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The Ethics of Documentary Film
Edited by Agnieszka Piotrowska
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Book Presentation:
Documentary film has been an important vehicle to interrogate the world since the inception of film more than a hundred years ago. The Ethics of Documentary Film reformulate some of the foundational notions in documentary films studies and practice, relating to archive and the production of knowledge. Published in a particular moment in time, post pandemic and in the middle of the climate change debates and the traumas of new conflicts in the world, it gives voice to all of the important contemporary debates and offers ideas about different international approaches to documentary. With particular focus on the question of to what extent a documentary film can be defined as an ethical project, the various contributions look at issues of history, the hidden stories, and issues of the ethics of representation to provide new insights into the role documentary film can play within society.
About the Author:
Agnieszka Piotrowska, PhD, is an award-winning international creative practice researcher, educator, psychologist and filmmaker known for her dedication to inclusivity. Based in the UK, Professor Piotrowska has presented her work internationally, inspiring others through cross-cultural collaboration. She is a member of the General Council of the Visible Evidence, the most important global network for documentary studies. Formerly Head of the School of Film, Media and Performing Arts at the University for the Creative Arts, she currently supervises PhD students at Staffordshire and Oxford Brookes Universities. From 2018 to 2024, she was Professor of Film and Cultural Studies at the University of Gdansk, directing the Visible Evidence conference there. She has given keynotes internationally, focusing on the links between theory and practice. Her acclaimed documentary Married to the Eiffel Tower and her new award-winning experimental film work in Zimbabwe have received global recognition. Professor Piotrowska’s extensive publications on psychoanalysis, culture and cinema include Psychoanalysis and Ethics in Documentary Film (2014, 2023) Black and White: Cinema, Politics, and the Arts in Zimbabwe (2017) and the monograph The Nasty Woman in Cinema and Culture (2019), as well as four edited collections.
Press Reviews:
This visionary book renews inquiry into the ethics of documentary showing careful attention to theory and criticism as well to the quandaries of film practice. Its beautifully conceived sections hold chapters from authorities in the field and newer writers, offering live engagement with gender, race, trauma and ecology, amongst other issues. Movingly it is dedicated to the memory of Patricia Zimmermann, who is also an inspiration in its pages. ― Emma Wilson, University of Cambridge
In an age of fakery and bombast, the documentary film has taken on an ever-greater weight and responsibility. Where matters of Truth and Beauty may once have reigned, nothing now matters more than the Good. Does what we make and watch help or harm? Who benefits – maker, subject, sponsor? Who is silenced? Can ethics be situational, variable owing to historical and cultural context? These questions and more provide the focus for this long overdue study of ethics in documentary film. Broadly conceived and elegantly curated by Agnieszka Piotrowska, by turns philosophical and pragmatic, the volume boasts a truly global reach in its shared obsession with the ethical questions that should haunt all those who care about nonfiction film. ― Michael Renov, University of Southern California
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
> From the same author:
Psychoanalysis and Ethics in Documentary Film (2023)
Subject: Genre > Documentary
Femininity and Psychoanalysis (2019)
Cinema, Culture, Theory
Dir. Agnieszka Piotrowska and Ben Tyrer
Subject: Sociology
Black and White (2016)
Cinema, politics and the arts in Zimbabwe
Embodied Encounters (2014)
New approaches to psychoanalysis and cinema
Dir. Agnieszka Piotrowska
Subject: Sociology
> On a related topic:
Immediations (2017)
The Humanitarian Impulse in Documentary
by Pooja Rangan
Subject: Genre > Documentary
Post-1990 Documentary (2015)
Reconfiguring Independence
Dir. Camille Deprez and Judith Pernin
Subject: Genre > Documentary
The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration on Film and Television, Volume 1 (2025)
Ernest Shackleton
by John Atkins
Subject: Genre > Documentary
Women and Global Documentary (2025)
Practices and Perspectives in the 21st Century
Dir. Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi and Shilyh Warren
Subject: Genre > Documentary
Stories Make the World (2025)
Reflections on Storytelling and the Art of the Documentary
by Stephen Most
Subject: Genre > Documentary
The Interactive Documentary Form (2025)
Aesthetics, Practice and Research
Subject: Genre > Documentary
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