Documentary Theory Research Articles

New Nonfiction Film: Art, Poetics, and Documentary Theory, by Dara Waldron

New Nonfiction Film: Art, Poetics, and Documentary Theory, by Dara Waldron

Retroactive subjectivity in documentary film

ABSTRACTThis article endeavours to contribute to the growth of psychoanalytic documentary film theory by exploring the figurability of subjectivity in compilation film. It does this by intersecting psychoanalysis with compilation film through the notion of non-linear temporality. It takes the Laplanchian notion of aprés coup as a central concept to interrogate the multiple synchronous time lines found in compilation film, as well as the multiplicity of temporal inscriptions of memory found in the unconscious. While both domains have radically different ends, the process of retroactive inscription of subjectivity can be seen to function in both fields. This theoretical understanding is applied to Jonas Mekas’ Outtakes of a Life of a Happy Man (2012). In this analysis the article suggests that Mekas’ subjectivity is represented by the use of a particular temporal gaze that enables the archive and memory to remain perpetually open to resignification.

THE PROMISE OF THE INDEX IN CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTARY PERFORMANCE


 
 
 This essay investigates the troubled status of the concept of the index and its concomitant notion of evidence within the context of a global, visual culture. Specifically, the essay centres on the notion of the index in an era, where the use of digital images claiming to truthfully represent war and conflict has become an increasingly important part of warfare. Focusing on two documentary works by respectively performance artist Rabih Mroué and visual artist Abu Lawrence Hamdan (Forensic Architecture), the article shows that whilst both artists rely on material documents, which in each their way index back to conflictual events, the crucial point is not so much the status of the evidentiary material per se. Instead, enabled by fictitious strategies, the artists invite us to pay attention to the differing statuses and meanings assigned to documents depending on the particular knowledge systems and spaces of appearance within which they are perceived. In this way, the essay argues, the works of Mroué and Hamdan help us move beyond the discourses within documentary theory, which tend to conform to either a postmodernist relativist position or a realist epistemology.
 
 

Exercising radical democracy

The utopian promise of the digital era and the seemingly open, democratic power of the Internet have raised the hopes of activists and documentarians alike. The immediacy, reciprocity and accessibility of the emergent communication technologies appeared to be particularly suitable for media projects that aspire to mobilise for action, engage communities, and challenge the existing power structures in order to have direct influence on policy making. Over the last ten years, a whole new crop of documentary projects involving new modalities and unorthodox ways of knowledge production came into existence. Interestingly, the rise of this particular form coincided with the global economic crisis and a number of social and political upheavals of epochal proportions. Documentary representation, like all other forms of cultural expression, was not immune to those shifts. This article looks at the ensuing crisis of representation as linked to contemporary documentary practice, and examines some of the ways the new, web-based forms of documentary use polyvocality to engage their audience, build communities, and mobilise in struggles for social change. It features several examples and draws on the existing documentary theory, as well as the implicit, yet rarely invoked, links to the so-called “relational art”.

A reflection on practice-related research – the case of radio journalism

Abstract A reflection on conducting and articulating practice-related research, based on a reading of the article entitled ‘Radio journalism as research – a Ph.D. model’, by Mia Lindgren (2014) in The Radio Journal – International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, 12:1&2, pp. 169–182. Lindgren’s case study was her Ph.D. thesis, ‘Journalism as research: Developing radio documentary theory from practice’ (2011), Murdoch University, Perth.

Thinking Transition ‘From the Outside’: An Analysis of the Film De L’argentine by Werner Schroeter

The present article concentrates on the analysis of the film De l’Argentine/De la Argentina/For example Argentina (Werner Schroeter, France/Argentina, 1983–1985) as a way of access to a number of specific problems concerning the process of Argentinean democratic consolidation. It is a film that was only screened in Argentina for the first time in 2013, after a copy was found at the French Cinémathèque. Like other films produced in the context of dictatorship and democratic transition, Schroeter’s film has tended to think Argentina ‘from the outside’, that is, with a view marked by strangeness. These are documentaries which reflect upon physical and temporal distances, but, not the least, through cultural and ideological remoteness. On the basis of an analysis framed within Documentary Theory and the Sociology of Culture, this article seeks to make a contribution by way of an original perspective on a political film which, as far as we know, has not been addressed yet by Film Studies.

