The spirit that founded the volume and guided its development is radically inter- and transdisciplinary. Dispatches have arrived from anthropology, communications, English, film studies (including theory, history, criticism), literary studies (including theory, history, criticism), media and screen studies, cognitive cultural studies, narratology, philosophy, poetics, politics, and political theory; and as a special aspect of the volume, theorist-filmmakers make their thoughts known as well. Consequently, the critical reflections gathered here are decidedly pluralistic and heterogeneous, inviting—not bracketing or partitioning—the dynamism and diversity of the arts, humanities, social sciences, and even natural sciences (in so far as we are biological beings who are trying to track our cognitive and perceptual understanding of a nonbiological thing—namely, film, whether celluloid-based or in digital form); these disciplines, so habitually cordoned off from one another, are brought together into a shared conversation about a common object and domain of investigation.
This book will be of interest to theorists and practitioners of nonfiction film; to emerging and established scholars contributing to the secondary literature; and to those who are intrigued by the kinds of questions and claims that seem native to nonfiction film, and who may wish to explore some critical responses to them written in engaging language.
The spirit that founded the volume and guided its development is radically inter- and transdisciplinary. Dispatches have arrived from anthropology, communications, English, film studies (including theory, history, criticism), literary studies (including theory, history, criticism), media and screen studies, cognitive cultural studies, narratology, philosophy, poetics, politics, and political theory; and as a special aspect of the volume, theorist-filmmakers make their thoughts known as well. Consequently, the critical reflections gathered here are decidedly pluralistic and heterogeneous, inviting—not bracketing or partitioning—the dynamism and diversity of the arts, humanities, social sciences, and even natural sciences (in so far as we are biological beings who are trying to track our cognitive and perceptual understanding of a nonbiological thing—namely, film, whether celluloid-based or in digital form); these disciplines, so habitually cordoned off from one another, are brought together into a shared conversation about a common object and domain of investigation.
This book will be of interest to theorists and practitioners of nonfiction film; to emerging and established scholars contributing to the secondary literature; and to those who are intrigued by the kinds of questions and claims that seem native to nonfiction film, and who may wish to explore some critical responses to them written in engaging language.
At the Center of Our Age
Representative Qualities and Questions of Documentary Film
What Photography Calls Thinking: Theoretical Considerations on the
Power of the
Photographic Basis of Cinema
Cinematic Representation and Spatial Realism: Reflections
After/Upon André Bazin
Chapter 3: Documentary Traces: Film and the Content of
Photographs
The Limits of Appropriation: Subjectivist Accounts of the
Fiction/Nonfiction
Distinction
Inscribing Ethical Space: Ten Propositions on Death and
Documentary
Before Documentary: Early Nonfiction Films and the “View”
Aesthetic
Ruminating on the Ideologies of Nature Film
Jean Rouch’s Cine-trance and Modes of Experimental Ethnofiction
Filmmaking
The Ecstasy of Time Travel in Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten
Dreams
Habitats of Documentary: Landscapes, Color Fields, and Ecologies in
the
Avant-Docs of Vincent Grenier
Promises and Contracts Found in the Archive Are Not About the
Past:
Renewing Civil Alliances—Palestine 1947–48
“See and Remember”: The Golden Days of Said Otruk
Intimacy, Modesty, Silence: Documentary Filmmaking in the Face of
Trauma
Provoking the Truth: Applying the Method of Cinéma Vérité
Reenvisioning Dziga Vertov: 10 Enduring Diktats for Documentary
Cinema
Whose Strife is it Anyway? The Erosion of Agency in the Cinematic
Production of
Kitchen Sink Realism
Redefining Documentary Materialism: from Actuality to Virtuality in
Victor Erice’s
Four and a Half Film Fallacies
The Dogma 95 Manifesto and The Vow of Chastity
Minnesota Declaration: Truth and Fact in Documentary Cinema
Omission and Oversight in Close Reading—The Final Moments of
Frederick
Wiseman’s High School
Cinematic Consciousness: Animal Subjectivity, Activist Rhetoric,
and the Problem
of Other Minds in Blackfish
Understanding (and) the Legacy of the Trace: Reflections After
Carroll, Currie, and
Plantinga
: Adam McKay’s Vehicle for Truth Claims
Letter to Errol Morris: Feelings of Revulsion and the Limits of
Academic Discourse
“You are Never Alone”: On Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s
Zidane:
On Patience (After Sebald): Documentary as a True Portrait of
Sensibility
Fiction and Nonfiction in Chantal Akerman’s Films
Vérité Fiction, Dramatized Documentary: On Michelle Citron’s
Aesthetic Provocations
“Deceiving into the Truth”: The Indirect Cinema of Stories We Tell
and
A Reality Rescinded: The Transformative Effects of Fraud in I’m
Still Here
David LaRocca
David LaRocca is visiting assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York College at Cortland.
This anthology is a gem! Bringing together documentary filmmakers,
philosophers, and film theorists, this volume will be an important
resource for all those interested in this important genre of
filmmaking, be they students, professors, scholars, or just serious
film viewers. Get it for yourself and see!
