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The article reviews the documentary film diptych The Labudović Reels by film-maker Mila Turajlić. Based on her archival work at the Filmske Novosti production company, Turajlić discovers the legacy of hitherto unknown cinematographer Stevan Labudović. Both films are hybrid documentaries that combine archive footage with interview-style documentary, and both focus on two intertwined thematic cycles – Labudović's coverage of the Algerian war of independence (1959–1961) and the first summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (1960–1961). Conceptually, Turajlić's films engage thought-provoking matrixes, among them Pierre Nora's lieux de memoire and, more especially, Walter Benjamin's reflections on historical progress. This review finds that the implementation of the latter blurs the boundary between the critique of the idea of progress and historical relativism, which leads to the confusing presence of mutually exclusive voices in Turajlić's film, one calling for the reappropriation of the past, and another calling that same past into question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the 1985 documentary film, Sweet Sugar Rage (co-directed by Honor Ford-Smith and Harclyde Walcott), and its methodologies of renewable resistance to the enduring choreographies of planter's pageantry in the postcolonial Caribbean. Produced by Jamaica's Sistren Theatre Collective – a radical community theatre group formed in 1977 – the film (the collective's first) documents a set of dramatic interventions focused on women's labour exploitation in Jamaica's sugar cane fields. A series of workshops and plays depicts the historical and current material conditions of cane workers and aims to support participants in the practical navigation of plantation labour. In staging the material conditions of post-independence Jamaican plantation labour, including the gendered hierarchies of union organising, these counter-choreographies of workers' solidarity re-occupy the cane field as a historically dense site of collective resistance. Furthermore, I argue, in their rejection of the ubiquitous and insidious staging of the plantation as an ahistorical, hyper-aestheticised dreamscape of leisure and play, these local counter-choreographies intervene on the scale of global history. The essay articulates the stakes of this refusal by historicising the installation of plantation heritage tourism as a nostalgic site of planter's pageantry that continues to erase the violent legacies of enslaved and indentured labour into the present day. Engaging the aesthetic and political consequences of these competing choreographies, the essay looks towards the future of the Caribbean as a global proscenium of postcolonial possibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the use of oral history sources in my practice of documentary filmmaking as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. It examines how the filmic documentation of oral history sources can reflect aspects of testimony, memory, and postmemory, as they are theorized in the field of Holocaust Studies. In my film "Past Forward: Journeys to Transnistria," I document the challenge of relating an intergenerational and cross-cultural story while preserving historical accuracy. Filmed in Ukraine in 2002, it tells the story of my mother, a child-survivor of the Romanian Holocaust. Through oral testimony, the film captures my mother's survival story as she tells it to me and later to her granddaughter who documents it for a history school project. It then retraces my mother's journey between 1941 and 1944 from her hometown of Dorohoi, Romania to Transnistria as it was called then under German-allied Romanian occupation. Survivor's testimony combined with onsite witness interviews, and an archival military map, were used to trace the story of a little Jewish Romanian girl who survived the journey to Transnistria. Recently available archival sources have further validated her story. It has also contributed to locating the film within the broader context of the Holocaust in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on research in the archive of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society in Stockholm, this article sheds light on the complex production history behind Peter Watkins' fourteen-and-a-half-hour documentary Resan (The Journey) (1987). Set in a dozen countries around the world, the film presents a complex web of thematic tropes about global peace, consistently highlighting the connection between the local, national and international. The way in which the film subverts documentary form – in terms of both scope and aesthetic strategies – raises questions concerning the institutional conditions within which it was made. Although Watkins' authorial position between avant-garde and documentary film culture has been investigated in-depth, particularly from a textual point of view, little attention has been afforded the creative struggles permeating the production and circulation history behind this epic documentary. Bridging the gap between the scholarly fields of media activism, useful cinema and documentary film, this study zooms in on the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, Scandinavia's largest peace movement, and their fundraising drive for this film. In doing so, the article provides new information about the negotations that shaped the relationship between Watkins, the activists and the organization that made this film possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The figure of the craftsman has become a popular national symbol in the past decade with tremendous discursive power. This essay explores the cult of craftsmanship and its meanings in contemporary China by examining two widely-known TV documentary series, The Artisans of the Superpower (Daguo gongjiang, 2015) and Masters in the Forbidden City (Wo zai Gugong xiu wenwu, 2016), as well as its film version under the same title (2016). The Artisans of the Superpower demonstrates the "industrial hand," which showcases how handiwork is used to symbolize the strength of a rising China and present a self-reliant, creative, and technologically advanced nation. Masters in the Forbidden City presents the "artisanal hand," which presents another form of labor, restoration, bringing antique national treasures closer to viewers in a quotidian working environment. Despite their differences, I argue that these two representations of craftsmanship — the industrial hand and the artisanal hand — jointly constitute a form of nation-crafting that presents China's hard and soft power. Moreover, the notion of "one profession, one life," promoted as a virtue in both documentaries, establishes a form of solid, stable values in response to China's intense hyper-capitalist working culture characterized by precarity and flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On Black Saturday, February 7, 2009, 173 people died, among the worst of Australia's bushfire tragedies and a ubiquitous fear when those blustery, hot westerly winds blow at the height of an Australian summer. Human carelessness or recklessness is often the cause, but 13 percent are at the hands of an arsonist. This study examines the techniques and craft Chloe Hooper employs to create The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire, which