In the digital age, we often encounter analog photographs as things that – after having been stored away, lost, or even thrown away – are (re)found. The fascination with such found photographs is ...reflected in a striking way in contemporary essay and documentary film. Found photo films are an essayistic documentary form that has emerged since the turn of the millennium: Films that work with left-behind, rescued, or found convolutions of photographic images, collecting, selecting, and placing them in a new context. They stand in a field of tension between popular aestheticization and re-auratization of analog media in the course of digitalization as well as a long tradition of cinematically reflecting the materiality and mediality of film by working with photography and found footage. Charlotte Praetorius explores such appropriations of analog photographs through a corpus of international films: How do filmmakers relate to photographic found footage? How do the narratives and the narrativity of photography and history intertwine? How is the photographic material arranged and staged? And how can the relationships between different media and materials be grasped? In doing so, Praetorius is also concerned with taking the forms of documentary and essayistic film seriously as a medium for reflecting on (media) history and at the same time also critically questioning them.
Screen documentary has experienced a marked rise in visibility and popularity in recent years. What are the reasons for the so-called 'boom' in documentaries at the cinema? How has television ...documentary met the challenge of new formats? And how do audiences engage with documentaries on screen? Watching the world extends the reach of documentary studies by investigating recent instances of screen documentary and the uses made of them by audiences. The book focuses on the interfaces between textual mechanisms, promotional tactics, and audiences' viewing strategies. Key topics of inquiry are: film and televisual form, truth claims and issues of trust, the pleasures, politics and the ethics of documentary. Case studies include Capturing the Friedmans, Être et Avoir, Paradise Lost, Touching the Void, and wildlife documentaries on television. This compelling and accessible book will be of interest to both students and fans of documentary.
Analyses how independent documentaries are forging a new public sphere in today’s China. There has been an explosion in Chinese independent documentary making since the turn of the twenty-first ...century. How are we to understand this vibrant burst of activity? This timely study is based on detailed interviews with Chinese documentary makers rarely available in English, and insights gained by the author while working as a journalist in Beijing. Through detailed analyses of key contemporary documentary titles, it reveals the ways in which independent films probe, question and challenge the dominant ideas and narratives circulating in China’s state-sanctioned media.Key features: A detailed account of one of the world’s most active, vibrant and challenging contemporary documentary sectors * Draws extensively on first-hand interviews with filmmakers * Offers in-depth, critical analyses of China’s most challenging contemporary independent documentaries * Discusses China’s state-sanctioned film and television sectors to cast new light on how the official public sphere is shaped and guided by the state
Despite the increasing number of popular and celebrated sports
documentaries in contemporary culture, such as ESPN's 30 for
30 series, there has been little scholarly engagement with
this genre. ...Sports documentaries, like all films, do not merely
showcase objective reality but rather construct specific versions
of sporting culture that serve distinct economic, industrial,
institutional, historical, and sociopolitical ends ripe for
criticism, contextualization, and exploration. Sporting
Realities brings together a diverse group of scholars to probe
the sports documentary's cultural meanings, aesthetic practices,
industrial and commercial dimensions, and political contours across
historical, social, medium-specific, and geographic contexts. It
considers and critiques the sports documentary's visible and
powerful position in contemporary culture and forges novel
connections between the study of nonfiction media and sport.
William Greaves MacDonald, Scott; Stewart, Jacqueline Najuma
06/2021
eBook
William Greaves is one of the most significant and compelling
American filmmakers of the past century. Best known for his
experimental film about its own making, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm:
Take One , ...Greaves was an influential independent documentary
filmmaker who produced, directed, shot, and edited more than a
hundred films on a variety of social issues and on key African
American figures ranging from Muhammad Ali to Ralph Bunche to Ida
B. Wells. A multitalented artist, his career also included stints
as a songwriter, a member of the Actors Studio, and, during the
late 1960s, a producer and cohost of Black Journal, the first
national television show focused on African American culture and
politics. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of
Greaves's remarkable career. It brings together a wide range of
material, including a mix of incisive essays from critics and
scholars, Greaves's own writings, an extensive meta-interview with
Greaves, conversations with his wife and collaborator Louise
Archambault Greaves and his son David, and a critical dossier on
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm . Together, they illuminate Greaves's
mission to use filmmaking as a tool for transforming the ways
African Americans were perceived by others and the ways they saw
themselves. This landmark book is an essential resource on
Greaves's work and his influence on independent cinema and
African-American culture.
This interdisciplinary series addresses the relation between media and cultural memory. Its publications study how media construct, store, and disseminate memory. The series' focus is on different ...media and technologies, such as text and image, the cinema and the new digital media, on transmediality, intermediality, and remediation, as well as on the social (and increasingly transnational and transcultural) contexts of mediated memory. The aim of the series is to provide a vibrant international platform for research and scholarly exchange in the field of media and memory studies. Manuscripts submitted to the series are peer reviewed by expert referees.
