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Documentary productions encompass remarkable representations of surprising realities. How do documentaries achieve their ends? What types of documentaries are there? What factors are implicated in their production? Such questions animate this engaging study. Documentary Screens is a comprehensive and critical study of the formal features and histories of central categories of documentary film and television. Among the categories examined are autobiographical, indigenous and ethnographic documentary, compilation films, direct cinema and cinema verite and television documentary journalism. The book also considers recent so-called popular factual entertainment and the future of documentary film, television and new media. This provocative and accessible analysis situates wide-ranging examples from each category within the larger material forces which impact on documentary form and content. The important connection between form, content and context explored in the book constitutes a new and lively ''documentary studies'' approach to documentary representation.>
List of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
'Believe Me, I'm of the World': Documentary Representation
Men with Movie Cameras: Flaherty and Grierson
Constructing and Contesting Otherness: Ethnographic Film
Decolonizing the Image: Aboriginal Documentary Productions
The Truth of the Matter: Cinema Verite and Direct Cinema
The Camera I: Autobiographical Documentary
Finding and Keeping: Compilation Documentary
The Fact/Fiction Divide: Drama-Documentary and Documentary Drama
The Evening Report: Television Documentary Journalism
Up Close and Personal: Popular Factual Entertainment
The Burning Question: The Future of Documentary
Conclusion
Screenings and Additional Resources
Notes
Bibliography
Index.
About the author
KEITH BEATTIE is a Lecturer at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia.