investigates the fires in the Latrobe Valley, east of Melbourne. "Cinematic quality" is a term often used to describe exemplary longform narrative and this study uses a cross-disciplinary enquiry interrogating archetypal documentary filmmaking to discover a nexus between the two forms. Hooper is neither a journalist nor a literary journalist, yet writes with a literary journalism sensibility, her storytelling haunting and deeply memorable. Experimenting with a cross-disciplinary view--employing Bill Nichols's documentary film analysis and techniques crystallized by Constance Hale--this textual analysis of one section of The Arsonist posits empathy and emotional intelligence as integral components of a literary journalism sensibility before exploring what an exemplary piece of this form looks like on the page, and how it is rendered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the anti-anthropocentric world-building in documentaries that employ aspeculative mode of inquiry and reckon with the ecological crisis. Dubbed speculative documentaries, they move beyond the Griersonian creative treatment of actuality toward a speculative treatment of subjectivity. Understanding their world-building encourages us to place the documentary within the interdisciplinary, multidimensional, and collective undertaking to address the Anthropocene and the increasing climate crisis. Slow Action (2010) imagines the evolution of species and ecosystems when isolated and surrounded by unsuitable habitats envisioning a science fiction future of island biogeography in face of extinction. Truth or Consequences (2020) considers the possible cataclysmic futurity as its present-day setting. It seeks to define the mode of speculative documentary as documentary footage placed into a fictionalized context where, as if it were science fiction, takes what is nascent today and treats it as though it is already happening. Jan Ijäs's documentary series Waste (2016-ongoing) assumes a more-than-human approach to anthropogenic habitats by expanding on the concept of waste and critiquing the devastating human effect on the earth. The results are part ethnographic, part science fiction, offering a space for contemplation on constructed and natural environments that bewail and anticipate Earth's transformation over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Films Division stands as one of the pioneering institutions in post-independent India that played a crucial role in shaping and envisioning the country's identity as a post-colonial nation. Established in 1948, it is the largest repository of moving images in India. Despite being a state-regulated institution responsible for overseeing the production and distribution of newsreels and documentary films to support the objectives of nation building, integration, and development, there is a school of filmmakers inside Films Division who made films beyond the perceived boundaries of the institution. Identified as the 'transient outliers', these filmmakers have created experimental films within Films Division that challenged the collective and homogeneous vision of Films Division films. Joshy Joseph is one among the transgressive voices within the institution who has created innovative and experimental cinematic works despite operating within the confines of state censorship. In the context of the recent decision by the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to merge Films Division with the National Film Development Corporation, this interview with Joseph explores his life and politics as a filmmaker in Films Division. The interview also delves into Joseph's creative contributions, including innovative editing, incorporation of found footage, and utilization of still images, which emphasize his unique cinematic style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deepfakes are a technological innovation that might be understood to violate the documentary film's relationship with the real. Yet documentary makers have been among the first screen producers to adopt this technology, using it to swap the faces or voices of people they present to their audiences, further disrupting the already complex relationship between the filmmaker and their subject. This paper investigates the growing practice of documentary deepfakes, using two case studies of documentary films from the period 2019–2022 that have used varied forms of deepfakery, examining the intentions of the filmmakers, the technical processes and the ways in which creative choice is both expanded and limited by the technology. An interview-based research methodology provides original insights into filmmakers' rationales when creating deepfakes. The paper reveals the contradictions inherent in deepfake practice, as described by one documentary filmmaker: 'I'm looking at deepfake as a way of telling the truth' (Benjamin Field, producer). A central theme is the ethics of documentary practice using manipulative AI. This paper contributes new insights to theoretical discourse around the digital manipulation of the moving image, discussing the growing disruption caused by deepfakes to documentary film culture and audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, the author of this article discovered in the Russian State Documentary Film and Photo Archive and restored Dziga Vertov’s debut film Anniversary of the Revolution (1918), which film historians had considered lost up until then. The event aroused great interest among the press, the festival audience, the student audience, and the academic community in both Vertov himself and the film. After numerous screenings of the film in Russia and abroad, a large number of interviews appeared which touched upon various aspects of Dziga Vertov’s life and work, film storage practices, archival research methods, the principles of film restoration, the ethics of the researcher’s intrusion into other people’s material, as well as the financial and technical sides of the matter. The questions in those interviews were often repeated. In this article, the author systematizes and summarizes the information in the answers to the questions, scattered across individual materials. Why did this film disappear at some point? Why was the film not stored complete? How was the restoration of the film going? What is this film, the first work of the world-famous documentary filmmaker? The value of the film is that it provides a new visual source for the study of Russian history, as well as makes an important contribution to the study of the history of Russian and world documentary filmmaking.

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]

The article is a book review of "Making a Scene in Documentary Film: Iconic Filmmakers Discuss What Works and Why" by Maxine Trump. The book provides an analysis of American independent documentaries through interviews with renowned filmmakers. It focuses on specific scenes and explores the choices and circumstances that filmmakers face. The book is technical yet approachable, making it suitable for non-fiction film producers, editors, cinematographers, and aspiring directors. It also examines the evolution of documentary-making procedures and aesthetics over time. However, the book overlooks the longer histories of independent documentary filmmaking in America and the practice of making documentaries within institutional structures. [Extracted from the article]