A Companion to Documentary Film History

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Guide

Pages

A Companion to Documentary Film History

List of Contributors

Introduction: Expanding Documentary Histories

Documentary Film and the Documentary Tradition

Writing Documentary History

Thematic Strands

Documentary Borders and Geographies

Authors, Authorship, and Authoring Agencies

Films and Film Movements

Media Archaeologies

Audiences and Circulation

References

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Documentary Borders and Geographies

References

1 A Distant Local View: The Small‐Town Film and US Cultural Diplomacy and Occupation, 1942–1952

Introduction

Domestic Films for Overseas Consumption

Motion Pictures for Occupied Territories

Small‐Town Films

Small‐Town Films as Local Films

References

Notes

2 The Work of Displacement in Colonial Documentary: History, Movement, and Collectivity Between the Postwar Metropole and Colonial French West Africa

Introduction

Displacing Outrage and Mobilization to French West Africa: René Vautier and the Making of Afrique 50

The Work of Displacement in the Metropole: Afrique sur Seine, Paulin Vieyra, and the Groupe Africain du Cinéma

References

Notes

3 Negation of the Negation: Tracking Documentary Film Theory in Japan

Rotha, Japan, and Documentary Theory

Reality and Actuality: Tsumura Hideo

Cinema of Facts: Imamura Taihei

Sur‐documentary: Hanada Kiyoteru

Conclusion

References

Notes

Introduction: Authors, Authorship, and Authoring Agencies

References

Notes

4 The Topographical Aesthetic in Late Stalinist Soviet Documentary Film

Introduction

Institutions and Genre Definitions

Films and the “Topographical Aesthetic”

Soviet Patriotism

Survival Strategy

Conclusion

References

Note

5 Documentality: The Postwar Mental Health Film and the Database Logic of the Government Film Agency

Introduction

Governmentality and Modernity

The Psy‐disciplines and Citizenship

Mental Mechanisms and Mental Symptoms

Conclusion

References

Notes

6 Unmanned Capture: Automatic Cameras and Lifeless Subjects in Contemporary Documentary

Introduction

Death of the Camera

Unmanning + Capture

Scene 1: Double Hit

Scene 2: Racialized Capture and the Politics of Nonrecognition

Coda

References

Notes

7 Corporate Authorship: French Industrial Culture and the Culture of French Industry

Introduction

Making a Corporate Film in the 1950s

Corporate Film Conflict and the Discourse of Authorial Control

Corporate Authorship in a New Authorial Context

Corporate Personhood, or, Authors upon Authors in a World Without Authors

References

Notes

8 A Skillful Isis: Esfir Shub and the Documentarian as Caretaker

Introduction

Editing as Re‐editing: Revision and Preservation

Editing as Collective Labor: Found Footage and Women’s Work

Editing as Caretaking

References

Notes

9 Now and Then: On the Documentary Regime, Vertov, and History1

1

2

3

4

5

References

Notes

Introduction Films and Film Movements

Connective Tissue

Classification and Terminology

References

10 Documentary Dreams of Activism and the “Arab Spring”

The Soviet Socialist Legacy

Two Media Activist Moments 80 Years Apart

“That Google Guy”: Wael Ghonim

The Critique of Realism and the Crisis of Historicism

1917

Coda

References

Notes

11 A Culture of Reality: Neorealism, Narrative Nonfiction, and Roberto Rossellini (1930s–1960s)

Introduction

The Neorealist Imperative

Rossellini's Animals

Rossellini as a Narrative Documentary Filmmaker

Rouch and Rossellini

Rouch and the Ethnographic Discourse

Voyage to India

Conclusion

References

Notes

12 The Romantic Becomes Dialectic?: Joris Ivens, Cold Warrior and Socialist Realist, 1946–1956

Introduction

Cold War Phase‐In 1947–1954: Reinventing Socialist Realism

Lied der Ströme: Cold War Watershed?

