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This book traces the development of investigative cinema, whose main characteristic lies in reconstructing actual events, political crises, and conspiracies. These documentary-like films refrain from a simplistic reconstruction of historical events and are mainly concerned with what does not immediately appear on the surface of events. Consequently, they raise questions about the nature of the "truth" promoted by institutions, newspapers, and media reports. By highlighting unanswered questions, they leave us with a lack of clarity, and the questioning of documentation becomes the actual narrative. Investigative cinema is examined in relation to the historical conjunctures of the "economic miracle" in Italy, the simultaneous decolonization and reordering of culture in France, the waves of globalization and neoliberalism in post-dictatorial Latin America, and the post-Watergate, post-9/11 climate in US society. Investigative cinema is exemplified by the films Salvatore Giuliano, The Battle of Algiers, The Parallax View, Gomorrah, Zero Dark Thirty, and Citizenfour.
List of contents
1. Introduction: Any Resemblance to Real Persons or Actual Facts Is [Not] Purely Coincidental.- 2. Neorealism and the Double Stain: Television and Italian High Modernist Filmmakers.- 3. Objectively False: French Cinema and the Algerian Question.- 4. Stars and Stardom in Investigative Cinema: The Movies of Gian Maria Volonté and Gael García Bernal.- 5. The Ontology of Replay: The Zapruder Video and American Conspiracy Films.- 6. Unidentified Narrative Objects: The Anti-Mafia and No-Global Films as Transmedia Adaptations.- 7. The Ontology of the Digital: War on Terror and Post-9/11 Visual Culture.
About the author
Fabrizio Cilento is Associate Professor of Film and Digital Media at Messiah College, USA. His essays have appeared in numerous journals and edited collections, and explore the intersection between politics, recent history, and the aesthetics of moving images.
Summary
This book traces the development of investigative cinema, whose main characteristic lies in reconstructing actual events, political crises, and conspiracies. These documentary-like films refrain from a simplistic reconstruction of historical events and are mainly concerned with what does not immediately appear on the surface of events. Consequently, they raise questions about the nature of the “truth” promoted by institutions, newspapers, and media reports. By highlighting unanswered questions, they leave us with a lack of clarity, and the questioning of documentation becomes the actual narrative. Investigative cinema is examined in relation to the historical conjunctures of the “economic miracle” in Italy, the simultaneous decolonization and reordering of culture in France, the waves of globalization and neoliberalism in post-dictatorial Latin America, and the post-Watergate, post-9/11 climate in US society. Investigative cinema is exemplified by the films
Salvatore Giuliano,
The Battle of Algiers,
The Parallax View,
Gomorrah,
Zero Dark Thirty, and
Citizenfour.
