Overview

Bringing together an expansive range of writing by scholars, critics, historians, and filmmakers, The Documentary Film Reader presents an international perspective on the most significant developments and debates from several decades of critical writing about documentary. Each of the book's seven sections covers a distinct period in the history of documentary, collecting both contemporary and retrospective views of filmmaking in the era. And each section is prefaced by an introductory essay that explains its design and provides critical context. Painstakingly selected from the archives of more than a hundred years of cinema practice and theory, the essays, reviews, interviews, manifestos, and ephemera gathered in this volume suit the needs and interests of the beginning student, the advanced scholar, the casual reader, and the working documentarian.

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9780199739646

Table of Contents

Reviews

This collection of crucial and often hard-to-find writings will be of immense help in identifying some of the key preoccupations of documentary and dispersing some of its most persistent myths. --David MacDougall, author of The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses Kahana puts flesh to the bare bones of film history. These are essays that make the present vibrate with the steady drumbeat of a past we may not fully know but dare not entirely forget. It will serve as a standard reference for what has gone before and a powerful stimulus for what has yet to come well into the foreseeable future. --Bill Nichols, author of Introduction to Documentary, 2nd Edition Gathering such a range of thought on non-fiction film theory and practice in one volume is simply phenomenal. This is a must-read book, giving precious insight into the ideologies, trends, and evolutions of the documentary genre throughout the world, from its emergence to the present. --Jean-Marie Teno, director of Africa, I Will Fleece You (Afrique, je te plumerai) Kahana has curated a rambunctious oratorio of a reader, abundant with sharp discoveries and startling wisdom and surprising conversations across decades and borders. Every aspiring filmmaker should keep a copy in her backpack. --John Greyson, director of Fig Trees This collection of crucial and often hard-to-find writings will be of immense help in identifying some of the key preoccupations of documentary and dispersing some of its most persistent myths. --David MacDougall, author of The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses Kahana puts flesh to the bare bones of film history. These are essays that make the present vibrate with the steady drumbeat of a past we may not fully know but dare not entirely forget. It will serve as a standard reference for what has gone before and a powerful stimulus for what has yet to come well into the foreseeable future. --Bill Nichols, author of Introduction to Documentary, 2nd Edition Gathering such a range of thought on non-fiction film theory and practice in one volume is simply phenomenal. This is a must-read book, giving precious insight into the ideologies, trends, and evolutions of the documentary genre throughout the world, from its emergence to the present. --Jean-Marie Teno, director of Africa, I Will Fleece You (Afrique, je te plumerai) Kahana has curated a rambunctious oratorio of a reader, abundant with sharp discoveries and startling wisdom and surprising conversations across decades and borders. Every aspiring filmmaker should keep a copy in her backpack. --John Greyson, director of Fig Trees

This collection of crucial and often hard-to-find writings will be of immense help in identifying some of the key preoccupations of documentary and dispersing some of its most persistent myths. --David MacDougall, author of The Corporeal Image: Film, Ethnography, and the Senses Kahana puts flesh to the bare bones of film history. These are essays that make the present vibrate with the steady drumbeat of a past we may not fully know but dare not entirely forget. It will serve as a standard reference for what has gone before and a powerful stimulus for what has yet to come well into the foreseeable future. --Bill Nichols, author of Introduction to Documentary, 2nd Edition Gathering such a range of thought on non-fiction film theory and practice in one volume is simply phenomenal. This is a must-read book, giving precious insight into the ideologies, trends, and evolutions of the documentary genre throughout the world, from its emergence to the present. --Jean-Marie Teno, director of Africa, I Will Fleece You (Afrique, je te plumerai) Kahana has curated a rambunctious oratorio of a reader, abundant with sharp discoveries and startling wisdom and surprising conversations across decades and borders. Every aspiring filmmaker should keep a copy in her backpack. --John Greyson, director of Fig Trees

Author Information

Jonathan Kahana is Associate Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Intelligence Work: The Politics of American Documentary.

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