Risk Analysis in Documentary Letter of Credit Operation

Abstract Documentary Letters of Credit are among most popular methods of payment used in international trade. They function as an irrevocable promise of issuing a bank to pay instead of an applicant buyer to a beneficiary seller under the condition that the beneficiary presents complying documents with terms and conditions of the credit to the bank. One of the reasons for the popularity of the LCs in international trade is shifting the payment risk from an individual buyer to a bank with a much stronger financial standing. However, LC operation in international trade is not free of risk. Despite the fact that two main principles of the Documentary Letter of Credit’s Operation (Principle of independence and principle of strict compliance) facilitate the process of international trade significantly, but still all parties involved in LC operation are supposed to be cautious about the existing risks relevant to their role in LC operation. Current paper tries to use legal principles of documentary credits and risk management theory in order to define existing risks to each party (beneficiary, applicant and bank) in international LC transaction and find an answer to the question of what are exposing risks for involved parties? For this purpose, the paper starts with an explanation of the two main principles of LC operation and moves forward with using the risk management theory to explain existing risks for each party in detail.

Matters of concern and interactive documentary: notes for a computational nonfiction

ABSTRACTThis essay applies actor–network theory (ANT) and new materialism as a method for the study of interactive documentary. It provides an introduction to aspects of ANT and new materialism, arguing that interactive documentary theory’s ‘matters of concern’ need to be expanded to recognise and discuss the human and nonhuman material actors that make up any interactive documentary. It provides a series of theoretical ‘sketches’ to illustrate what a materialist study of interactive documentary might be, and how this could be enlarged into a broader field of practice and theory tentatively labelled ‘computational nonfiction’. It concludes with a critique of these ‘sketches’ and begins to detail some of the actors present in the online nonfiction work The Whale Hunt.

Niklas Luhmann’s concept of social communication and documentary information theory: Cross points

Niklas Luhman’s concept of social communication is considered. The relationship between communication concepts and information theory is shown. The heuristic potential of Luhmann’s theory with respect to the document and information disciplines is analyzed.

John Grierson’s ‘First principles’ as origin and beginning: the emergence of the documentary tradition in the field of nonfiction film

The exponential increase in academic discussion of documentary since the early 1990s has revived interest in the question – as posed by Bill Nichols – ‘How did documentary film making get started?’.1 The critical or theoretical texts we consider foundational to an academic discipline or subdiscipline such as documentary studies will often frame our answers to questions of origins and beginnings. John Grierson’s ‘minor manifesto of beliefs’, ‘First principles of documentary’ (1932–34), is one such text,2 a short work that John Corner describes as the foundational text of documentary theory.3 Taking Grierson’s intellectual formation and his ‘shrewdly tactical’ manoeuvring into account, Corner summarizes the key arguments of ‘First principles’.4 He notes Grierson’s initial contrast between ‘lower categories’, including travelogues, newsreels, educational and ‘interest’ films, and the newly emergent higher category of documentary.5 I will expand upon this basic but crucial distinction later, as it bears directly upon the question of documentary’s origin and beginnings. Corner also enumerates the ‘major theoretical themes’ of ‘First principles’.6 Grierson’s manifesto advances a notion of realism whose sophistication is sometimes underestimated; it incorporates ‘raw’ location shooting and the filming of real people at work, but moves beyond describing only ‘the surface values of a subject’ to ‘more explosively reveal[ing] the reality of it’.7 More broadly, it promotes documentary’s creative dramatization of information, serving the wider goals of ‘the development of citizenship in modern society’ and ‘the cause of social reform’.8 Corner’s and other writers’ explorations of these themes have contributed significantly to our understanding of Grierson’s definition of documentary. However, one key issue remains unexamined: the stakes involved in consecrating ‘First principles’ as a foundational text.

