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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.

Interactive Documentary, Narrative Scepticism and the Values of Documentary Film

Ted Nannicelli

in Truth in Visual Media: Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics

This chapter critically assesses some of the claims that have been made about interactive documentary’s putatively special capacity to yield a variety of values – epistemic, ethical, and political – ... More

This chapter critically assesses some of the claims that have been made about interactive documentary’s putatively special capacity to yield a variety of values – epistemic, ethical, and political – and to defend a moderately pessimistic view of interactive documentary’s ability to realise any of those values in a way that is superior to traditional, narrative documentary film. The chapter also rebuts the corollary claim that linear narrative – in documentary film and more generally -- is unable or ill-equipped to realise those values. The chapter closes on a more positive note by highlighting the various virtues narrative documentary can realise at its best.Less

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

Regarding the Lives of Poets: On Biopics and Poetic Documentaries

Ben Bollig

in Moving Verses: Poetry on Screen in Argentine Cinema

Chapter Three, on the screening of poets’ lives in films by María Luisa Bemberg, Santiago Loza, and Ernesto Ardito and Virna Molina, asks what happens to the literary work when the writer’s life ... More

Chapter Three, on the screening of poets’ lives in films by María Luisa Bemberg, Santiago Loza, and Ernesto Ardito and Virna Molina, asks what happens to the literary work when the writer’s life becomes the subject of the filmmaker’s attentions. Put another way, if one can tell the life of a poet, what happens to the poetry? I assess the poetry-film nexus with reference to the politics of the baroque and neo-baroque; reference Michael Chanan’s work on documentary; and address the “queering” of memory and identity, with reference both to contemporary politics (e.g. memory debates during the Kirchner-Fernández governments) and the Deleuzean philosophy that informed the neobarroco in the Southern Cone. These films demonstrate the long history of intermediality, as far back as the historical baroque, if not earlier, and the particular difficulties raised for intermedial works by poetry.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

Non-lieux de mémoire: Maps and Graffiti in the Scriptable City

Lia Brozgal

in Absent the Archive: Cultural Traces of a Massacre in Paris, 17 October 1961

This chapter explores the intersection of spatial practices, the representation of urban space, and the way both of these interact with the visibility of October 17 and its inscriptions (or lack ... More

This chapter explores the intersection of spatial practices, the representation of urban space, and the way both of these interact with the visibility of October 17 and its inscriptions (or lack thereof) on the city. Beginning in the contemporary moment with a discussion of current polices and politics of the representation of October 17 in the Parisian memorialscape, the chapter then returns to October 1961 to explore the spatial politics of the demonstration and its representation, teasing out a cartographic impulse that connects up with both earlier colonial technologies of mapping and representation, and that emerges, later, as a trope in the anarchive (notably in documentary film). Finally, chapter 3 explores the ways the anarchive has represented October 17 and the space of Paris through revisionist cartography, pop- or counter-cultural subversive tactics such as graffiti, and rogue spatial practices.Less

The Seine’s Exceptional Bodies

Lia Brozgal

in Absent the Archive: Cultural Traces of a Massacre in Paris, 17 October 1961

Chapter 4 analyzes the anarchive’s representations of the Seine River. The notion of the iconic Parisian river as a mass burial site remains one of the most gruesome aspects of the massacre. While ... More

Chapter 4 analyzes the anarchive’s representations of the Seine River. The notion of the iconic Parisian river as a mass burial site remains one of the most gruesome aspects of the massacre. While not all of the dead on October 17 fell victim to the river, it is nonetheless true that the Seine has come to occupy significant symbolic territory in the realm of representation, to a degree that perhaps surpasses the representation of analogous “killing fields” or “technologies” of destruction in other episodes of state violence. The anarchive is replete with images of the Seine and of the experience of what Sidi Mohammed Barakat calls “exceptional bodies,” all of which participate in an implicit project of re-signifying the river. In exploring representations of the Seine in novels, documentary and fiction film, and visual art, this chapter makes visible a poetic and political discourse about the nature of the violence on October 17. It also explores how culture has dealt with the weighty implications of a state hiding evidence of its crimes in a site so geographically, affectively, and symbolically central. Alongside cultural productions, this chapter engages archival material from the files of the Parisian police and the history of the Seine.Less

Rakhshan Banietemad’s Art of Social Realism: Bridging Realism and Fiction

Maryam Ghorbankarimi

in ReFocus: The Films of Rakhshan Banietemad

This chapter offers a survey of her documentary works in search of a unique social realist approach to filmmaking. The chapter argues that, although Banietemad’s auteurship might be evident in her ... More

This chapter offers a survey of her documentary works in search of a unique social realist approach to filmmaking. The chapter argues that, although Banietemad’s auteurship might be evident in her films through their recurring links and themes, it is in her self-reflexive documentaries that we really see her artistic and critical approach to telling stories about ordinary people in society.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

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

“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

“How Lucky Were the Blond Kabyles”: Reading Race in the Anarchive

Lia Brozgal

in Absent the Archive: Cultural Traces of a Massacre in Paris, 17 October 1961

Chapter 5 tackles the issues of race and racism as they relate to the October 17 massacre itself, the way it was documented in police archives, and the anarchive. When read for its representations of ... More

Chapter 5 tackles the issues of race and racism as they relate to the October 17 massacre itself, the way it was documented in police archives, and the anarchive. When read for its representations of race and racism, the anarchive produces a transhistorical discourse that is as instructive in its moments of ambivalence as it is in its most pointed critiques. The chapter begins with a discussion of the difficulties of talking about race in a French context, and then goes on to excavate discourses of race and racism as they have been produced, implicitly or explicitly, in over 50 years’ worth of cultural productions, ranging from documentary and feature film to historical and graphic novels. In each section, cultural productions are read against their specific micro-historical context, conditions of publication or production, and other epiphenomena. At stake in reading race in the anarchive is a process of “race-ing” October 17, that is, of understanding the repression as not simply an inevitable skirmish in a war for independence, but as the fallout of a colonial ideology invested, tacitly but profoundly, in a racialized worldview.Less

An Overview of Banietemad’s Career and Films

Maryam Ghorbankarimi

in ReFocus: The Films of Rakhshan Banietemad

The introduction offers an overview of Banietemad’s life and works. It also addresses each chapter individually to highlight the main argument and content of each chapter as well as demonstrating ... More

The introduction offers an overview of Banietemad’s life and works. It also addresses each chapter individually to highlight the main argument and content of each chapter as well as demonstrating their connection with the overall aims and scope of the book.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