scholarly journals DOCUMENTARY AS A PHANTOM

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Semantic Field ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Observer Effect ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Mutual Transition ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Empty Signifier

The aim of the study is to reflect on the problem of the “documentariness” of documentary films based on the refinement of the semantic spectrum of the “documentary” concept. The definitions spectrum of the “documentary” concept in classical and post-non-classical film studies from B. Matushevsky, J. Grierson and D. Vertov to R. M. Barsam, J. Gaines, P. Lorentz, R. D. McKenn, B. Nichols, M. Renov, L. Ward (and others) is analyzed. As a generalization of these definitions, the author’s definition of “documentary” is proposed: the term “documentary” refers to a film not as an affirmative form of a completed film statement, but as an interrogative form of an open film gesture balancing on the verge of “truth” and “fiction”, as the continuity of an implicit mutual transition between non-fiction and fiction methods of cinema narration, a kind of hybrid between the video fixation of authentic facts with documentary value and their cinematic interpretation, which involves a reconfiguration of the reality caused by the “observer effect,” an interpretation of documented facts, and a creative implication of the ideas of the authors of the film. are a kind of hybrid between cinema recording of authentic facts of documentary value and cinematic interpretation of them, which involves reconfiguration of reality caused by the “observer effect”, author's interpretation of documented facts and creative implication of the ideas of movie makers. “Hybrid” genres combining the features of documentary and features of non-fiction film are described: “docudrama”, “mockumentary”, and the “art-dock”. The problem of the “documentariness” of documentary is considered with the help of a number of film cases from L. Riefenstahl, P. Watkins and R. Carmen to V. Mansky, S. Loznitsa and I. Khrzhanovsky. The main conclusion to the study is the assertion that there is sufficient reason to consider “documentary” a very abstracted “empty signifier” – a concept with a “blurred semantic field” and a “weak ontological status”. In general, the “documentariness” of documentary is as much desired as the shaky movie illusion: there are documentary shotings and documentary shots as the primary material of the film, but the “documentary” film as such does not exist, or it is a phantom.

Dust and Shadows … A Progress Report

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 415-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Russell
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Progress Report ◽  
First Century ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Twenty First Century

This article considers postwar British documentary films in light of recent curatorial initiatives and wider historiographical issues. The article places the BFI's 2010 Shadows of Progress project in the context of a wider and substantial shift of perception of non-fiction film in the early twenty-first century, which has caused the canon of British documentaries to increase in size, scope and profile. The article argues that archivists, media producers and the general public have played at least as large a role in these developments as scholars of the documentary film. The article summarises some of the key features of postwar British documentary as it is now understood and mentions other aspects of postwar, and other, British factual film meriting future research.

scholarly journals From the medicalisation of dementia to the politics of memory and identity in three Spanish documentary films: Bicicleta, cullera, poma, Las voces de la memoria and Bucarest: la memòria perduda

2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (10) ◽  
pp. 1688-1710 ◽  
Author(s):  
RAQUEL MEDINA
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Spanish Society ◽  
Interdisciplinary Perspective ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Contemporary Spain

ABSTRACTThis paper explores how the concept of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is constructed through Spanish media and documentary films and how it is represented. The article analyses three documentary films and the cultural and social contexts in and from which they emerged: Solé's Bucarest: la memòria perduda [Bucharest: Memory Lost] (2007), Bosch's Bicicleta, cullera, poma [Bicycle, Spoon, Apple] (2010) and Fabrá, Peris and Badia's Las voces de la memoria [Memory's Voices] (2011). The three documentary films approach AD from different perspectives, creating well-structured discourses of what AD represents for contemporary Spanish society, from medicalisation of AD to issues of personhood and citizenship. These three films are studied from an interdisciplinary perspective, in an effort to strengthen the links between ageing and dementia studies and cultural studies. Examining documentary film representations of AD from these perspectives enables semiotic analyses beyond the aesthetic perspectives of film studies, and the exploration of the articulation of knowledge and power in discourses about AD in contemporary Spain.

scholarly journals Record. Reenact. Recycle. Notes on Shindō Kaneto’s Documentary Styles

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Lauri Kitsnik
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Common People ◽  
Realist Approach ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The Everyday

In his work, the filmmaker Shindō Kaneto sought to employ various, often seemingly incongruous, cinematic styles that complicate the notions of fiction and documentary film. This paper first examines his ‘semi-documentary’ films that often deal with the everyday life of common people by means of an enhanced realist approach. Second, attention is paid to the fusion of documentary and drama when reenacting historical events, as well as the subsequent recycling of these images in a ‘quasi-documentary’ fashion. Finally, I uncover a trend towards ‘meta-documentary’ that takes issue with the act of filmmaking itself. I argue that Shindō’s often self-referential work challenges the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction while engaging in a self-reflective criticism of cinema as a medium.

