Regarding Life

Animals and the Documentary Moving Image

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by Belinda Smaill

Type

Studies

Subject

Genre > Documentary

Keywords

documentary, animals, sociology

Publishing date

2017

Publisher

State University of New York Press

Collection

SUNY series, Horizons of Cinema

1st publishing

2016

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 200 pages
6 ¼ x 9 ½ inches (16 x 24 cm)

ISBN

978-1-4384-6248-6

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Book Presentation:
Contends that the narrative and aesthetic qualities of the documentary genre enable new understandings of animals and animal/human relationships.

As indicated by the success of such films as March of the Penguins and Food, Inc. , the documentary has become the preeminent format for rendering animals and nature onscreen. In Regarding Life, Belinda Smaill brings together examples from a broad array of moving image contexts, including wildlife film and television, advocacy documentary, avant-garde nonfiction, and new media to identify a new documentary terrain in which the representation of animals in the wild and in industrial settings is becoming markedly more complex and increasingly more involved with pivotal ecological debates over species loss, food production, and science.

While attending to some of the most discussed documentaries of the last two decades, including Grizzly Man; Food, Inc. ; Sweetgrass; Our Daily Bread; and Darwin's Nightmare, the book also draws on lesser-known film examples, and is one of the first to bring film studies understandings to new media such as YouTube. The result is a study that melds film studies and animal studies to explore how documentary films render both humans and animals, and to what political ends.

About the Author:
Belinda Smaill is Associate Professor in Film and Screen Studies at Monash University in Australia. She is the author of The Documentary: Politics, Emotion, Culture and the coauthor (with Olivia Khoo and Audrey Yue) of Transnational Australian Cinema: Ethics in the Asian Diasporas.

Press Reviews:
"…Regarding Life, in its detailed and wide-ranging engagements with both theory and documentary practice, makes an important and fascinating contribution to the field. " — Film-Philosophy

"A brilliant, cogent, and timely look at the intersection of animals, the environment, food, and the people who enjoy and consume them. This is the most solid book on film I have read in quite a while, and it will be taken up with much enthusiasm by documentary scholars, animal-rights activists, eco-warriors, and a broad public that is interested in one or another—or all—of the subjects covered here. " — David Desser, author of American Jewish Filmmakers, Second Edition

See the publisher website: State University of New York Press