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Filmmaking is an unconventional, but supremely rewarding career path for criminal justice educators. The author chronicles his career as he transitioned unexpectedly from a traditional path involving legal analyses and policy research to the very unusual enterprise of documentary filmmaking. Each of his film projects emanated directly from his teaching or research experiences, experiences that might just as appropriately have culminated in articles for publication. But he chose a different mode for disseminating his research and insights. The author reviews the myriad challenges he faced as a filmmaker—both inside and outside of the film industry, itself. Throughout, he describes—and outlines his efforts to overcome—the staunch resistance by the academic community to filmmaking by faculty who reside outside traditional departments of theatre and film. He also urges colleagues to consider the path for themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Courtroom art, as in comics, self-insertion and self-portraiture invite a metatextual discussion of the relationship between the artist and the reality they seek to depict. Courtroom art is an under-theorised medium discussed, almost exclusively, in the history and practices of law. The tools of comics studies, I seek to show, can provide a language to discuss the sociological and formal aspects of the work of courtroom artists. As such, in this paper I argue that, despite the apparent unsuitability of drawing as a documentary method, courtroom art is an effective vehicle for truth claims. Courtroom artists not only mitigate but leverage the lack of objectivity of their medium to offer a different kind of documentary from technological reportage; they record not only an impression of what occurred but how an event was experienced. In the sections below I offer an overview of the history and practices of courtroom art and theories of documentary comics, a discussion of the relationship between courtroom and comics art, and a series of close readings of examples of courtroom art which effectively leverage the form's interpretive capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, documentaries have employed cinematic techniques, but since the 1990s there has been a pronounced application of such devices for theatrical appeal. This trend, amplified by digital streaming platforms, raises concerns about representations of reality. To understand the scope of such concerns, a key question arises: what constitutes some of these 'cinematic' techniques used within documentaries? Despite claims that appealing documentaries often employ Hollywood storytelling strategies, there is limited understanding of how the genre adopts specific devices for cinematic entertainment. This article examines true crime documentary The Imposter, analysing its use of cinematic screenwriting and story devices, specifically dramatic structure. An analytical model is synthesised through genre theory (thriller) with Lucy V. Hay's understanding of the Three-Act-Structure, underpinned by relevant literature. This examination reveals how the documentary employs 'cinematic' aesthetics and thriller conventions to engage audiences. Drawing on Murray Smith's 'Structure of Sympathy', the article explores the filmmaker's application of these storytelling techniques, shedding light on their potential capacity to shape audience appraisal of real-world events and subjects in true crime documentaries. The analysis aims to identify and unpack these specific storytelling devices, contributing to a deeper understanding of the impact of cinematic techniques in nonfiction filmmaking for representing reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes two strikingly different documentaries by Michael Liu which were included in the “Northeast China Yao-at-work Photography Exhibition” (dongbei yao zhanjie richang in Taipei 2017) on the lives of cross-dressed and transgender (male-to-female) sex workers in Dongbei and the way they discuss their futures and “yao” or “trans” identities differently according to the different modes of documentary employed. In Magic (nü yao er, 2014) we see their practices of everyday life, improvised queer forms of kinship and survival, their dark sense of humor and their business ambitions, whereas in Trans to a New Life (2016) they address their hardships and dreams of the future to the compassionate “NGO gaze” that demands testimonial about being a victim of discrimination (from family members, hospitals, and in employment). Understanding these rhetorical differences helps to intervene in a major debate in contemporary China over the role of NGOs, especially regarding transgender identity, sex work, HIV, and queer forms of kinship. I also connect these recent documentaries to films about queer sex workers in Beijing by Cui Zi’en [2005; 2012. Queer China, “Comrade” China. Brooklyn, NY: dGenerate Films], debates over the testimonial and ethnographic format of an influential U.S. documentary about transgender women of color and sex workers, Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1990), and current debates in China and the U.S. over trans cultural production, respectability politics, and the politics of visibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some Kind of Liberating Effect is a documentary dedicated to research freedom in the academic study of religion in Central and Eastern Europe. This essay examines the techniques used to develop a script and a screenplay. It will show how the documentary integrates screenwriting with the question of freedom of research in this academic field and region. First, the essay presents the raw footage filmed between 2022 and 2023, then the screenwriting techniques used for plotting a story. Finally, it discusses the shift from the history of the academic field to storytelling, particularly with regard to the frame story included in the film. In conclusion, it presents some remarks concerning the interdisciplinary and intersectoral