and Korean film historiographies that have pushed this crucial film unit of the empire onto the margin of film history.Less

Other Women: Thinking Class and Gender in Contemporary Brazilian Documentary Film

Carla Maia

in Female Agency and Documentary Strategies: Subjectivities, Identity and Activism

Focusing on the relational dimension of some selected works, this essay proposes to consider the subject matter as films with women rather than films of women. The main effort is to understand ... More

Focusing on the relational dimension of some selected works, this essay proposes to consider the subject matter as films with women rather than films of women. The main effort is to understand something that takes place in-between spaces – before and after the camera, but also between viewer and film – and critically reflect on the aesthetic, ethical and political potential that a cinema marked by different women’s perspectives can bring to light. The author concludes that instead of reflecting a certain proximity between women, most films by contemporary female documentarists in Brazil, are suffering from the impact of the difference in social station between the director and the women being filmed.Less

“They Probably Got Us All on the News”: Unsettled Filming in Trouble the Water

Kate Parker Horigan

in Consuming Katrina: Public Disaster and Personal Narrative

This chapter examines Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s 2008 documentary film Trouble the Water. The filmmakers use unique documentary techniques that incorporate narrators’ engagement with the processes of ... More

This chapter examines Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s 2008 documentary film Trouble the Water. The filmmakers use unique documentary techniques that incorporate narrators’ engagement with the processes of their story’s publication. The film includes survivor Kim Roberts’ own footage, shot during Katrina on her handheld camera. Kim’s role as documentarian is foregrounded, and in some striking scenes she expresses her awareness about the value of her story and its likelihood of circulating among particular kinds of audiences. The filmmakers successfully integrate survivors’ own critiques of the discourses that typically represent them, and through this and other methods, create what Dominick LaCapra calls “empathic unsettlement.” However, the film’s optimistic conclusion evokes a dominant narrative of racial uplift, with a neoliberal twist that undermines the powerful work the film is otherwise performing.Less

Slow Violence in Film

Christine L. Marran

in Ecology without Culture: Aesthetics for a Toxic World

This chapter examines how documentarian Tsuchimoto Noriaki created a perceptual field for invisible toxins. I discuss the formal, theoretical, and social modes in Tsuchimoto’s nuclear and medical ... More

This chapter examines how documentarian Tsuchimoto Noriaki created a perceptual field for invisible toxins. I discuss the formal, theoretical, and social modes in Tsuchimoto’s nuclear and medical films, paying particular attention to what I call his “optics of ambulation,” his refusal of montage, and his capture of the impact of toxins over time--what Rob Nixon calls “slow violence.”Less

Flickers of the American Dream: Filming Possibility in Decline

Rebecca J. Kinney

in Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit As America's Postindustrial Frontier

The fourth chapter examines the story of opportunity in the face of hardship in two recent documentary films, Deforce and Detropia. The premise of the documentary film enables the narrative of ... More

The fourth chapter examines the story of opportunity in the face of hardship in two recent documentary films, Deforce and Detropia. The premise of the documentary film enables the narrative of possibility through the persistent belief of real Detroiters. The chapter turns to the ways in which the myth of the contemporary postindustrial frontier, much like the myth of the historical frontier in American culture, operates not only as a physical place but also as an ideological symbol to suggest the potential of hardworking and determined individuals against all odds. Even as the present is portrayed as bleak, the narrative resolution of Detroit’s uncertain future nearly always falls back on a retrenchment of the American idea of success through individual hard work and determination.Less

Interview with D.A. Pennebaker

Keith Beattie

in D.A. Pennebaker

This chapter presents an interview with D. A. Pennebaker conducted by Jonathan Marlow in March 2006 during a tribute to Pennebaker at the Documentary Film Institute. Topics covered include his film ... More

This chapter presents an interview with D. A. Pennebaker conducted by Jonathan Marlow in March 2006 during a tribute to Pennebaker at the Documentary Film Institute. Topics covered include his film Daybreak Express as one of the most stunning shorts ever made and at what point he decided to use Ellington as the springboard; the experiences that made him decide to pursue a career as a filmmaker; how he met Robert Drew; how much of his work with Drew, Richard Leacock and Albert Maysles was a matter of being in the right place at the right time; the unconventional editing for Dont Look Back; and the appeal of working with artists during a transitional stage in their careers.Less

Record Keeping: Family Memories on Film – Rea Tajiri’s History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige and Wisdom Gone Wild

Kerreen Ely-Harper

in Female Agency and Documentary Strategies: Subjectivities, Identity and Activism

In this essay, the author proposes to demonstrate how Rea Tajiri in History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashig (USA, 1991) moves through three stages in her filmmaking process; (1) embodiment (2) ... More

In this essay, the author proposes to demonstrate how Rea Tajiri in History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashig (USA, 1991) moves through three stages in her filmmaking process; (1) embodiment (2) distillation and (3) re-representation. These processes (as distinct from the commercial stages of producing a film) can be seen to parallel the narrative and trauma theory models of transformation from incoherence to coherence through the reconstruction of the autobiographical memory narrative. The author concludes that “Tajiri’s work demonstrates that the documentary film format can be a space for working through transgenerational trauma, difficult and forgotten histories.”Less

