How Documentaries Went Mainstream

A History, 1960-2022

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by Nora Stone

Type: Studies
Subject: Genre > Documentary
Keywords: documentary, broadcast
Publishing date: 2023
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 240 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN

978-0-19-755730-3

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Book Presentation:
• Explains the documentary's crucial shift from the cultural margins to mainstream media
• Illuminates the industrial and institutional history of documentary film in the United States
• Provides a model for studying the fluidity between film and television

Since the 1960s, documentary films have moved closer to the mainstream, thanks to the popularity of rockumentaries, association with the independent film movement, support from public and cable television, and the rise of streaming video services. Documentary films have become reliable earners at the U.S. box office and ubiquitous on streaming platforms, while historically they existed on the margins of mainstream media. How do we explain the growing commercialization of documentary films and the conditions that fueled their transformation?

The growing commercialization of documentary film has not gone unnoticed, but it has not been sufficiently explained. Streaming and the growing interest in reality TV are usually offered as initial explanations whenever a documentary enters the cultural conversation or breaks a box-office record, but neither of those causes grapple with the overlapping causal mechanisms that commercialized documentary film. How Documentaries Went Mainstream provides a more comprehensive and meaningful periodization of the commercialization of documentary film. Although the commercial ascension of documentary films might seem meteoric, it is the culmination of decades-long efforts that have developed and fortified the audience for documentary features. Author Nora Stone refines rough explanations of these efforts through a robust synoptic history of the market for documentary films, using knowledge of film economics and the norms of industry discourse to tell a richer story. This periodization will allow scholars to compare the commercialization of documentary film with other genres. Drawing on archival documents, industry trade journals and popular press, and interviews with filmmakers and film distributors, Stone illuminates how documentary features have become more plentiful, popular, and profitable than ever before.

About the Author:
Nora Stone, University of North Alabama Nora Stone is a film historian and filmmaker teaching at the University of North Alabama. She earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has published work in Media Industries Journal, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Her short films have screened at the Maryland Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival, Architecture and Design Film Festival, among others. She produced and art-directed the independent feature film A Dim Valley (distributed by Altered Innocence).

Press Reviews:
"Stone's history of post-vérité U.S. documentary is, simply put, the book I've been waiting for. For too long, documentary histories have focused primarily on makers and movements, but Stone weaves an account of the film markets, documentary institutions, and shifts in film culture driving documentary's increased public visibility. Whether discussing canonical works, box office flops, public television broadcasts, or popular documentary hits, this book provides a narrative that reframes and illuminates the major changes in the documentary landscape over the last half century." - Chris Cagle, Associate Professor, Temple University, Film and Media Arts

"How Documentaries Went Mainstream explores the tension between public service and commodity exchange in the documentary film market by tracing the shifting industrial trends in documentary distribution and exhibition between the 1960s and today. Deftly researched and incisively written, Stone's book offers an important intervention in the history of documentary by focusing on the mode's industrial concerns. Essential reading for anyone interested in how and why documentary has come to occupy such a prolific and lucrative corner of the media market in recent years." - Kristen Fuhs, Professor of Media Studies, Woodbury University

"Stone's work is an essential reference for anyone interested in the development of American documentary film." - Will DiGravio, Cineaste

"In this refreshing addition to the history of nonfiction film, Stone foregrounds distribution and circulation as the locus of documentary's influence, tracing evolutions in infrastructure, film culture, and market machinations to explain the genre's commercial transformation." - Devin Thomas, Film Quarterly

"The value of documentaries as commodities and as public services coexists across the world. The core of Nora Stone's painstakingly researched book How Documentaries Went Mainstream: A History, 1960-2022 reflects this conflict, as it traces the development of documentaries from Hollywoods periphery to the mainstay of Internet streaming services. Stone's insightful contribution to the history of nonfiction cinema places distribution and circulation front and center, demonstrating how changes in infrastructure, film culture, and market dynamics have shaped the commercial development of the genre. The book is organized chronologically, with each chapter concentrating on a distinct period in the growth and spread of documentaries and the networks that support them." - Muhammad Asad Latif, Journal of Popular Culture

See the publisher website: Oxford University Press

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