The Right to Play Oneself
Looking Back on Documentary Film
by Thomas Waugh
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Book Presentation:
The Right to Play Oneself collects for the first time Thomas Waugh’s essays on the politics, history, and aesthetics of documentary film, written between 1974 and 2008. The title, inspired by Walter Benjamin’s and Joris Ivens’s manifestos of “committed” documentary from the 19 0s, reflects the book’s theme of the political potential of documentary for representing the democratic performance of citizens and artists.
Waugh analyzes an eclectic international selection of films and issues from the 1920s to the present day. The essays provide a transcultural focus, moving from documentaries of the industrialized societies of North America and Europe to those of 1980s India and addressing such canonical directors as Dziga Vertov, Emile de Antonio, Barbara Hammer, Rosa von Praunheim, and Anand Patwardhan. Woven through the volume is the relationship of the documentary with the history of the Left, including discussions of LGBT documentary pioneers and the firebrand collectives that changed the history of documentary, such as Challenge for Change and ACT UP’s Women’s Collective.
Together with the introduction by the author, Waugh’s essays advance a defiantly and persuasively personal point of view on the history and significance of documentary film.
About the Author:
Thomas Waugh is professor of film studies at Concordia University, Montreal.
Press Reviews:
"For decades now, Thomas Waugh has worked at the forefront of documentary media studies. This collection of his essays on documentary shows his international range, rigorous historical analysis, commitment to media as an active force for political enlightenment and change, and hallmark wit in full force. Waugh provides a crucial foundation for discerning what’s at stake in the evolving world of documentary media." —Chuck Kleinhans, coeditor of JUMP CUT: A Review of Contemporary Media
"There is no one quite like Thomas Waugh. As this glorious collection shows, while always alert and responsive to changes in documentary and attitudes towards documentary, he has more than thirty-five years remained true. He is committed to commitment. With his wit, lightly worn self-awareness, and wonderfully uncloying sense of caring, he lets us too see and hear why documentary—and the world—matters." —Richard Dyer, author of The Matter of Images: Essays on Representations
> From the same author:
The Conscience of Cinema (2016)
The Works of Joris Ivens 1926-1989
by Thomas Waugh
Subject: Director > Joris Ivens
The Perils of Pedagogy (2013)
The Works of John Greyson
by Brenda Longfellow, Scott MacKenzie and Thomas Waugh
Subject: Director > John Greyson
Challenge for Change (2010)
Activist Documentary at the National Film Board of Canada
by Thomas Waugh, Michael Brendan Baker, Ezra Winton and Michael Brendan Baker
Subject: Genre > Documentary
The Romance of Transgression in Canada (2006)
queering sexualities, nations, cinemas
by Thomas Waugh
Subject: Sociology
Hard to Imagine (1996)
Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall
by Thomas Waugh
Subject: Genre > Porn films
> On a related topic:
Critical Mass (2018)
Social Documentary in France from the Silent Era to the New Wave
by Steven Ungar
Subject: Genre > Documentary
American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary (2013)
The Cambridge Turn
Subject: Genre > Documentary
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