“Nobody Asked You to Go to America”

Harlow Robinson

in Lewis Milestone: Life and Films

This chapter focuses on Milestone’s early life: his childhood and family life in Moldova, his identity as a Jew and early experience of anti-Semitism, his love for the theater, his decision to ... More

This chapter focuses on Milestone’s early life: his childhood and family life in Moldova, his identity as a Jew and early experience of anti-Semitism, his love for the theater, his decision to immigrate to America and his difficult voyage to New York. It continues with his early work as a society photographer in New York, and his enlistment in the Photographic Division of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, where he edited documentary film footage sent from the front. Known as a practical joker with a fine sense of humor, Milestone made friends and useful connections easily. When the War ended, he took the advice of some Hollywood veterans and moved to Los Angeles in 1919 to break into the film industry.Less

The Canary in the Gemeinschaft?: Disability, Film, and the Jewish Question

Faye Ginsburg

in Deus in Machina: Religion, Technology, and the Things in Between

This chapter explores questions about Judaism, disability, and technology from the vantage point of a group of documentary film-makers and other activists concerned with the place of the physically ... More

This chapter explores questions about Judaism, disability, and technology from the vantage point of a group of documentary film-makers and other activists concerned with the place of the physically and mentally disabled within modern Ashkenazic Jewish community. The chapter examines a series of films that document religious, scientific, and popular conceptions of Jewish community as a shared genetic heritage, the ways such evidence has been used to silence or hide the presence of disabled Jews, and the strategies deployed by activists to re-imagine Jewish kinship and to redefine the notion of the human as made in God's image. Examples discussed include: Liebe Perla, a film about a short-statured Holocaust survivor; Praying with Lior, which focuses on the religious life of a Jewish boy with Down syndrome; and the recent proliferation of Internet-mediated forums for “cyber-kinship” that are enabling Jews born with genetic diseases to network with one another and to achieve a visible presence that is transforming Jewish public culture.Less

Awakening the Eye

George Kouvaros

in Awakening the Eye: Robert Frank's American Cinema

The introduction outlines Robert Frank’s life and development as a filmmaker and photographer. His works always depicted a narrative in one way or another. He also used striking images and a ... More

The introduction outlines Robert Frank’s life and development as a filmmaker and photographer. His works always depicted a narrative in one way or another. He also used striking images and a documentary point of view to capture the way of life for everyday Americans. Kouvaros connects Frank’s film The Americans to contemporary Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Finally, the introduction explains how being a photographer impacted Frank’s filmmaking style and decisions.Less

Forensic Matter

Ángeles Donoso Macaya

in The Insubordination of Photography: Documentary Practices under Chile's Dictatorship

The Lonquén case, as it is known, was the first case that definitively confirmed the denied existence of the detained-disappeared. Besides establishing that fifteen men who had been detained on ... More

The Lonquén case, as it is known, was the first case that definitively confirmed the denied existence of the detained-disappeared. Besides establishing that fifteen men who had been detained on October 7, 1973, had been thrown into the furnace of an abandoned mine, buried, and left there in clandestine cemeteries, the forensic analysis and the inspecting judge’s investigation also revealed that the depositions given by the policemen involved in the crime were completely false. Despite the prominence of the Lonquén case, little attention has been placed on the documentary photographs that served to secure and present the physical remains found as forensic evidence. I consider two sets of photographs taken by Vicaría de la Solidaridad photographers Helen Hughes and Luis Navarro at the abandoned mine during the first days of December 1978, immediately after the findings. My analysis centers on the photos that were disseminated publicly and also considers how the unpublished photos (the vast majority) were discussed in the media. The chapter ends with a brief consideration of No Olvidar (Not To Forget) (1982) by Ignacio Agüero, and La ciudad de los fotógrafos by Sebastián Moreno, two documentary films in which the traces of Lonquén continue emerging.Less

Houses of leaves, cinema and the new affordances of old media

Paul McCormick

in Mark Z. Danielewski

Paul McCormick takes a narratological approach in examining the cinematic qualities of House of Leaves as part of the book’s ‘media interface.’ Borrowing the term ‘affordance’ from ecological ... More

Paul McCormick takes a narratological approach in examining the cinematic qualities of House of Leaves as part of the book’s ‘media interface.’ Borrowing the term ‘affordance’ from ecological psychologist J. J. Gibson, which signifies both the inherent properties of an artefact and its perceived usage, McCormick proposes that Danielewski transposes the media affordances of cinema into the book medium in four central ways: a video diary, the perceptual frame of a surveillance camera, the concept of cinematic montage, and a documentary film. These borrowings create what McCormick calls a ‘postmodern uncertainty’ and a ‘level of indeterminacy’ which render the novel both eternally incomplete and firmly situated within the media environment of 1990s America.Less