Documentary Comedy

2002 ◽  
Vol 104 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Middleton
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Film Making

While documentaries like Roger and Me and mock documentaries such as This is Spinal Tap differ in terms of the ontological status of their referents, they share many formal characteristics, particularly in their editing strategies. This essay examines the editing techniques in these two influential films of the 1980s in order to theorise exactly how film-makers combine conventions of documentary with those of comedy in an attempt to produce laughter in audiences. Having demonstrated the formal qualities of an editing technique prevalent in these films which I term ‘cutting on the absurd’, the essay then explores the broader implications of this comic style in more recent documentary film-making. With a particular focus on Chris Smith and Sarah Price's American Movie (1999), it examines how the editing strategies in documentary films characterised as ‘offbeat character studies' alternately position viewers to laugh at and laugh with the subjects, to occupy a position that can be at once derisory and empathetic.

scholarly journals New Documentary Film Seeks to Be “More Real”

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (5) ◽  
pp. 169-173
Author(s):  
Manxi Li ◽  
Wenqing Su ◽  
Xinman Li
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Historical Origin ◽  
At Home

After the birth of documentary film, the discussion of “fiction” and “non-fiction” has not stopped. Influenced by the ideological trend of postmodernism, “new documentary film” overturns the concept of traditional documentary film and believes that it is feasible and meaningful for documentary to take “fiction” as a means. Adhering to the “new” exploration of this documentary, the author discusses the historical origin of new documentary films, the authenticity of new documentary films at home and abroad and the creative techniques of new documentary films, in order to provide innovative support for the true publication of new documentary films.

scholarly journals The Image of the Holocaust in the Television Documentary Drama Trilogy “The Chronicle of the Minsk Ghetto”

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-98
Author(s):  
Nataliia G. Stsiazhko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Documentary Film ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Television Documentary ◽  
Text Information ◽  
Documentary Drama

The prevailing view in modern film studies is that television documentary drama (docudrama) is either a hybrid, a synthesis, or a documentary film genre. The author of the article hypothesizes that docudrama has long exceeded the boundaries of documentary films and asserted its own place in the system of screen arts on par with feature films, documentaries and animated films. The author claims that docudrama is a unique phenomenon generated by television and it combines all the modern innovations in cinema. Docudrama allows for the text information to be reformatted into an audio-visual experience in an emotional, spectacular and accurate way, therefore possessing the inherent features of other screen arts. Like other forms of screen arts, it forms an image capable of evoking certain emotions and makes the viewer think and draw their own conclusions. The combination of artefacts and quotes adds volume and artistic value to the image. The article explores the genesis and development of television docudrama and gives it a definition based on key characteristics. It shows how films of various genres can be created within docudrama, proving that docudrama is not a subgenre within the genre of documentary film but a new independent branch of screen arts. The author highlights that the reason for the popularity of docudrama lies in the fact that the historical and informative material, which can be interesting and useful to the viewer, is presented in a spectacular and lightweight form. This idea is supported through the analysis of the documentary drama trilogy The Chronicle of the Minsk Ghetto, in which an image of the Holocaust, the unspeakable tragedy of the Jews during the Second World War, is shown.

John Henry Newman

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Hurley
Keyword(s):  
John Henry Newman ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Prose Style ◽  
Definition Of

Newman has been much vaunted as a ‘master’ of non-fiction prose style, and justly so. His felicity of phrasing is astonishing: so precise, so elegant, so vivid. This chapter admires Newman’s stylistic achievements too, but with a view to explaining why Newman himself baulked at such praise, by insisting instead on the importance of veracity over verbalism. While a number of different writings by Newman are surveyed in the course of the chapter, the argument comes to focus in particular on his seminal work of faith, Grammar of Assent, a book that took him some twenty years to write, which almost killed him, and which best exemplifies his suggestive but enigmatic definition of ‘style’ as ‘a thinking out into language’.

scholarly journals The classification, definition, and ontology of delusion

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-181
Author(s):  
José Eduardo Porcher
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Status ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
To Come ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Shed Light

Although delusion is one of the central concepts of psychopathology, it stills eludes precise conceptualization. In this paper, I present certain basic issues concerning the classification and definition of delusion, as well as its ontological status. By examining these issues, I aim to shed light on the ambiguity of the clinical term ‘delusion’ and its extension, as well as provide clues as to why philosophers are increasingly joining the ranks of psychiatrists, psychologists, and neuroscientists in the effort to come to a comprehensive understanding of delusion.

The smell of distance: Wallace Stegner’s definition of western non-fiction

2001 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph E. Hanson
Keyword(s):  
Non Fiction ◽  
Definition Of

scholarly journals Ethnological motifs in the non-fiction film

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dumitru Olarescu ◽  
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Research Topic ◽  
Native People ◽  
Totalitarian Regime ◽  
Non Fiction

The possibilities of the documentary film to fix ethnological and ethnographic phenomena in all their audiovisual integrity contributed to the realization of this category of films right from the beginnings of non-fiction cinema. At the «Moldova-film» studio, despite the very vigilant ideological conditions of the totalitarian regime, especially when it came to the cultural heritage of the native people, our filmmakers released a series of films, dedicated to customs, rituals and traditions – important components of our national identity. This category of films has been talked about and written in some specialized studies. The cinematographic works “Trânta/Wrestling” (director Anatol Codru) and “Jocurile copilăriei noastre/The Games of our Childhood” (directors Vlad Druc, Mircea Chistrugă) serve as research topic for us. They are dedicated to popular sports games, which, besides being captivating manifestations that have survived through centuries until the present, are imposed in the context of national identity, but, through this prism, the respective works have not been researched yet.

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