approaches between religious studies and the film industry implemented in the documentary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Korean documentary film has historically both been designed as a contribution to political life and also as a creative exploration in the growing film industry. Documentary in the service of political mobilizing, which occupied a large place in early documentary, has evolved into a wide range of expression, without losing the overall character of social commitment. As seen at the Jeonju Film Festival 2024, documentary work continues the longstanding politically-engaged character of South Korean documentary, while demonstrating sophisticated approaches to the challenge of developing narratives of remembrance. This work is undertaken with techniques ranging from animation to strategic use of silence and absence, reflexive archival use and memoir. Documentary choices testify to professionalization and innovation in the field and also to the enduring identity of documentary filmmakers as storytellers of a fraught, contested and still in formation Korean identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental issues in mainstream documentary film have been aestheticized and personified through specific filmmaking methods such as talking-head interviews, single-character narrative arcs, and three-part dramatic structures. These anthropocentric approaches can make it difficult to pay attention to slower temporalities and more-than-human lifeworlds that are at the crux of understanding slower-moving environmental disasters. The groundwork for the ecological collapse of an ecosystem is often only partially discernible within a human time frame, encompassing connections across species, seasons, elements, genres, and time and space too temporally and spatially vast, too micro- or macroscopic to be captured as visible evidence, and therefore more experimental film practices are needed to register these scalar frequencies. Multispecies cinema is a new mode of filmmaking that centers the more-than-human through several experimental methodological expansions, with the goal of decentering the human while narrativizing ecosystems in trouble. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The earthquakes that occurred in Turkey on 6 February 2023 have been one of the most important disasters of recent history. In the aftermath of the earthquake, various segments of society wanted to witness the devastation first-hand, and YouTube documentaries became one of the popular forms of this testimony. The aim of this study is to map YouTube documentaries about these devastating earthquakes, focusing on the content and creators, and thus to draw a framework for the multidimensional situation of the disaster based on this witnessing. The documentary content shared on YouTube during the year following the earthquake was analysed through quantitative content analysis, categorizing the predefined video features of the platform and codes related to documentaries and documentary makers. The data shows that most of the documentaries were created in a participatory mode and a significant increase in the number of documentaries uploaded in the immediate aftermath and on the anniversary of the earthquake. The study also underlines the scope and diversity of the desire to witness the major disaster, while documentaries with an oppositional approach that criticize official discourses are associated with higher levels of audience engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author explores current perspectives on contemporary art projects through the concept of the archive. By applying a theoretical framework termed "concern for the archive", the author aims to elucidate complex relationships between the archive as a medium and the situated practices of contemporary art. The paper examines contemporary art as a form of temporary memory storage, particularly through the analysis of Tomáš Rafa's documentary films. It addresses two key questions: What specific aspects of concern for the archive can be identified in political or activist contemporary art? How does concern for the archive differ from archival care, and why is this distinction important?. In the first section, the author discusses the "zones of contact" in political activist art, highlighting the formation of dialogical structures and distinguishing them from scientific research and purely documentary creation. The second section traces the layers of artistic training in Grzegorz Kowalski's renowned studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, where the author gained experience in organizing and documenting collective workshops. This part reveals the specifics of documentary video creation with its activist and archival overlaps. In the final sections, the author outlines a theoretical framework for interpreting documentary video pieces in relation to the concepts of archive, cultural trauma, and cultural therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Doc On-Line: Revista Digital de Cinema Documentário is the property of Doc On-Line: Revista Digital de Cinema Documentario and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Documentaries have frequently captured journeys to places audiences might not have seen before. The first documentary film Nanook of the North (1922), often referred to as a travel film, took viewers to the Canadian Artic for the first time. In 1929, The Man with a Movie Camera revealed the rhythm of the Soviet cities through the Kino-Eye. Now the documentary film genre, the City Film is taking viewers on a virtual tour into new digital synthetic domains as they contain artificially generated images produced by GenAI. In response to this emergence of the ‘AI eye’, a computational vision of the world, the following attributes of AI as an asset, tool and collaborator shape the discussion of novel creative documentary processes that are emerging when Gen AI is integrated into computational non-fiction. This article explores a computational vision