Contemporary Documentary

Description

Contemporary Documentary offers a rich survey of the rapidly expanding landscape of documentary film, television, video, and new media. The collection of original essays addresses the emerging forms, popular genres, and innovative approaches of the digital era. The anthology highlights geographically and thematically diverse examples of documentaries that have expanded the scope and impact of non-fiction cinema and captured the attention of global audiences over the past three decades. It also explores the experience of documentary today, with its changing dynamics of production, collaboration, distribution, and exhibition, and its renewed political and cultural relevance. The twelve chapters - featuring engaging case studies and written from a wide range of perspectives including film theory, social theory, ethics, new media, and experience design - invite students to think critically about documentary as a vibrant field, unrestricted in its imagination and quick in its response to new forms of filmmaking. Offering a methodical exploration of the expansive reach of documentary as a creative force in the media and society of the twenty-first century, Contemporary Documentary is an ideal collection for students of film, media, and communication who are studying documentary film. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Figures Notes on Contributors Foreword Introduction: Situating Contemporary Documentary Part I: Forms, Genres, Innovations 1. Lying to Be Real: The Aesthetics of Ambiguity in Docufictions Introduction Historical precedents and the mockumentary paradigm “Judgment comes easy in documentary”: In Vanda’s Room and the need to play oneself Soliciting the viewer: documentary redefinition and camcorder aesthetics A trip down memory lane: personal testimonies of national memory in 24 City Conclusion Notes Bibliography 2. The Mockumentary Introduction Chronicle: documenting the superhero The Office and the emergence of the mockusoap I’m Still Here and mockumentary hoaxes The naturalization of mockumentary discourse Notes Bibliography 3. Animated Documentary Introduction What are animated documentaries? Interpreting animated documentaries Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008) The present and future of animated documentary Suggested viewing Notes Bibliography 4. Producing the Crowdsourced Documentary: The Implications of Storytelling and Technology Crowdsourcing Production overviews Documentary storytelling Technology Conclusion Bibliography 5. Designed Experiences in Interactive Documentaries Experience design Interactivity Conclusion Bibliography 6. Indigenous Documentary Media Defining the murky terrain Indigenizing the documentary paradigms Theoretical approaches to indigenous media Constructing indigenous representational sovereignty: some case studies Coniston, A Thick Dark Fog, and the unsilencing of indigenous histories Children of the Jaguar Conclusion Notes Bibliography Part II: Documentary in New Contexts 7. True Life: The Voice of Television Documentary The voice of documentary First-person media and reality television Giving an account of oneself “True Life: I’m Homeless” Bibliography 8. Interrogating the Media: Errol Morris in the Information Age Technology and the documentary tradition The Fog of War: animating archival media Standard Operating Procedure: digital photography and database aesthetics The Unknown Known: truth in the information age Conclusion Notes Bibliography 9. Documentary and the Survival of the Film Auteur: Agnès Varda, Werner Herzog, and Spike Lee Introduction: the creative spirit of the independent auteur Agnès Varda Werner Herzog Spike Lee Documentary and the survival of the independent Note Bibliography 10. The Ethics of Appropriation: “Misusing” the Found Document in Suitcase of Love and Shame and A Film Unfinished Document(ary) eavesdropping Document(ary) rectification Conclusion Notes Bibliography 11 Documentary, Multi-platform Production, and Cosmopolitan Dialogues Cosmopolitan citizenship and global imaginaries Mediated cosmopolitanism and the global documentary A collaborative, multi-platform documentary project Poor Us: global dialogue and the shaping of our cosmopolitan imaginary Park Avenue: the dark side of the American dream Solar Mamas: the power of education and mobility Cosmopolitan visions—global realities Bibliography 12. Documentary and Video Activism Documentary and political organizations The documentary challenge to viewers Types of political participation The Gulf Crisis TV Project Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films Conclusion Note Bibliography Index