Documentary Display

Re-Viewing Nonfiction Film and Video

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by Keith Beattie

Type

Studies

Subject

Genre > Documentary

Keywords

documentary, sciences

Publishing date

2008

Publisher

Wallflower Press

Collection

Nonfictions

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 224 pages
6 ½ x 9 inches (16.5 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-1-905674-73-2

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Book Presentation:
Not all documentary films and videos are sober depictions of the real world. Documentary representations can present expressive, entertaining and spectacular images. This book examines such innovative approaches as they occur within the process of "documentary display"—a practice which emphasizes the visual attractions of documentary representation. Works of documentary display explore modes of exhibitionistic "showing" in which sensation is frequently the vehicle of cognition and knowledge. Such a display is analyzed within the popular and prominent forms of found-footage film, "rockumentary", the city film, nonfiction surf film and video and certain views of natural science topics. This accessible and informed study, with its focus on entertaining, popular, spectacular and sensational forms of representation, makes an important contribution to theoretical analyses of documentary film and video.

About the Author:
Keith Beattie is a member of the Faculty of Arts of Deakin University, Melbourne.

Press Reviews:
Documentary has too often been regarded as the sober reverse-side of fiction in cinema: grey, instructional, wedded to ponderous, old-fashioned notions of realism. Keith Beattie's exciting Documentary Display throws the question of documentary open—both in its production and its reception—and, at the same time, re-opens our eyes to its very diverse, frequently spectacular history... This book re-defines a cinematic genre, and in the process challenges us to embrace the sensual, poetic and thoroughly entertaining aspects of non-fiction film. Adrian Martin, Senior Research Fellow, Monash University, Melbourne

See the publisher website: Wallflower Press