of the world in relation to the City Film documentary genre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If Gaelic has been symbolically appropriated to represent Scotland, then it follows that we need to look more closely at the part played by documentary film both of and from the Scottish Hebrides, in furthering the dissemination of what is an idealised and contested identity. As documentary is a negotiated contract between the producer and those they 'represent', the discussion needs to consider whether the representation of a Hebridean identity, and by extension a mythical Scottish identity, is constructed by the filmmaker, and if so, how filmic constraints and practices inform this representation. Within this framework is an acknowledgement of the extent to which Hebridean identity has been mediated by books, photographs and films for the past 300 years. This article will deliver the findings of a research project undertaken in the in the Outer Hebrides (also known as the Western Isles and Lewis & Harris). The research investigates the extent to which interviewees themselves collude with documentary makers in presenting a view of the Gael that reflects the Gaelic-speaker's own self-assigned role as guardian of the land and traditions. As this research marries practice with research, it will present it in a semi-autobiographical style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an account of an independent filmmaker's work in documenting some of the stories from the global Indian diaspora. Based in Aotearoa New Zealand, with ancestral connections to Fiji, East Africa, UK, US and India, and using documentary making with both its journalistic and artistic purposes, the author firstly refers to the literatures that identifies documentary-making as journalism, diaspora, and the caste system. She then situates herself within the South Pacific Indian diaspora, before describing her experience in the making of the documentary entitled Hidden Apartheid: A Report on Caste Discrimination. The article concludes by reflecting on her role and the role of documenting hidden discrimination where it exists throughout Indian communities of the diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Fotocinema is the property of Revista Fotocinema and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of Romantic notions in understanding contemporary human–animal relations. I examined how three documentaries dealing with the problem of farm-animal exploitation construct the relationship between farmers and meat producers on the one hand and farm animals on the other. Using the method of multimodal critical discourse analysis, I examined audiovisual and linguistic levels of documentaries. I argue that documentary narratives have a dual function in exploring these relationships. First, they produce anthropocentric narratives that focus on the farmer's perspective and their experience of the relationship with farm animals. The anthropocentric narrative legitimizes the notions of traditional forms of sustainable agriculture in which animals graze freely, and a relationship of trust exists between farm animals and farmers. In this narrative, farm animals are portrayed as anthropomorphized and thus equal to humans. Ideologically, it follows the premodern idea of pastoralism. The second narrative is biocentric in that it focuses primarily on animals. This narrative consists of a critique of the exploitation of farm animals in large, industrialized fattening farms and slaughterhouses. I argue that the origins of both narratives lie in Romantic notions about the relationship between humans and animals. Ultimately, both narratives propagate a Romantic return to preindustrial pastoralism, advocating a harmonious coexistence of land, animals, and people, and rejecting industrial, mechanical, and technological forms of farm animal husbandry. I conclude by asking how Romantic ideas contest late capitalist forms of commodification of animals and what the limits of these ideas are in eliminating the exploitation of farm animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writer and director Elaine McMillion Sheldon begins her latest documentary, King Coal , with a funeral rite. A multigenerational, multiracial procession of people in black clothing walks slowly up a country road. All is quiet except for the sound of insects and a steady drum. Who are these mourners? Sheldon lets the mystery linger. But we learn eventually that the solemn rite is for a king—King Coal—or perhaps for the past he represents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a content analysis of 10 interactive Russian-language and English-language projects to isolate documentaries from them and analyze the structure to derive the principles of constructing the narrative of an interactive film. Based on the study, the authors deduce three patterns of regularities of constructing the narrative of an interactive documentary film: a clear project structure with rationally chosen techniques that complement each other as part of the designer; the choice of a story, whose perception should not be linear and can be formed from independent elements; creation of convenient navigation, intuitive for users, as well as the creation of instructions for a complex project form. Interactive documentary films in this article are compared with video games, with which this direction of documentary science is similar to the user as a coauthor, as well as the use of technology. The article discusses the technology of shooting 360 degrees, which allows the user to "look around". Considering the growing popularity of streaming channels, and web projects, interactive film has a future in documentary filmmaking. Creating an interactive film requires not only knowledge of technology and multimedia storytelling techniques, but also a solid foundation in perception psychology, and storytelling theory, as well as the ability to study and reinterpret the experiences of video game creators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study