Introduction to Documentary
About this ebook
Introduction to Documentary is not organized as a history of the form although its examples span a century of filmmaking. Instead, this book offers suggestive answers to basic issues that have stood at the center of all debate on documentary from its very beginnings to today. Each chapter takes up a distinct question from "How did documentary filmmaking get started?" to "Why are ethical issues central to documentary?" These questions move through issues of ethics, form, modes, voice, history and politics, among others. A final chapter addresses the question of how to write about documentary in a clear, convincing manner. Introduction to Documentary provides the foundational key to further explorations in this exceptionally vital area of filmmaking today.
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About the author
Bill Nichols holds the Fanny Knapp Allen Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Rochester where he is Professor of Art History/Visual and Cultural Studies in the Department of Art and Art History. He is an internationally recognized authority on documentary and ethnographic film. He has published on a wide-range of topics from cybernetics and visual culture to New Iranian Cinema. His anthology, Movies and Methods (1976),helped define the new discipline of film studies. A former President of the Society of Cinema Studies, his previous books include Representing Reality and Blurred Boundaries, both on issues in documentary film, and, as editor, Maya Deren: Radical Aspirations, on the postwar American avant-garde's most important figure.
