Documentary Screens: Nonfiction Film and Television

by Keith Beattie

Overview

Documentary productions encompass remarkable representations of surprising realities. How do documentaries achieve their ends? What types of documentaries are there? What factors are implicated in their production? Such questions animate this engaging study. Documentary Screens is a comprehensive and critical study of the formal features and histories of central categories of documentary film and television. Among the categories examined are autobiographical, indigenous and ethnographic documentary, compilation films, direct cinema and cinema verite and television documentary jourbanalism. The book also considers recent so-called popular factual entertainment and the future of documentary film, television and new media. This provocative and accessible analysis situates wide-ranging examples from each category within the larger material forces which impact on documentary form and content. The important connection between form, content and context explored in the book constitutes a new and lively 'documentary studies' approach to documentary representation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333741160
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	09/04/2004
Edition description:	2004
Pages:	276
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

KEITH BEATTIE is a Lecturer at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Scar that Binds (New York University Press, 1998).
KEITH BEATTIE is a Lecturer at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Scar that Binds (New York University Press, 1998).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
'Believe Me, I'm of the World': Documentary Representation
Men with Movie Cameras: Flaherty and Grierson
Constructing and Contesting Otherness: Ethnographic Film
Decolonizing the Image: Aboriginal Documentary Productions
The Truth of the Matter: Cinema Verite and Direct Cinema
The Camera I: Autobiographical Documentary
Finding and Keeping: Compilation Documentary
The Fact/Fiction Divide: Drama-Documentary and Documentary Drama
The Evening Report: Television Documentary Jourbanalism
Up Close and Personal: Popular Factual Entertainment
The Burbaning Question: The Future of Documentary
Conclusion
Screenings and Additional Resources
Notes
Bibliography
Index.