in media practice provides insights on video production for holographic prism projection, which has become more accessible as smart flat screens have become more available. The study reflects on the experiences of producing, installing and viewing a documentary video projected via holographic prism, titled 'FarNearFutureNow.' Engaging the participation of Extinction Rebellion (XR) members, this university-funded production included recording and combining interview footage with energy policy texts in the visual style of the hologram scene from Star Wars, the 1977 science-fiction film. With viewer co-experience, environmental politics and legacies of colonialism in mind, we produced a 5-minute video and prism projection system for public exhibition. FarNearFutureNow was produced through collective processes of gathering, assembling, reviewing, storyboarding, scripting and editing interview footage and other recordings as well as testing and fabricating installation materials. These production processes enabled us to understand the affordances of creative darkness in holographic production for disassociating and recombining visual elements. The hologram's disassociated focus on a single object proved useful in drawing audience attention and for assembling non-fiction elements in sequences referencing popular fiction. It is also useful for showing radically different visual scales in sequence, and for simultaneously juxtaposing audio and visual scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A masterclass in Serbia on documentary film debates creativity. Experimental and documentary filmmakers in the region assert the boundaries of documentary in order to transgress them. Creativity offers a means to authenticity, animated through viewers' projection. Approaching authenticity as animated rejects preoccupations with the mechanical indexicality of the camera. Rather than focusing on index as trace, the ambivalence of indexicality productively moves between representation and reality. This highlights two paradoxes of documentary: that fictional techniques create a real world and that individuals animate types. Authenticity is fragile. Documentary creativity celebrates this vulnerability, inviting visual anthropology to experiment, as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the various forms of reenactment in contemporary Israeli documentary cinema. It argues that current documentary reenactments challenge—along the axes of nationalism, gender, class, and ethnicity—the traditional distinctions between past and present, documentary and fiction, reference and representation. They offer the possibility of bringing the past into the present, and simultaneously awarding a new aesthetic form to the historical event appearing on the screen for the first time. The reenactments give presence to the past, while at the same time showing the impossibility of returning to it in its entirety. They put into question the very borders of documentary cinema as well as raising ethical issues about the ontological status of documentary “truth.” Moreover, through reenactments, contemporary documentaries aspire to retrieve lost voices and bodies, forgotten testimonies and histories of Israeli society’s Others, and to give them new visual form so that they can find new listeners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to point out a phenomenon in Israeli cinema: a return to the story of the binding of Isaac [the akedah] in its biblical version. Against the background of the traditional casting of the akedah myth in Israeli art, where the miracle of Isaac’s rescue is replaced by his death, and the ram is missing from the picture, recently Israeli documentary films have appeared that deal with combat stress reaction, which shapes the story of the akedah in a way that is faithful to the biblical story. They reinstate within the plot the story of Isaac’s replacement by a ram and describe life after Isaac saw the knife raised over him, where the traumatic memory of the past upsets the routine of the present. At the same time, the films are informed by the Israeli art tradition, with one film adopting the hegemonic view of Abraham, who raises the knife, while the other adopts the critical view of Sarah, the mother, who identifies with the victim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

News organizations in recent years have embraced documentary film. From streaming ventures to Academy Award nominations, newsrooms are producing documentaries to reach new audiences and maintain their relevance in changing media cultures. This study examines documentary's surging popularity among news outlets and addresses two questions: How does the political economy of media affect filmmakers' editorial decisions and aesthetic choices? And, how do seemingly commonplace audiovisual and production techniques – such as music, lighting, sound design, and directing – complicate journalistic norms? Drawing on in-depth interviews with journalistic filmmakers (n = 24), the study offers three findings: the political economy of digital media is altering the production and distribution models for documentary, creating ethical dilemmas for filmmakers; the relational dynamics among filmmakers, participants, and audiences significantly inform the ethical frameworks that filmmakers use; and the 'emotional truth' of documentary storytelling forces filmmakers to reevaluate their conceptions of objectivity and neutrality. The study illuminates the relationship between documentary and journalism, and details how filmmakers are navigating the increasingly-blurry boundaries between these fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What counts as documentary in the twenty-first century? More importantly, is documentary studies capable of contributing to a discourse that can both define the contours of and point beyond the past twenty-odd years of digital experimentation? During this time, documentary has been productively disassembled and its component parts strung about the white cube and strewn across the internet; however, it would seem its cinematic self has not developed much beyond the performative and reflexive 'new documentary' of the 80s-90s. In all likelihood, twenty-first-century new media documentaries exceed the horizons of documentary studies scholarship. In response, Jihoon Kim's Documentary's Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary (New York: Oxford Press, 2022) and Kate Nash's Interactive Documentary: Theory and Debate (New York: Routledge, 2022) draw together an impressive array of alternative approaches. This review will compare how both books historicize this century's documentary in relation to the last. