Documentary: Home

Animated Documentary considers how animation is used as a representational strategy in nonfiction film and television and explores the ways animation expands the range and depth of what documentary can show us about the world. Animated Documentary will without doubt become an essential resource for many years to come for anyone interested in the intersection of animation and documentary.

Drawing on interviews with leading industry sources and containing discussion of over 200 documentaries, Australian Documentary: History, Practices and Genres brings to life over a century of documentary making and connects it to international debates in criticism, theory and history. This incisive book covers the development of documentary in Australia from the early days of cinema to the coming of television and to the digital environment. Addressing the issues facing today's documentary makers, the authors explore the role of the documentary in shaping the nation and forming the 'imagined community'.

Documentary storytelling is a vital way to explore our world and who we are as a nation. In this they are as much an art form as about real life - and that's sufficient reason for them to have a strong cultural imperative. But in this evolving digital era, a new landscape has emerged. Much has changed: new storytelling tools, a new global base - but with reduced government funding and increased fragmentation of the distribution sector.

Contemporary Documentary offers a rich survey of the rapidly expanding landscape of documentary film, television, video, and new media. The collection of original essays addresses the emerging forms, popular genres, and innovative approaches of the digital era. The anthology highlights geographically and thematically diverse examples of documentaries that have expanded the scope and impact of non-fiction cinema and captured the attention of global audiences. It also explores the experience of documentary today, with its changing dynamics of production, collaboration, distribution, and exhibition, and its renewed political and cultural relevance.

Directing the Documentary covers the methods, technologies, thought processes, and judgments that a director must use throughout the fascinating process of making a film. It emphasizes low-cost digital technology, which allows cutting-edge creativity and professionalism on shoestring budgets. And, recognizing that you learn best by doing, the book includes dozens of practical hands-on projects and activities to help you master technical and conceptual skills.

After a long period in eclipse, documentary has undergone a marked revival in recent art. The renewed attention to photography and video in the gallery and museum world has helped make documentary one of the most prominent modes of art-making today. This anthology explores the roots of documentary in modernism and its critique under postmodernism; surveys current theoretical thinking about documentary; and examines a wide range of work by artists within, around, or against documentary through their own writings and interviews.

Powerfully posing questions of ethics, ideology, authorship and form, documentary film has never been more popular than it is today. The Documentary Film Book is an essential guide to current thinking on documentary film. In a series of fascinating essays, key international experts discuss the theory of documentary, outline current understandings of its history, survey documentary production, consider documentaries by marginalised minority communities, and assess its contribution to other disciplines and arts.

Documentary Storytelling has reached filmmakers and filmgoers worldwide with its unique focus on the key ingredient for success in the growing global documentary marketplace: storytelling. This practical guide reveals how todays top filmmakers bring the tools of narrative cinema to the world of nonfiction film and video without sacrificing the rigor and truthfulness that give documentaries their power. The book offers practical advice for producers, directors, editors, cinematographers, writers and others seeking to make ethical and effective films that merge the strengths of visual and aural media with the power of narrative storytelling.

This comprehensive work combines clear, up-to-date technical information, production techniques and gear descriptions with an understanding of how technical choices can create meaning and serve a directors creative vision. Drawing on the authors years of experience as documentary filmmakers, and on interviews with a range of working professionals in the field, the book offers concrete and thoughtful guidance through all stages of production, from finding and researching ideas to production, editing and distribution.

Female Authorship and the Documentary Image engages with the relationship between female documentary filmmakers and the documentary image. With a thematic focus on the documentary image directly, within the more traditional arenas of theory and practice and especially within the context of gaze and author theory, the book also considers more philosophical questions of aesthetics, home and identity within the contexts of female subjectivity, globalisation and trauma.

Introduction to Documentary identifies the distinguishing qualities of documentary and teaches the viewer how to read documentary film. Each chapter takes up a discrete question, from "How did documentary filmmaking get started?" to "Why are ethical issues central to documentary filmmaking?" Carefully revised to take account of new work and trends, this volume includes information on more than 100 documentaries released since the first edition, an expanded treatment of the six documentary modes, new still images, and a greatly expanded list of distributors.

Building upon the best-selling 2005 edition, Betsy McLane keeps the same chronological examination, factual reliability, ease of use and accessible prose style as before, while also weaving three new threads - Experimental Documentary, Visual Anthropology and Environmental/Nature Films - into the discussion. She provides emphasis on archival and preservation history, present practices, the future needs for documentaries and specific problems of copyright and fair use as they relate to documentary.

