The Documentary Film Movement
An Anthology
Edited by Ian Aitken
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Book Presentation:
It includes generous selections from the work of John Grierson as well as writings by Paul Rotha, Humphrey Jennings, Alberto Cavalcanti and Basil Wright. Each section is accompanied by short commentaries. A full introduction examines the historical development of the documentary film movement between 1927 and 1950, the types of films made by the movement, its relationship to other British film genres and to contemporary debates on British national cinema. An accessible, comprehensive and illuminating source book for courses on Documentary Film and the History of British Cinema.
About the Author:
Ian Aitken is Professor of Film Studies at the School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University. His publications include Hong Kong Documentary Film (2014), Lukácsian Film Theory and Cinema: An Analysis of Georg Lukács’ Writings on Film 1913-1971 (2012), The Major Realist Film Theorists, (2016), Colonial Documentary Film in South and South-East Asian (2016) and Cinematic Realism (2020).
Press Reviews:
The texts collected here gives a vivid sense of the intellectual orientations, motivations, relationships between, and achievements of, the featured individuals. British documentary scholars will have encountered most of his material before ... Aitken's anthology ... is the first recent publication to pisition itself as an authoriitative collection of source material on the movement as a whole.– Journal of Popular British Cinema 2000, no3
A useful collection of material– Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory
> From the same author:
Cinematic Realism (2020)
Lukács, Kracauer and Theories of the Filmic Real
by Ian Aitken
Subject: Theory
The Concise Routledge Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film (2017)
Dir. Ian Aitken
Subject: Genre > Documentary
The Colonial Documentary Film in South and South-East Asia (2016)
Dir. Ian Aitken and Camille Deprez
Subject: Countries > Southeast Asia
The British Official Film in South-East Asia (2016)
Malaya/Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong
by Ian Aitken
Subject: Countries > Southeast Asia
Film and Reform (2016)
John Grierson and the Documentary Film Movement
by Ian Aitken
Subject: Director > John Grierson
Lukácsian Film Theory and Cinema (2012)
A Study of Georg Lukács' Writing on Film 1913-1971
by Ian Aitken
Subject: Film Analysis
Realist Film Theory and Cinema (2006)
The Nineteenth-Century Lukácsian and Intuitionist Realist Traditions
by Ian Aitken
Subject: Theory
> On a related topic:
Public Information Films (2024)
British Government Film Units, 1930-52
by Alan Harding
Subject: Genre > Documentary
Cinema on the Front Line (2021)
British Soldiers and Cinema in the First World War
Subject: Genre > Documentary
André Bazin on Documentary (2026)
Cinema's Urge to Explore
Dir. André Bazin
Subject: Genre > Documentary
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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