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the impact of cross-border collaboration on independent Chinese documentary. Through a study of Wang Jiuliang's Plastic China, I argue that the film, which passed through training events run by CNEX and the Sundance Institute's Documentary Film Programme in China, bears the formal impact of the industrial-humanitarian logic central to these workshops: character-driven storytelling as the key to generating a global Anglophone public for independent Chinese documentary. Tracing this logic through the workshop mechanism, the film's form, and audience reactions to its screening in the UK, I suggest the result is a viewer response privileging personal action over structural critique—what in this context I term "worrying about China." This allows me to locate the documentary in relation to broader liberal arguments over China's place in the world system and assess the limitations of this approach to "going global" for independent Chinese documentary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the collective pursuit of justice and memory in Sin miedo [Without Fear] (Zulian, 2017). The documentary is a grassroots implementation of a 2012 Inter-American Court of Human Rights judgement. The relatives of desaparecidos/as during the Guatemalan military dictatorship were the catalysts for the film's creation. This study focuses on a filmic analysis of techniques, research on the history of the internal armed conflict in Guatemala, and relevant information on the family members' hunt for justice, such as the detailing and connection of common crimes to politically motivated ones. A continued climate of impunity in Guatemala is challenged by the protagonists as they utilize the collection of testimonials and evidence to break cultures of enforced silence and fear. Zulian's documentary claims new ground as it provides the relatives with the means to fulfill the court mandate and to actively construct and position their forcibly disappeared family members' stories and their own within Guatemala's historical narrative. Through their dynamic involvement in Sin miedo (2017), the relatives participate in the conversion of film into action and memory. These findings support grassroots movements in (re)shaping dominant narratives through media like film; they are also a reminder of the power of silenced voices and of the varied forms that claims for justice can take, from court mandates to documentaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article synthesizes modes of representation in documentary films with strategies of legitimation. It develops a framework of documentary legitimation, where each of the six modes recognized by Bill Nichols in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (1991) and Introduction to Documentary (2017) – expository, participatory, observational, performative, reflexive and poetic modes – tends to highlight certain legitimating strategies. For instance, the expository mode mainly legitimates through voice-of-God commentary, expert speeches and expository intertitles, the participatory mode legitimates through witness testimony and the observational mode legitimates through audience observation, and so on. The proposed framework is applied to a case study of a documentary entitled The Lockdown: One Month in Wuhan produced by China Global Television Network (CGTN). Analysis demonstrates how legitimation of the Wuhan lockdown during the early outbreak of COVID-19 is realized by adopting different representation modes and legitimating strategies. The article illustrates how an interdisciplinary approach may lead to a more comprehensive understanding of legitimation and its realization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the first-time choreographic collaboration between Eiko Otake, a renowned Japanese dance artist, and Wen Hui, a celebrated Chinese choreographer and filmmaker, which took place in mainland China in January of 2020. The outbreak of the coronavirus in Wuhan compelled Otake to return to the US prematurely, and the subsequent global pandemic led the two artists to continue working together through the computer screen. Constructed from daily footage of Wen and Otake moving together, conversing about their personal histories and choreographic works, and visiting the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, the resulting documentary film No Rule Is Our Rule (2023, 74 min) offers a poignant portrayal of their creative process, which places utmost importance on honesty and openness. Through an in-depth analysis of their artistic exploration presented through the film, the article examines how their collaborative endeavor which prioritizes corporeal interaction and unfiltered dialogues can be conceived as a form of mediated social choreography. I argue that their embodied methodology, grounded in the interweaving of personal and social memories, points to the potential for collective healing from the tension and trauma in Sino-Japanese history and promotes collective imagining through intercultural dialogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the current video production practices are focusing on filming, editing, storytelling or special effects, and the articles on video production also put the emphasis on tourism, business or natural scenery. There are not many video production practices