The Documentary Real: Thinking Documentary Aesthetics

In this article we consider the growing interest in recent years in the use of documentary strategies in the wold of contemporary art, film and performing arts and explore some of the central epistemological assumptions underpinning the persistent idea that the documentary should be equated with ‘non-fiction’. Following Stella Bruzzi we argue that if documentary theory maintains objectivity as the primary measure of value, it will inevitably and continuously arrive at the conclusion that the documentary genre is fundamentally flawed. Instead, we propose to move beyond the ‘realist epistemology’ of documentary theory and focus on the ‘documentary real’, i.e. the specific performativity of the reality constructed in and by the documentary genre. In the last paragraphs, we introduce the various articles that address the “documentary real” in this special issue.

From Fief to Clan: Boisot’s Information Space Model as a Documentary Theory for Cultural and Institutional Analysis

From Fief to Clan: Boisot’s Information Space Model as a Documentary Theory for Cultural and Institutional Analysis

The JFK Image: Profiles in DocudramaRalucaLucia Cimpean. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.

JFK Image: Profiles in Docudrama Raluca Lucia C impean. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.A key figure in numerous fiction films, documentaries, and docudramas, the image of the thirty-fifth president of the United States has been portrayed in a variety of ways. An entry in Rowman & Littlefield's recently launched Film and History series, Raluca Lucia Cimpean's JFK Image: Profiles in Docudrama addresses this story of an image, of its coalescence, reflection, and/or refraction (ix), specifically the JFK image in the overlooked genre of the docudrama. She defines features of the docudrama in her introduction, differentiating the docudrama from the documentary and-less convincingly-from the historical film. Melodrama is also a key feature of the docudrama, as it remains the docudramatic mode of dramatization, and such films will often incorporate archival material to fit the melodramatic framework. Cimpean grounds her work in narrative theory, Bill Nichols's documentary theory, Hayden White's theory of historical representation, and Murray Smith's work on identification.In the first part of the book, Cimpean delineates the three general approaches to how Pres. was remembered by historians, as it would shape the later docudramas: the New Frontier, Camelot, and Camelot-Inside-Out. As Cimpean clarifies, The New Frontier had been optimistic, bold, dashing, future oriented; was skeptical, reverential, subdued, and past recuperative (59). This period was marked by the hagiography that arose after the assassination and the cult following Jacqueline Kennedy's Camelot interview in Life. This last stage, Post-Camelot, arose in later decades through the revisionist and iconoclastic literature, one that questioned JFK's status as family man as well as his foreign policy. Much of the historical context the author surveys in the opening chapters may be familiar (although the author's investigation into the circumstances surrounding the accounts of the PT-109 incident is an added bonus), but the author's focus on how contemporary journalists and historians discussed Kennedy's presidential leadership and postassassination legacy proves enlightening, particularly as to how it relates to JFK's portrayal in film and television today.The second half of the book examines the films under discussion, divided into three categories: The Leadership {PT 109 [1963], Thirteen Days [2000]), The Assassination {Executive Action [1973], JFK [1991], Interview with the Assassin [2002]), and Kennedy Nostalgia {In the Line of Fire [1993], Nixon [1995], Rat Pack [1998], Path to War [2002]). These Kennedy Nostalgia films are, in keeping with docudramas in general, more in the vein of New Frontier and Camelot. While the films range from the obvious {PT 109, the docudrama par excellence Thirteen Days) to the less so {The Rat Pack), the inclusion of the mock documentary Interview with the Assassin is perhaps the most perplexing, particularly since the author contrasts the differing characteristics of mock documentaries and docudramas. …

Reproduction of the female image and nationalism in Taiwanese sport documentaries

In Taiwan, female athletes receive little media attention or are objectified when they win international competitions. However, this objectification does not merely demonstrate sexism toward female athletes, but it also indicates current social views toward national identity and nationalism in Taiwan. This study examined the representation of female athletes from the perspectives of historical background, the narrative structure of documentaries, gendered discourse and gendered nationalism. A textual analysis approach was adopted and documentary theory was employed as a theoretical framework. Four sports documentaries regarding female athletes produced from 2002 to 2009 were analysed. The results showed that in addition to the female athletes telling their stories, the voices of male others were also included to portray the female athletes’ experiences. Moreover, the female athletes were depicted as physically masculine but emotionally feminine, and represented as sports heroines and daughters of Taiwan. As presented by the narration strategy, the female body embodies the gendered nationalism and gendered discourse pervading Taiwanese sports culture.

