The spirit that founded the volume and guided its development is radically inter- and transdisciplinary. Dispatches have arrived from anthropology, communications, English, film studies (including theory, history, criticism), literary studies (including theory, history, criticism), media and screen studies, cognitive cultural studies, narratology, philosophy, poetics, politics, and political theory; and as a special aspect of the volume, theorist-filmmakers make their thoughts known as well. Consequently, the critical reflections gathered here are decidedly pluralistic and heterogeneous, inviting—not bracketing or partitioning—the dynamism and diversity of the arts, humanities, social sciences, and even natural sciences (in so far as we are biological beings who are trying to track our cognitive and perceptual understanding of a nonbiological thing—namely, film, whether celluloid-based or in digital form); these disciplines, so habitually cordoned off from one another, are brought together into a shared conversation about a common object and domain of investigation.This book will be of interest to theorists and practitioners of nonfiction film; to emerging and established scholars contributing to the secondary literature; and to those who are intrigued by the kinds of questions and claims that seem native to nonfiction film, and who may wish to explore some critical responses to them written in engaging language.
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The Philosophy of Documentary Film
The spirit that founded the volume and guided its development is radically inter- and transdisciplinary. Dispatches have arrived from anthropology, communications, English, film studies (including theory, history, criticism), literary studies (including theory, history, criticism), media and screen studies, cognitive cultural studies, narratology, philosophy, poetics, politics, and political theory; and as a special aspect of the volume, theorist-filmmakers make their thoughts known as well. Consequently, the critical reflections gathered here are decidedly pluralistic and heterogeneous, inviting—not bracketing or partitioning—the dynamism and diversity of the arts, humanities, social sciences, and even natural sciences (in so far as we are biological beings who are trying to track our cognitive and perceptual understanding of a nonbiological thing—namely, film, whether celluloid-based or in digital form); these disciplines, so habitually cordoned off from one another, are brought together into a shared conversation about a common object and domain of investigation.This book will be of interest to theorists and practitioners of nonfiction film; to emerging and established scholars contributing to the secondary literature; and to those who are intrigued by the kinds of questions and claims that seem native to nonfiction film, and who may wish to explore some critical responses to them written in engaging language.
The spirit that founded the volume and guided its development is radically inter- and transdisciplinary. Dispatches have arrived from anthropology, communications, English, film studies (including theory, history, criticism), literary studies (including theory, history, criticism), media and screen studies, cognitive cultural studies, narratology, philosophy, poetics, politics, and political theory; and as a special aspect of the volume, theorist-filmmakers make their thoughts known as well. Consequently, the critical reflections gathered here are decidedly pluralistic and heterogeneous, inviting—not bracketing or partitioning—the dynamism and diversity of the arts, humanities, social sciences, and even natural sciences (in so far as we are biological beings who are trying to track our cognitive and perceptual understanding of a nonbiological thing—namely, film, whether celluloid-based or in digital form); these disciplines, so habitually cordoned off from one another, are brought together into a shared conversation about a common object and domain of investigation.This book will be of interest to theorists and practitioners of nonfiction film; to emerging and established scholars contributing to the secondary literature; and to those who are intrigued by the kinds of questions and claims that seem native to nonfiction film, and who may wish to explore some critical responses to them written in engaging language.
David LaRocca is visiting assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York College at Cortland.
Table of Contents
ForewordAt the Center of Our AgeTimothy CorriganIntroductionRepresentative Qualities and Questions of Documentary FilmDavid LaRoccaPart I: The Medium, Morals, and Metaphysics of Documentary FilmChapter 1: What Photography Calls Thinking: Theoretical Considerations on the Power of the Photographic Basis of CinemaStanley CavellChapter 2: Cinematic Representation and Spatial Realism: Reflections After/Upon André BazinNoël CarrollChapter 3: Documentary Traces: Film and the Content of PhotographsGregory CurrieChapter 4: The Limits of Appropriation: Subjectivist Accounts of the Fiction/NonfictionDistinctionCarl PlantingaChapter 5: Inscribing Ethical Space: Ten Propositions on Death and DocumentaryVivian SobchackPart II: Strategies and Styles of Documenting with FilmChapter 6: Before Documentary: Early Nonfiction Films and the “View” AestheticTom GunningChapter 7: Ruminating on the Ideologies of Nature FilmScott MacDonaldChapter 8: Jean Rouch’s Cine-trance and Modes of Experimental Ethnofiction FilmmakingWilliam RothmanChapter 9: The Ecstasy of Time Travel in Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten DreamsWilliam DayChapter 10: Habitats of Documentary: Landscapes, Color Fields, and Ecologies in the Avant-Docs of Vincent GrenierClaudia Pederson and Patricia R. ZimmermannPart III: Documentary Theorist-Filmmakers at WorkChapter 11: Promises and Contracts Found in the Archive Are Not About the Past: Renewing Civil Alliances—Palestine 1947–48Ariella AzoulayChapter 12: “See and Remember”: The Golden Days of Said OtrukDiana AllanChapter 13: Intimacy, Modesty, Silence: Documentary Filmmaking in the Face of Trauma Mieke BalChapter 14: Provoking the Truth: Applying the Method of Cinéma VéritéBernadette WegensteinChapter 15: Reenvisioning Dziga Vertov: 10 Enduring Diktats for Documentary CinemaDan GevaChapter 16: Whose Strife is it Anyway? The Erosion of Agency in the Cinematic Production of Kitchen Sink RealismElan Gamaker Chapter 17: Redefining Documentary Materialism: from Actuality to Virtuality in Victor Erice’s Dream of LightSelmin KaraPart IV: Interventions and Reconstitutions of Documentary Modes, Methods, and MeaningsChapter 18: Four and a Half Film FallaciesRick AltmanChapter 19: The Dogma 95 Manifesto and The Vow of ChastityLars von Trier and Thomas VinterbergChapter 20: Minnesota Declaration: Truth and Fact in Documentary CinemaWerner HerzogChapter 21: Omission and Oversight in Close Reading—The Final Moments of Frederick Wiseman’s High SchoolV. F. PerkinsChapter 22: Cinematic Consciousness: Animal Subjectivity, Activist Rhetoric, and the Problem of Other Minds in BlackfishJennifer L. McMahonChapter 23: Understanding (and) the Legacy of the Trace: Reflections After Carroll, Currie, and PlantingaKeith DrommChapter 24: The Big Short: Adam McKay’s Vehicle for Truth ClaimsK. L. EvansChapter 25: Letter to Errol Morris: Feelings of Revulsion and the Limits of Academic Discourse Bill NicholsPart V: Auto/biography and the Composition of Identity in Documentary FilmChapter 26: “You are Never Alone”: On Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s Zidane: A Twenty-First Century PortraitMichael FriedChapter 27: On Patience (After Sebald): Documentary as a True Portrait of SensibilityGarry L. HagbergChapter 28: Fiction and Nonfiction in Chantal Akerman’s FilmsCharles WarrenChapter 29: Vérité Fiction, Dramatized Documentary: On Michelle Citron’s Aesthetic ProvocationsLinda WilliamsChapter 30: “Deceiving into the Truth”: The Indirect Cinema of Stories We Tell and The Act of KillingKaren D. HoffmanChapter 31: A Reality Rescinded: The Transformative Effects of Fraud in I’m Still HereDavid LaRocca