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Drawing on archival documents, industry trade journals and popular press, and interviews with filmmakers and film distributors, this book illuminates how documentary features have become more plentiful, popular, and profitable than ever before.
List of contents
- Introduction: How Documentaries Went Mainstream
- Chapter 1: 1960 to 1977, Direct Cinema Blossoms, But Little Support for Documentary Films in Theaters
- Chapter 2: 1978 to 1989, A Rising Tide: How the Independent Film Movement Boosted Documentaries
- Chapter 3: 1978 to 1990, Fighting For A Place On Public Television: Independent Filmmakers Lobby
- Chapter 4: 1990 to 1999, Television or Cinema? Redefining Documentary for Prestige and Profit
- Chapter 5: 2000 to 2007, The Docbuster Era
- Chapter 6: 2008 to 2022, Streaming Video Drives Documentary Production Trends and Private Investment
- Conclusion: Documentary Film Inches Closer to the Center, But Core Tensions Remain
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Nora Stone is a film historian and filmmaker teaching at the University of North Alabama. She earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has published work in
Media Industries Journal, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, and
Los Angeles Review of Books. Her short films have screened at the Maryland Film Festival, Wisconsin Film Festival, Architecture and Design Film Festival, among others. She produced and art-directed the independent feature film
A Dim Valley (distributed by Altered Innocence).
Summary
Drawing on archival documents, industry trade journals and popular press, and interviews with filmmakers and film distributors, this book illuminates how documentary features have become more plentiful, popular, and profitable than ever before.
Additional text
How Documentaries Went Mainstream explores the tension between public service and commodity exchange in the documentary film market by tracing the shifting industrial trends in documentary distribution and exhibition between the 1960s and today. Deftly researched and incisively written, Stone's book offers an important intervention in the history of documentary by focusing on the mode's industrial concerns. Essential reading for anyone interested in how and why documentary has come to occupy such a prolific and lucrative corner of the media market in recent years.
