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The Documentary Film Reader
History, Theory, Criticism
Edited by Jonathan Kahana
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Book Presentation:
• Provides the most comprehensive overview of documentary film assembled to date, with over 100 articles on myriad topics
• Features a substantial main introduction and section introductions throughout to establish key contexts and important critical issues
• Ranges widely across continents, filmmakers, and subgenres, addressing early documentary, avant-garde, propaganda, the essay film, and more
• Proposes a fresh canon of films and texts as a starting point for further exploration into the world of nonfiction cinema
• Includes foreword from the renowned film historian and filmmaker Charles Musser
The Documentary Film Reader brings together an expansive range of writing by scholars, critics, historians, and filmmakers to provide a stimulating foundational text for students and others who want to undertake study of nonfiction film. While documentary has long been a mainstay of universities and cinematheques, its popularity of late has grown tenfold as reality television has flourished and as the ranks of novice filmmakers have swelled. There are now dozens of film festivals dedicated exclusively to documentaries. This reader presents an international perspective on the most significant developments and debates from several decades of critical writing about documentary. It integrates historical and theoretical approaches, offering a collection that is particularly well suited to meet the needs of large undergraduate survey courses on nonfiction film, as well as providing sufficient depth for graduate classes.
About the Author:
Edited by Jonathan Kahana, Associate Professor of Film and Digital Media, University of California-Santa Cruz, and Foreword by Charles Musser, Professor of Film Studies, Yale University Jonathan Kahana is Associate Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of Santa Cruz. He is the author of Intelligence Work: The Politics of American Documentary.
Press Reviews:
"The volume offers a rich and varied corpus of works that includes scholarly essays, film criticism, manifestos, interviews, letters, and personal recollections ... [the editors] have performed tremendous acts of scholarly service ... [presenting] a rich mosaic of writing on film form, politics, and practice that order the discursive field while still allowing the unruly documentary construct room to breathe." - Tanya Goldman, Cinema Journal
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
> From the same author:
> On a related topic:
Constructions of the Real (2023)
Intersections of Documentary-based Film Practice and Theory
Dir. Christine Rogers, Kim Munro and Liz Burke
Subject: Genre > Documentary
What Is Non-fiction Cinema? (2022)
On the Very Idea of Motion Picture Communication
Subject: Genre > Documentary
Toward a Philosophy of the Documentarian (2019)
A Prolegomenon
by Dan Geva
Subject: Genre > Documentary
The Philosophy of Documentary Film (2016)
Image, Sound, Fiction, Truth
Dir. David LaRocca
Subject: Genre > Documentary
Truth in Visual Media (2023)
Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics
Dir. Marguerite La Caze and Ted Nannicelli
Subject: Theory
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