In Mondovino Veritas? Politics of the Documentary Film for Critical Management Research

Abstract

Whether as a material or a method, the documentary film is increasingly used in management research. An analysis of the filmic device used in Mondovino – a film about the effects of globalization on the wine world – offers an opportunity to explore different politics at work in the documentary film. Based on the concept of politics as defined by Rancière, and the ‘critical device’ of Caillet, we show that the documentary film is a valuable resource for both the cinephile researcher and the filmmaking researcher engaged in critical research. We ascribe three political dimensions to the documentary film: (1) through its filmic device, it operates as an intervention or performance that concretely changes reality within its scope of action (filmmaking); (2) through its narrative, it builds a critical alternative that reconfigures our historical world (worldmaking); and (3) through making the filmic device visible in the cinematographic narrative, it enables the viewer to relate the political act of filmmaking to the critical issues in the narrative (worldmaking in filmmaking).