*Thomas E. Wartenberg, Mount Holyoke College*
The Philosophy of Documentary Film undoubtedly bears witness to the
complexity and the density of its subject matter. The texts
included in the volume cover a wide range of topics and approaches,
and they raise multiple philosophical questions inherent to
documentary films.
*Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image*
With the pervasive and facile use of digital manipulation of images
in public and private communications, few questions are more
important than the question raised by this richly rewarding
book—‘What is real and what is fake?’ In 1960 my executive producer
at NBC warned us to be careful of what we put on the screen because
he said ‘people will believe it.’ David LaRocca in his fulsome and
well-articulated introduction reminds us that a critical mind has
never been more essential to acquire ‘a fuller, truer, experience
of reality.’ As a successful documentarian for over 60 years, I
know of no other book that is more useful in the pursuit of that
goal.
*Bill Jersey, winner of two Peabodys, Emmys, and Oscar
nominations*
This anthology is a gem! Bringing together documentary filmmakers,
philosophers, and film theorists, this volume will be an important
resource for all those interested in this important genre of
filmmaking, be they students, professors, scholars, or just serious
film viewers. Get it for yourself and see!
*Thomas E. Wartenberg, Mount Holyoke College*
With the pervasive and facile use of digital manipulation of images
in public and private communications, few questions are more
important than the question raised by this richly rewarding
book—‘What is real and what is fake?’ In 1960 my executive producer
at NBC warned us to be careful of what we put on the screen because
he said ‘people will believe it.’ David LaRocca in his fulsome and
well-articulated introduction reminds us that a critical mind has
never been more essential to acquire ‘a fuller, truer, experience
of reality.’ As a successful documentarian for over 60 years, I
know of no other book that is more useful in the pursuit of that
goal.
*Bill Jersey, winner of two Peabodys, Emmys, and Oscar
nominations*
This is the collection of essays on documentary film that I have
been waiting for. It brings together many of the best classic
pieces on documentary theory and practice, and a trilling
assortment of new essays by philosophers, film scholars devoted to
aesthetic issues and close reading, and documentary filmmakers who
teach. The writing throughout is of the highest order, and the
promise of genuine (as opposed to tinker toy) philosophical inquiry
is amply kept. David LaRocca has done an exemplary job of editing,
and his lengthy overview essay which serves as the volume's
Introduction is incisive and indispensable.
*George Toles, University of Manitoba*
As far as documentary film and philosophy are concerned, David
LaRocca has summoned a cloud of reliable witnesses and all the
usual suspects, or so it seems. Once readers enter the critical
conversations that these estimable writers provoke and sustain, the
criteria for reliability and suspicion themselves become
productively volatile, and that volatility will lead readers to
surprising insights and reflections. From considerations of Plato
to Cavell and well beyond, these memorable essays fruitfully
explore both truth and make believe in documentary film, as well as
the manifold challenges of discerning the elusive differences
between them.
*Lawrence Rhu, University of South Carolina*
Timely. Vital. Engaging. An essential companion to any thinking
about documentary cinema. LaRocca is especially attuned not just to
the voices at the heart of theoretical debates but, to my liking,
also to those who push out into the practice and craft of
documentary filmmaking.
*Paul Cronin, School of Visual Arts*
At the center of many of these observations and discussions—now
receiving new and expert engagements in The Philosophy of
Documentary Film—has been the taunting power of cinematic reality,
nowhere more concentrated than in the quintessential art of the
real, the provocative revelator of truth, documentary cinema. . . .
These works in hand are contemporary perspectives on, for me, the
most vibrant practice in contemporary cinema. They call us to think
carefully and seriously not only about the truth claims and
strategies of specific documentary films but also about why
documentaries are so central to our age.
*Timothy Corrigan, University of Pennsylvania*
An impressive selection, including some of the most interesting
voices in documentary thought.
*Jonathan Kahana, University of California, Santa Cruz*
A marvelous collection that promises to inform the teaching of
nonfiction film for years to come.
*J.P. Sniadecki, Northwestern University, director of
Chaiqian/Demolition, Foreign Parts, and The Iron Ministry and
co-director of El Mar La Mar*
The Philosophy of Documentary Film is a welcomed addition to the
scholarly study of a mischievous praxis—one that continues to
expand, contract, merge, and mangle in its attempts to explore
versions of “real life” on film. Periodic, thoughtful reflection on
this rogue form is necessary, and this book provides it. The
leading lights of nonfiction film scholarship are well represented,
and especially pleasing to me, as a documentary filmmaker, is the
fact that documentarians have also been enlisted to write about our
craft. Furthermore, just for good measure, The Dogma 95 Manifesto
is included as both a beacon and dangerous shoal to filmmakers
exploring the choppy waters around the fiction/nonfiction
whirlpool. Great idea!
*Ross McElwee, Director, Sherman’s March, Bright Leaves, Professor
of the Practice of Filmmaking, Harvard University*
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