Conclusion

References

Notes

Introduction: Media Archaeologies

References

Note

13 A Concise History and Theory of Documentaries on the Visual Arts

Introduction

Origins and Prewar Developments

“The Golden Age,” Europe 1940–1960 and FIFA

Major Figures: Emmer, Storck, and Resnais

Education and Research Versus Artistic Autonomy

Artists and Acts of Creation

Art Book and Museum

Television: Standardization and Deconstruction

From the Neo‐Avant‐Garde to Post‐Cinema

References

Notes

14 Documentary in the Age of Mass Mobility: Minzu wansui and the Epic Gesture of Ethnographic Propaganda

Introduction

The Age of Documentary

The Dream of Mass Mobility: Wireless Propaganda

Minzu wansui (Long Live the Nation): Diary of an Artist Filmmaker

The Gesture of Filming: Medium, Form, Meaning

The Epic Gesture of Documentary

References

Notes

15 Documentary Plasticity: Embryology and the Moving Image

Introduction

“The Unique Impression of Continuity”

Hans Elias and Educational Embryological Cinema

Plasticity, the Avant Garde, and Digital Technics

References

Notes

16 Hans Richter and the Filmessay: A Media Archaeological Case Study of Documentary Film History and Historiography

Introduction

Documentary Film, Useful Cinema and the Filmessay

The Filmessay in Practice and the “Problem” with Die Börse

The Transatlantic Trajectory of the Filmessay

Instead of a Conclusion: The Aftermath of The Filmessay

References

Notes

Introduction: Audiences and Circulation: The Spaces of Reception

References

17 Nonfiction Film in and out of the Moving Picture Theater: Roosevelt in Africa (1910)

Introduction

Nonfiction and Multipurpose Cinema

Illustrated Lectures and Lecturettes

Roosevelt in Africa

Conclusion

References

Notes

18 The Marginal Spectator

Introduction

Template: The UK to 1939

Case: The USA to 1941

Case: France to 1939

Case: Germany to 1933

The Return of the Suppressed?

References

Notes

19 “Every Spectator Is Either a Coward or a Traitor”: Watching The Hour of the Furnaces

Introduction

Militant Cinema and the “Film‐Act” in the Writings of the Cine Liberación Group

The Rosario Mobile Film Unit

Militant Screening Audiences

Factory Occupations

Debates

Document

The work approach with each group. 1. Intellectuals (artists and professionals)

2.‐ Students (university and high school)

3. Worker groups (neighborhoods and slums: workers and youth). Union groups

SPECIAL SITUATIONS

PLANS FOR 1971

References

Notes

20 From Media Effects to the Empathy Machine: The Nature of the Audience and the Persistence of Wishful Thinking

Introduction

The Pliable Audience: Mass and Media Effects

The Active and Engaged Audience

The Productive Audience

Looking Ahead

References

Notes

Index

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Media archaeology is an approach to studying media history that aims to challenge what many see as teleological narratives of progress and technological development. Applying Michel Foucault’s archaeological approach to media and technology, scholars sought to identify forgotten examples in media history and to do so explicitly across media. It aims to radically destabilize narratives about media history, hierarchical relations across media, and the epistemological stability of cinema, radio, television, new media, and other forms. As Malte Hagener argues, the application of such an approach to documentary is generative. Documentary’s reliance on the dynamic between the fragment or “the document” and its insertion into a new context, “the documentary,” is ripe for media archaeology’s interest in the “materialities and medialities” of ruptures and originary contexts. It also aligns with the efforts of documentary scholars to continually question documentary’s definitional center and borders. The essays in this section take up this challenge, applying rigorous historical research to an array of nonfiction film material, looking “not only for the breaks and fissures, but rather for the contact zones and adhesive joints at which new formations emerge and new concepts are born.”

Traditionally less about entertainment than about education, instruction, and preservation, documentaries have rarely attracted substantial theatrical box office success. As a result, filmmakers and producers have had to argue that they have audience impact in a different way—by claiming that documentaries have lasting effects on viewers. But such claims, Brian Winston asserts, have little verifiability. The goal of sparking audiences to act in support of the film’s argument has been achieved on a limited basis and with limited, targeted communities. The more common effect of mainstream documentaries (for Winston, this is part of the Griersonian tradition) on a mainstream audience has been an empathetic response that seldom led to social action. But any assessment of audience impact, whether as empathy or action, has been made in the absence of an archive. As Winston notes, “Our historical understanding of viewers’ responses is trapped between the limitations of positivist social science and, essentially, anecdotage.” The essays in this section point to areas and methods that aim to redress these gaps. They urge us to reconsider established narratives of nonfiction film history: about the emerging dominance of fiction film entertainments inside and outside of the movie theater from 1907–1910 (Waller), and about the audiences and spaces of exhibition for films central to the Western European and American documentary canon in the late 1920s and early 1930s (Winston). They think through the implications of this historical (mis)understanding: on how the meaning of a film we thought we knew can be transformed both over time and across reception context (Mestman), and how those who dream of or project a certain type of audience engagement would be wise to think about how viewers have historically interacted with media technologies both old and new (Uricchio).

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