on topics such as hospice, because this topic involves death, illness, patients and their families and other factors, and most of these film subjects are not willing to be shot. This research aims to explore the impact of filming practices on sensitive topics on the producers and the filmed subjects. By selecting the hospice care documentaries produced by Zhejiang Communication University as a case study, this study interviews 8 documentary producers and 8 filmed subjects and researchs the whole filming process through method of participatory observation. This research demonstrates that for hospice documentary filmmakers, going through such a filmmaking journey can be helpful in increasing their level of identification with hospice care, increasing their emotional experience and documentary production skills, and most importantly for their future documentary filmmaking, as they feel the power of humanity. For the subjects, i.e. patients, families, doctors and nurses, end-of-life care documentaries have expanded the dissemination of knowledge to a certain extent, but the impact on the behavioural choices of patients at the moment of death has not been significant, and these behavioural choices are more influenced by non-medical factors which the filmmakers are clearly aware of it. Instead, these filming activities were somewhat of an optional burden on filmed subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The current presence of hybridity between documentary and fiction filmmaking has taken many senses, with disparate results, which have the purpose of delivering works that provide new looks on reality, which is understood as an entity represented through images. Methodology: The objective of this research is to analyze four films of hybrid fiction and documentary narration, in order to determine the elements used to create significant and unusual cinematographic experiences. A film analysis is carried out with four categories of analysis: fictional elements, documentary style, temporal manipulation and interaction with the viewer. Results: Four hybrid fiction/documentary films were analyzed. Elements such as dramatized situations and narrative tones that mix fiction and reality to question truth and lies were identified. It was observed that temporal manipulation and interaction with the viewer are crucial to create meaningful cinematic experiences. Discussion: The fusion of genres allows for new ways of representing and questioning reality. The films studied show how fiction can enrich documentary, providing an additional layer of meaning and reflection. Conclusions: The hybridization of genres in film offers a powerful tool to explore and represent reality in an innovative way, challenging traditional boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of IBEROAMERICANA. América Latina - España - Portugal is the property of Vervuert Verlag and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study focuses mainly on the genre of biographical compilation in the context of development of the compilation film form in Slovakia after 1989. The author analyses current creative approaches in creating biographical compilations or compilations with biographical motifs. His main interest is the application of film collage techniques by those documentary directors who work with appropriated audiovisual and archival materials. He explores the crossing of authenticity and fiction based on the case study of the biographical compilation film Countdown - The Last Film of Ivan Palúch (Odpočítavanie - posledný film Ivana Palúcha, dir. Martin Palúch, 2022). This feature film is a unique example of a biopic about the career and life of a film actor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Plurentes is the property of Universidad Nacional de La Plata and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite the increasing documentary filmmakers' on-screen presence in their own films, the analysis of their corporeal presence and performance in the documentary genre hasn't been fully explored yet. Following Plantinga's (2018) discussion on characterization and character in documentary film, the present article proposes to examine documentary filmmakers' on-screen presence and performance, making three central assumptions. First, documentary filmmakers' on-screen presence is a cinematic representation constructed in similar ways to that of other characters/subjects participating in the film. Second, documentary filmmakers' characters are generally shaped and constructed throughout the filmmakers' careers, much like fiction film stars. Third and last, the salience of filmmakers as characters should be understood as the outcome of major cultural, technological, and economic shifts shaping and affecting the documentary film production patterns and stylistic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the encounter between the “First World American women” and “Third world Afghan women” is framed to inadvertently enact a form of representational violence in Liz Mermin’s documentary film, The Beauty Academy of Kabul. The paper shows that despite its ostensibly progressive stance of giving space to Afghan women’s voice, the film, serves to validate the new form the colonial self has taken in the globalized world - the humanitarian identity - and reaffirms the American imperial agenda. Employing Judith Butler’s insights in Frames of War, where she points out how the frame delimits the domain of representability and the confines of “reality” itself, the analysis explores how Mermin’s documentary frames the Afghan women as the first world audience is meant to recognize, grieve and intervene for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The film elements, especially in documentary or essay films, carry the director's point of view more prominently. A Dog Called Money (2019) is a film with essayistic and documentary features by photographer Seamus Murphy about the creation process of English musician PJ Harvey's album, The Hope Six Demolition Project. The film