{"title":"Documentary resistance: social change and participatory media","authors":"Wakae Nakane","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1762318","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1762318","url":null,"abstract":"In what capacity does the documentary engage in public dialogue for creating social change? Conditioned by the broadly shared ontological understanding of documentary's indexicality to the lived wo...","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"15 1","pages":"105 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1762318","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45193162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond observation: A history of authorship in ethnographic film","authors":"B. Winston","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1762319","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1762319","url":null,"abstract":"George Stony, pioneer of interactive media-making, felt that he had spent his life filming documentaries about other people that they should have made for themselves. Perhaps this regret applies no...","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"14 1","pages":"280 - 281"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-05-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1762319","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49475116","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Interactive documentary at the intersection of performance and mediation: navigating ‘invisible’ histories and ‘inaudible’ stories in the United States","authors":"Dale Hudson","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2019.1678561","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2019.1678561","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Examining four interactive documentaries, this article analyzes how performance and mediation can encourage curosity, empathy, and accountability in relation to complex issues and perspectives that cannot be always represented with any pretense of objectivity or ethics in conventional analogue practices. They can foreground emotional and affective registers as meaningful – sometimes more meaningful than the empirical and rational registers typically prioritized in analogue media. They model a critical engagement with digital evidence, tactile interfaces, and locative experiences to navigate a postcolonial/transnational United States and allow for potentially multi-perspectival understandings of issues. Documentary studies historically focused on visible or audible evidence. It has paid less attention to invisible and inaudible evidence. By activating invisible geographies, interactive documentaries facilitate new ways of imagining relationships and new ways of enacting collaborative solutions to problems that are larger than any one of us. They can instruct in ways to navigate larger processes, such as forced migration and global warming. Rather than the universalizing revolutions of past centuries – industrial revolutions, anticolonial revolutions – the current moment demands micro-revolutions and micro-assemblies. In addition to devoting our intellectual energies and financial resources in 360° VR as a new mode for documentary presentation, we can focus on less expensive technologies that allow underrepresented perspectives to affect audiences.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"14 1","pages":"128 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2019.1678561","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44288117","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Filming the world from home: windows in personal documentary films in Israel/Palestine","authors":"Liat Savin Ben Shoshan","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2019.1614269","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2019.1614269","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines documentary diary and essay films made in Israel/Palestine from 1973–2009, where windows play a central role as architectural elements, cinematic frames and embodiments of the relations between the private and public spheres. The films represent personal, artistic and political turning points: David Perlov's Diary, made in 1973–1977, began with the transformative event of the 1973 war, the film was a turning point in Israeli filmmaking which had until then consisted primarily of Zionist social realist documentaries and popular dramas; Michel Khleifi's Fertile Memory (1980), the director's feature documentary debut, it marked the beginning of a new period in Palestinian filmmaking, by its focus on personal rather than collective. The third example is Anat Even's Closure (2009), a camera positioned on a window reflects on death, loss and transformations in urban history. In all films, the window is both a physical and a symbolic space, mediating private and political, constituting a new material awareness of their interrelations, which is eliminated in contemporary technology based communication. The encounter between camera, window, and viewer reflects and facilitates the act of observing and engaging with conflicts, arguing that it is an opportunity for both self-reflection and political critique.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"14 1","pages":"81 - 98"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2019.1614269","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46642467","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Austria’s Indirect Cinema. Avoiding representation in Kurz davor ist es passiert (2006)","authors":"M. Hofmann","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2019.1678560","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2019.1678560","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Contemporary documentary films are faced with the challenge of an oversaturation of certain images that have lost all power. One strategy to address this issue is the employment of artifice, the obvious and unconcealed manipulation of images. Films of what I call Indirect Cinema escalate this strategy by avoiding direct representation altogether. One example of this development is the film Kurz davor ist es passiert (2006) by Anja Salomonowitz about human trafficking in Austria. The film showcases stories of different instances of human trafficking that are not told by the victims themselves; instead, random Austrians recite their statements verbatim while carrying out their everyday tasks. The artifice of the scenes disrupts the reception by emotionally distancing the viewer from the suffering of the victim. Transferring the statements from one medium, and from one body, to another avoids an overwhelming emotional response. The forced dislocation of the viewer allows a space of critical awareness to emerge in which one can reflect upon the politics and boundaries of representation. After a brief overview of Direct Cinema and Cinema Vérité as a point of departure, I give a close analysis of Kurz davor as a paradigmatic example of Indirect Cinema.