The Philosophy of Documentary Film: Image, Sound, Fiction, Truth (The Philosophy of Popular Culture)

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. Contents Foreword: At the Center of Our Age Introduction THE MEDIUM, MORALS, AND METAPHYSICS OF DOCUMENTARY FILM What Photography Calls Thinking Cinematic Representation and Spatial Realism Documentary Traces The Limits of Appropriation Inscribing Ethical Space STRATEGIES AND STYLES OF DOCUMENTING WITH FILM Before Documentary Ruminating on the Ideologies of Nature Film Jean Rouch’s Ciné-trance and Modes of Experimental Ethnofiction Filmmaking The Ecstasy of Time Travel in Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams Habitats of Documentary DOCUMENTARY THEORIST-FILMMAKERS AT WORK Promises and Contracts Found in the Archive Are Not About the Past “See and Remember” Intimacy, Modesty, Silence Provoking the Truth Reinvisioning Dziga Vertov Whose Strife Is It Anyway? Redefining Documentary Materialism INTERVENTIONS AND RECONSTITUTIONS OF DOCUMENTARY MODES, METHODS, AND MEANINGS Four and a Half Film Fallacies The Dogma 95 Manifesto Minnesota Declaration Omission and Oversight in Close Reading—The Final Moments of Frederick Wiseman’s High School Cinematic Consciousness Understanding (and) the Legacy of the Trace The Big Short Letter to Errol Morris AUTO/BIOGRAPHY AND THE COMPOSITION OF IDENTITY IN DOCUMENTARY FILM “You are Never Alone” On Patience (After Sebald) Fiction and Nonfiction in Chantal Akerman’s Films Vérité Fiction, Dramatized Documentary “Deceiving into the Truth” A Reality Rescinded Acknowledgments Selected Bibliography Index Contributors Perhaps Nowhere In The Broad Expanse Of Types Of Film Is The Old Quarrel Between Philosophy And Poetry More Evident--and Also More Vitally Relevant--than In The Genre Or Mode Of Film Known As Documentary. Documentary Film Is Just Another Form Of Poetic Imitation, In Its Variety Of Instances And Complexity Of Fabrication, It Is Just As Much Caught Up With The Limitations--and Effects--of Mimetic Art, Including Fiction Film. This Book Affords A Prismatic Perspective On Documentary Cinema, Inviting The Dynamism And Diversity Of The Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, And Even Natural Sciences Together Into A Shared Conversation.