focuses on the artists' journey in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Washington, DC, and the album's production process, which takes place in a live museum exhibition. Murphy uses visual narrative, while Harvey takes on the textual and auditory narrator role with voice-over, text, and music. Therefore, this study analyses the textual and audio-visual features of the documentary film that reflect the self-representation of both artists. The representation form created by the multiple narrators that the film's narrative varies between the essay and the documentary genre is interpreted in the context of image, sound, and text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the Spanish documentary related to the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent Franco dictatorship has experienced a verifiable boom. At the same time that interest in the past grew, it was possible to see, in the words of Enzo Traverso, how the «I» burst into the writing of history. These new discursive practices, described by some authors as hybrids between fiction and history, have also been adopted by some Spanish documentary filmmakers belonging, for the most part, to the so-called «post-memory generation». The objective of this essay is to analyze this trend from a theoretical perspective while focusing attention on three especially relevant documentary films: Mi tío Ramón (Ignacio Lasierra, 2015), Canción a una dama en la sombra (Carolina Astudillo Muñoz, 2021) and Apuntes para una herencia (Federico Robles, 2018). We will analyze the use that these products make of that «I» introduced and conceptualized as a problematic element within the writing of history, and that originates from avant-garde products and related to family cinema and found footage, the case of the film by Astudillo, to others closer to the strategies of autofiction, as is the case of the work of Federico Robles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to renegotiate the relationship between reenactment, truth, history, and the archive in documentaries on genocide. It moves away from the common binaries surrounding the supposed creativity and fictionality of reenactments as opposed to the evidentiary and static archive, and instead reads reenactments as facilitating access to truth. Through four case studies of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985), Laurence Rees's Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution' (2005), Rithy Panh's The Missing Picture (2013), and Joshua Oppenheimer's The Act of Killing (2012), it contends that reenactments in documentaries on genocide problematize the associations of an image's supposed indexical link to a past event with truth. Instead, reenactments confront us with the constructed nature of historical narrative and enable us to see affective, factual, and ethical truths of the past unavailable through the archive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Documentary filmmakers are gradually embracing immersive media to create novel Virtual Reality Nonfiction (VRNF) content. Over the past twenty years initial experimentation in this new medium has brought forward numerous linearly structured 360° documentaries that maintain a close link to traditional documentary modes. More recently, we have observed a shift from the relatively passive 360° cinema towards more open-world, non-linear, game-like interactive experiences that challenge traditional definitions of the documentary genre. Volumetric world-building techniques provide nonfiction creators with additional tools that afford 'viewer-users' spatial and interactive agency, leading to a heightened autopoietic realisation of the storyworld. VRNF creators have the potential to allow their viewer-users enhanced control over framing, temporal ordering of the plot and spatial unfolding of the diegetic world, thus inviting them to become actual co-creators of a deeply personal and personalized experience. This article addresses how VRNF may go beyond the mere 'documentation' of people, places or past events that existed in a pre-filmic reality and provide viewer-users through augmented agency a unique present-tense autopoietic experience that pushes the boundaries of traditional 2D documentary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seeing documentary film as an object for remembering and resurrecting the past is a complex issue touching upon questions pertaining to the ontology of photographic capturing, its ways of becoming an index, means of reinventing/fabricating the past through narrative and how such shared, cultural conventions impinge on the personal sphere, i.e. the singularity and authenticity of the experience preserved. While some past and present key media theorists regard such cinematization of memory as either a reduced or falsified form of pastness, I argue, employing Edward S. Casey's influential phenomenological study of mnemonic modes and taking Aslaug Holm's (auto)biographical documentary Brothers (Brødre, 2015) as an outstanding example, that documentary as an object perceived by a specific (not abstracted) consciousness is multiple and functions as a virtual reservoir for potential complex acts of memory to occur – it enlivens, not reduces one's engagement with the past. Brothers is seen as both a form of reminiscence vehicle and commemoration vehicle. I furthermore identify a new mode of memory manifest in the film, not discussed by Casey, and its related object – anterior reminding and memento mori – which preserves the past and alludes to the future, this way determining what that past shall have been. