Social Documentary Reading Primer

How the Other Half Lives (Penguin Classics)

corporateer@califoracle.com — Sun, 4 Feb 2007 19:21:35 -0800

by Jacob A Riis

Introduction To Documentary (01 Edition)

by Bill Nichols

An overview of important topics and issues in documentary history and criticism. Each chapter takes up a distinct question from "How did documentary filmmaking get started?" to "Why are ethical issues central to documentary?". Issues of form, modes, voice, history and more are addressed.

New Documentary: A Critical Introduction

corporateer@califoracle.com — Sun, 4 Feb 2007 19:14:29 -0800

by Stella Bruzzi

Synopsis:
"New Documentary" provides a comprehensive account of the last two decades of documentary filmmaking in the US, Britain and Europe. Bruzzi discusses key genres, filmmakers, and issues for the study of non-fiction film and television. Bruzzi discusses the relationship between recent, innovative examples of the genre and the more established canon of documentary. She also explores how issues of gender identity, queer theory, performance, "race" and spectatorship are important to our understanding of contemporary documentary.

Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary

corporateer@califoracle.com — Sun, 4 Feb 2007 19:13:16 -0800

by Bill Nichols

Documentary Expression and Thirties America

corporateer@califoracle.com — Sun, 4 Feb 2007 19:16:16 -0800

Synopsis:
"A comprehensive inquiry into the attitudes and ambitions that characterized the documentary impulse of the thirties. The subject is a large one, for it embraces (among much else) radical journalism, academic sociology, the esthetics of photography, Government relief programs, radio broadcasting, the literature of social work, the rhetoric of political persuasion, and the effect of all these on the traditional arts of literature, painting, theater and dance. The great merit of Mr. Stott's study lies precisely in its wide-ranging view of this complex terrain."--Hilton Kramer, New York Times Book Review

It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics

corporateer@califoracle.com — Sun, 4 Feb 2007 19:17:24 -0800

by Francesca Polletta

Synopsis:
Activists and politicians have long recognized the power of a good story to move people to action. In early 1960 four black college students sat down at a whites-only lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, and refused to leave. Within a month sit-ins spread to thirty cities in seven states. Student participants told stories of impulsive, spontaneous action—this despite all the planning that had gone into the sit-ins. “It was like a fever,” they said.Francesca Polletta’s It Was Like a Fever sets out to account for the power of storytelling in mobilizing political and social movements. Drawing on cases ranging from sixteenth-century tax revolts to contemporary debates about the future of the World Trade Center site, Polletta argues that stories are politically effective not when they have clear moral messages, but when they have complex, often ambiguous ones. The openness of stories to interpretation has allowed disadvantaged groups, in particular, to gain a hearing for new needs and to forge surprising political alliances. But popular beliefs in America about storytelling as a genre have also hurt those challenging the status quo.A rich analysis of storytelling in courtrooms, newsrooms, public forums, and the United States Congress, It Was Like a Fever offers provocative new insights into the dynamics of culture and contention.

Visible Evidence #7: States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies

corporateer@califoracle.com — Sun, 4 Feb 2007 19:18:50 -0800

by Patricia Rodden Zimmermann

Publisher Comments:
A passionate argument for the importance of radical documentary and experimental filmmaking in the face of rapid technological and political change.

Today's political, technological, and aesthetic landscapes are rife with landmines. In this embattled milieu, leftist filmmakers and conservatives struggle for control of the national imaginary. Amid unprecedented mergers and consolidations, political conservatives have launched major attacks against the National Endowment for the Arts, the Public Broadcasting System, state arts councils, and other sponsors of oppositional programming. Meanwhile, developing technologies like satellites and the Internet have not only altered and globalized communication but also offer untapped possibilities for reconstructing democracies. All of these events signal a radical transformation in how we will view the world in the decades to come.

In States of Emergency, Patricia R. Zimmermann describes the shifting terrains socially engaged documentary artists and experimental filmmakers encounter in the aftermath of these changes. Public space has been chiseled away and politically conscious documentaries forced to go underground. Viewing an array of subjects (including the wars in Bosnia, Chiapas, and the Persian Gulf; Japanese internment during World War II; homelessness; race; and reproductive rights) through technologies ranging from high-end video, camcorders, cable access, digital imaging systems, and media piracy, Zimmermann creates an explosive montage of colliding ideas and events. In combative terms, she charts the intricately layered relationships between independent documentary, power, money, and culture, and also analyzes how media artists use new technologies and radical media practices to undermine cuts in support and conservative backlash.

States of Emergency anchors documentary into a social and historical context that shows the complex connections among audiences, filmmakers, funders, and subjects in the fascinating and fraught milieu in which they coexist. Zimmermann passionately and convincingly argues that the survival of democracies and public spaces is inextricably fueled by the robust endurance of documentary and other insurgent forms of communication.
Review:

Regarding the Pain of Others (03 Edition)

corporateer@califoracle.com — Sun, 4 Feb 2007 19:20:19 -0800

by Susan Sontag

Twenty-five years after her classic On Photography, Susan Sontag returns to the subject of visual representations of war and violence in our culture today.

How does the spectacle of the sufferings of others (via television or newsprint) affect us? Are viewers inured--or incited--to violence by the depiction of cruelty? In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag takes a fresh look at the representation of atrocity--from Goya's The Disasters of War to photographs of the American Civil War, lynchings of blacks in the South, and the Nazi death camps, to contemporary horrific images of Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Israel and Palestine, and New York City on September 11, 2001.

In Regarding the Pain of Others Susan Sontag once again changes the way we think about the uses and meanings of images in our world, and offers an important reflection about how war itself is waged (and understood) in our time.

Maus, A Survivor's Tale, Book I: My Father Bleeds History

corporateer@califoracle.com — Sun, 4 Feb 2007 19:22:14 -0800

by Art Spiegelman

Two powerful, definitive chronicles of modern atrocities — the perfect books for anyone who doubts comix have grown up. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus is a staggering personal depiction of the Holocaust, rendered all the stronger by Spiegelman's refusal to lionize the victims (Spiegelman's parents are presented as complex individuals — warts and all — instead of saintly martyrs) and his determination to keep his metaphor (Jews as mice, Germans as cats) from slipping into allegory.

Safe Area Gorazde suggests we didn't learn much from the Holocaust except how to avert our gaze when genocide is being enacted practically under our noses. Sacco's account of the war in Sarajevo is human and heartbreaking. His vividly rendered images put us right there in Gorazde, with an immediacy neither film nor prose can replicate. Nothing can truly atone for the world's complacency in the midst of the Sarajevo massacre, but Sacco's remarkable graphic novel goes a long way toward helping us understand the brutalities that our newspapers glossed over. Recommended by Bolton, Powells.com