A troubled and difficult art : a brief introduction to non-fiction film. The D word: definitions, obligations and functions -- Major trends, movements and voices -- Reading non-fiction : case studies, concepts and criticism. Pioneers.

Praise for New Documentary: 'It's refreshing to find a book that cuts through the tired old debates that have surrounded documentary film and television. Itnbsp;heralds a welcome new approach.' Sight and Sound 'Documentary practice changes so fast that books on the subject are often out of date before they are published. Bruzzi's achievement is to have understood the genre as an activity based on performance rather than observation. This is a fresh perspective which illuminates the fundamental shifts that will continue to take place in the genre as it enters its second century.' John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London New Documentary provides a contemporary look at documentary and fresh and challenging ways of theorising the non-fiction film.

Artists, filmmakers, art historians, poets, literary critics, anthropologists, theorists, and others, investigate one of the most vital areas of cultural practice- documentary.Contemporary engagements with documentary are multifaceted and complex, reaching across disciplines to explore the intersections of politics and aesthetics, representation and reality, truth and illusion. Discarding the old notions of "fly on the wall" immediacy or quasi-scientific aspirations to objectivity, critics now understand documentary not as the neutral picturing of reality but as a way of coming to terms with reality through images and narrative. This book collects writings by artists, filmmakers, art historians, poets, literary critics, anthropologists, theorists, and others, to investigate one of the most vital areas of cultural practice- documentary.

As our world becomes more globalized, documentary film and television tell more cosmopolitan stories of the world's social, political, and cultural situation. Ib Bondebjerg examines how global challenges are reflected and represented in documentaries from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Scandinavia after 2001. The documentaries deal with the war on terror, the globalization of politics, migration, the multicultural challenge, and climate change. Engaging with Reality?is framed by theories of globalization and delves into the development of a new global media culture.

Documentaries matter now more than ever. Documentary storytelling is a vital way to explore our world and who we are as a nation. In this they are as much an art form as about real life - and that's sufficient reason for them to have a strong cultural imperative. But in this evolving digital era, a new landscape has emerged. Much has changed: new storytelling tools, a new global base - but with reduced government funding and increased fragmentation of the distribution sector.

A Complete Guide to Documentary Filmmaking is a wonderful resource to anyone thinking about, or already in the process of making a documentary. This book covers every concept from selecting your topic, to buying the equipment you need, to video production, video editing, audio coverage, music and soundtrack, distribution, and much more. A Complete Guide to Documentary Filmmaking is perfect for any filmmaker, if you're just starting out, or you are a seasoned professional, you must read this book.

Revolutionary thinking around gender and race merged with new film technologies to usher in a wave of women's documentaries in the 1970s. Driven by the various promises of second-wave feminism, activist filmmakers believed authentic stories about women would bring more people into an imminent revolution. Yet their films soon faded into obscurity. Shilyh Warren reopens this understudied period and links it to a neglected era of women's filmmaking that took place from 1920 to 1940, another key period of thinking around documentary, race, and gender. Drawing women's cultural expression during these two explosive times into conversation, Warren reconsiders key debates about subjectivity, feminism, realism, and documentary and their lasting epistemological and material consequences for film and feminist studies.

Soul of the Documentary offers a groundbreaking new approach to documentary cinema. Ilona Hongisto stirs current thinking by suggesting that the work of documentary films is not reducible to representing what already exists. By close-reading a diverse body of films - from The Last Bolshevik to Grey Gardens - Hongisto shows how documentary cinema intervenes in the real by framing it and creatively contributes to its perpetual unfolding. The emphasis on framing brings new urgency to the documentary tradition and its objectives, and provokes significant novel possibilities for thinking about the documentary's ethical and political potentials in the contemporary world.

In Documentary Across Platforms, noted scholar of film and experimental media Patricia R. Zimmermann offers a glimpse into the ever-evolving constellation of practices known as "documentary" and the way in which they investigate, engage with, and interrogate the world. Collected here for the first time are her celebrated essays and speculations about documentary, experimental, and new media published outside of traditional scholarly venues. These essays envision documentary as a complex ecology composed of different technologies, sets of practices, and specific relationships to communities, engagement, politics, and social struggles.