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this queer reading of the 1985 horror sequel Freddy's Revenge, I use Halberstam's theory of queer failure to interrogate cultural mechanisms that validate and invalidate a film's memory. The 2019 documentary Scream, Queen! guides my queer celebration of Freddy's Revenge. The movies converge to create profound, low theoretical insights into queer desire at the apex of the AIDS pandemic. The essay challenges heteronormative impulses commonly used to frame a media artifact as significant and successful enough to merit investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how documentary cinema in war contexts can challenge gender representations. To do so, we adopt a feminist and postcolonial approach to analyze the work of Catalan non-fiction filmmaker Alba Sotorra in Kurdistan, Afghanistan and Catalonia. In her films, Sotorra positions herself close to a series of subjects absorbed by wars and armed conflicts that (re)define their identities while acting beyond gender stereotypes. In particular, the paper analyzes the modes of production and representational strategies of two of Sotorra's latest feature films, Game Over and Commander Arian, documentaries with which the filmmaker aims at overcoming the visual exploitation of alterity. After an introduction to Sotorra, and a brief revision of the theory of postcolonial feminist cinema, our argument unfolds in four parts. Firstly, we reflect on cinematic representations of women and men at war; secondly, we introduce our methodology, based on in-depth interviews with the director to support our film analysis; thirdly, we contrast our hypotheses by means of close-readings of the films; lastly, we reflect on how the filmmaker aligns herself with intersectional feminism by using empathy and solidarity towards her subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay links the historical figure of Phoolan Devi, infamously known as the "Bandit Queen," a vigilante and the subject of several articles, news stories, books, and a biopic, with the more recent figure of Jyoti Singh Pandey, the victim of a brutal gang rape in 2012, who similarly became the subject of news stories, films, performances, and a TV series. It examines the BBC's commissioned documentary film India's Daughter (dir. Leslee Udwin, 2015) as an example of how the aesthetics of realism can sensationalize sexual assault, engender a spectatorial complicity, and, in this case, scaffold damaging cultural narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This article considers the documentary film, Taking Alcatraz (John Ferry, 2015), in the context of US-Indigenous history. The documentary form presents alternative ideas and futures beyond those dominant in the US imagination and run counter to stereotypical representations of Native Americans found in the Western genre. The 1969 Occupation of Alcatraz can be seen as part of a history of political dissent by Indigenous peoples whilst the (mediated) nature of film reinvigorate and reanimate ideas such as those employed at Alcatraz – perceived dormant since the closure of the prison, save for the eighteen months of Indigenous occupation, commencing in 1969. At the heart of this analysis is the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty which returned all unused land to Native peoples, prompting the Occupation, and how this event is offered continued context and urgency whilst opening previously closed dialogues of Indigenous history; stressing the power of the (moving) image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Divergencia is the property of Taller de Historia Politica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Belarusian national identity is a taboo subject in Belarus nowadays, unless identity is understood in a Soviet/Lukashenko way. So for Belarusians, who have gone through national destruction more than once, this issue is not just a usual research topic but a crucial question that can contribute to national survival. In the 1920s-30s a part of Belarusian lands belonged to Poland and Polish filmmakers shot some documentaries there, which turned out to be the sole materials since whatever was taken in Soviet Belarus at this time, got burned later. This research aims to determine what these visual materials communicate, how they can add to the Belarusian identity and why it is important for modern Belarus and its cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In his book 24/7, Jonathan Crary describes our contemporary temporality, an always-on existence that detaches itself from any possible political action in the form of a long-term project. A clear example of this temporality, in which a tremendous amount of labor and resources are expended to produce the consensus that no political change is possible or necessary, is the 24-hour news cycle. In Chats perchés (2004), his film contrasting the contemporary French news media with scenes from Parisian protests in the wake of the United States' wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the presidential elections in France, Chris Marker takes up Guy Debord's practice of détournement, reversing the production-consumption flow of images and creating a new situation for thought and action. Marker's use of voice-over and montage to repurpose the news media and documentary images of protest serves as a means of breaking out of the 24/7 temporality of the spectacle, allowing the viewer to tie the present to previous instances of revolutionary agency and to imagine the possibility of future political change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the work of 1920s Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov found especially fertile ground in 1960s Japan, where critics have long discussed ties between documentary and the avant-garde. Theorists interpreted Vertov's filmmaking as fundamentally avant-gardist. That is, it was both an "experiment in a dream" and an "experiment in reality," according to Nakahara Yusuke, rather than the work of a documentarian "catching life unawares." This transnational media ecology results in a strong tradition of experimental documentary that traces revolutionary politics to editing tricks and self-reflexivity. Soviet and Japanese avant-garde documentary emerge independently, and decades apart, yet result in a fascinating confluence of political avant-garde aesthetics that overlaps significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]