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"14 1","pages":"114 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2019.1678560","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46296752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Documenting inherited memories: homage, redemption, and affect in Entre el dictador y yo","authors":"Laia Quílez","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2019.1663717","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2019.1663717","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Although the concept of postmemory emerged from reflections on the representation and transmission of the Holocaust, the term has come to describe a group of works produced in other geographical contexts that invoke equally traumatic pasts. Over the last two decades in Spain, a considerable number of documentaries has been produced by the generation following those who were victims of repression under the Franco regime. These are works of documentarians who approximate a past they do not remember but that they nonetheless must interrogate in order to define themselves as political subjects. The following article reviews one of the earliest, the documentary Entre el dictador y yo (Between the Dictator and Me) (2005), a collective project undertaken on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Franco’s death. I analyze this film through the lens of memory and postmemory studies of Spain’s traumatic past; this approach intends to offer a critical and comparative reading of the six shorts that make up the documentary, each directed by documentarians born during the transition to democracy. Largely subjective in nature, these documentaries present themselves as exercises of political, social, and family memory about Spain’s recent history, while at the same time they evidence the coexistence of multiple memories of the past.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"14 1","pages":"161 - 175"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2019.1663717","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47786818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The view from a body of water: representing flooding and sea level rise in the South Pacific","authors":"S. Troon","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1725995","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1725995","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article critiques the representation of sea level rise in environmental documentaries, positioning Briar March’s There Once Was an Island: Te Henua e Nnoho (2010) as an essential rejoinder to more prominent representations of oceanic climate change, exemplified in An Inconvenient Truth (2006). An array of recent documentary productions, seeking to draw attention to rising seas and other anthropogenic disasters, turn to the Pacific Ocean utilising a wide range of mediatic regimes and visual apparatuses – from cinematic long takes to satellite imagery and digital animation. Among these films There Once was an Island offers a crucial perspective in its representation of the Takuu atoll, where residents faced with rising seas consider migrating en masse, prioritising subjectivity and physical reality as it foregrounds the cultural, material, and personal specificities of the atoll and its inhabitants. It offers a powerful counterpoint to dominant techniques for visualising climate disaster, which are characterised by spectacular imagery and logics of global mastery. By counterposing the perspectives offered in divergent documentary tendencies and examining their resonance with other cinematic strategies for representing catastrophe, from Hollywood CGI to post-war Italian neorealism, this article works through some ethical considerations for this growing subgenre of eco-cinema.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"15 1","pages":"75 - 88"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1725995","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45276541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Landscapes of care and the enchantment of dying in Edwin Beeler’s Die weisse Arche (2016)","authors":"A. Elsner","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1725994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1725994","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines representations of nature and dying in the Swiss documentary Die weisse Arche (2016) through the lens of Jane Bennett’s critique of Max Weber’s concept of disenchantment. I establish a specific relationship between Edwin Beeler’s film and Bennett’s claim that enchantment is foundational to the ethical life, stressing that Die weisse Arche posits an ethics of end-of-life care motivated by moments of enchantment that emanate from the mythical, religious, and local belief systems of the characters Beeler portrays. The film is situated within the recent proliferation of documentaries on dying, marked as they are by a focus upon a single terminal patient and a refusal to film the actual moment of death. Close analysis brings to the fore the film's distinctive poetic style and narrative structure, highlighting in particular how Beeler juxtaposes natural and religious imagery alongside images of dying and care. Drawing upon a methodological framework that brings together philosophy and film studies, this article claims that Die weisse Arche, through its marked absence of medical images in a twenty-first century film about dying, allows us to question the role and place of medicine in contemporary end-of-life care.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"14 1","pages":"147 - 160"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1725994","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46786744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Injustice narratives in a post-truth society: emotional discourses and social purpose in Southwest of Salem: the story of the San Antonio four","authors":"George S. Larke-Walsh","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2020.1725996","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2020.1725996","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article discusses Southwest of Salem: the story of the San Antonio four (2016, Deborah Esquinazi) as a feature-length example of the injustice narrative documentary. It studies links between its narrative strategies and emotional engagement using the principles of cognitive theory to explain the diverse ways such a film can be received by viewers. Despite its long history and popularity in journalism, literature, film and television, the true crime genre and its subcategories have rarely earned critical praise or value. The intention here is to discuss how we can value this documentary and others for the ways they encourage emotional engagement, not as a strategy designed merely for entertainment, but to encourage critical debate on the infallibilities of institutional discourses, especially the manipulation of emotion in the legal system. As a consequence, this article will argue injustice narrative documentaries are not simply cliched and voyeuristic sensationalism, but instead have a valid social purpose.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"15 1","pages":"89 - 104"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2020-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17503280.2020.1725996","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48437709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}