A documentary-information approach in the context of post-non-classical methodology of knowledge in bibliographic and library sciences

The basis of a documentary-information approach in the post-non-classical library and bibliographic sciences is the documentary information theory, as well as presentation of library and bibliographic institutions and services as a united complex self-developing system. The article emphasizes studying the institutional information-documentary process, in the structure of which syntactic, semantic and pragmatic components are singled out. It underlines that library-bibliographical institutions implement a semantic component aimed maintaining the semantic symmetry, and a pragmatic one connected with information updating due to bibliographic activity, all these permits to consider library-bibliographical documents and information as a resource. It is noted, that this approach makes it possible, firstly, to consider complementary informational-documentation aspects of library-bibliographic activities (to refuse the documentary and information paradigms opposition), and secondly, to justify the status of library-bibliographic institutions as organizers rather than the documentary-information process intermediaries. The approach methodological potential is analyzed and shown.

Authorship, Autobiography and the Archive

In 2004, documentary theorist Michael Renov described ‘the recent turn to filmic autobiography’ as ‘the defining trend of “post-verite” documentary practice...’ In 2008 Renov went further still, suggesting that ‘the very idea of autobiography challenges/reinvents the VERY IDEA of documentary.’ Archive based autobiographical filmmaking, meanwhile, is even more problematic for documentary theory. Indeed, a number of recent documentaries, because of their status somewhere in the spectrum between biography and autobiography, have prompted the construction of an entirely new conceptual category, deploying archival film, often in the form of home movies, to document the lives of their human subjects in Renov’s formulation ‘shared textual authority’. In this article I examine one of ‘my’ own archive based documentaries, ‘Marilyn on Marilyn’ (BBC2 2001), as a way of asking questions not just about biographical and autobiographical documentary but also - and perhaps more urgently - about attributions of authorship in archive-based documentary.

Irish Intercultural Cinema: Memory, Identity and Subjectivity

Irish intercultural cinema looks at the development of a cinematic genre which focuses on issues of Irish migrancy but is produced outside of Ireland. This paper has as its focus the cultural landscape of Irish-Australia. The essay uses methodologies of ethnographic and documentary theory plus textual analysis of film and written texts to establish a throughline of Irish intercultural film. The essay begins by contextualising the place of the Irish diaspora within the creation of Irish identity globally. The discussion around migrancy is widened to consider the place of memory and intergenerational tensions within not just the Irish migrant population, but also within the diverse cultures which comprise the contemporary Australian landscape. The historical development of intercultural cinema is then explored internationally within a context of colonial, gender and class struggles in the 1970s and1980s. The term intercultural cinema has its origins in the Third Cinema of Argentinians Solanas and Getino in the 1970s and covers those films which deal with issues involving two countries or cultures. The term was refined by Laura Marks in 2000 and further developed by Hamid Naficy in 2001 in his discussion of accented cinema which narrows its definition to include the politics of production. The paper then traces the development of Irish intercultural cinema from its beginnings in England in the 1970s with Thaddeus O'Sullivan through to Nicola Bruce and others including Enda Murray in the present day. The essay concludes by bringing these various strands together to see where intercultural film might have a place in today's globalised cultural landscape. Common traits within intercultural film such as the notion of place, autobiographical film and personal identity are explored using examples of intercultural filmmaking from around the globe. These commonalities point to a way forward for the future of a sustainable multicultural film culture.

Reading across cultures towards a comparative documentary film studies: Eduardo Coutinho's documentary Jogo de Cena (2007)

This article examines Eduardo Coutinho's Jogo de Cena (2007) in relation to documentary spectatorship across cultures. Coutinho's documentary contains numerous culturally specific and localised references amongst the stories told by a cast of women actors. These stories and the figures that relate them make available a number of layers of knowledge production constituting a filmic experience that is multivalent and complex. In considering these complexities and their spectatorship, this article utilises Paul Willemen's notion of comparative film studies as a springboard to begin a closer consideration of what is possible with a combination of Brazilian cultural knowledge and documentary film theory.

Діахронічний аналіз біблійної давньоєврейської мови та історико-критичний метод у біблеїстиці

Діахронічний аналіз біблійної давньоєврейської мови та історико-критичний метод у біблеїстиці

A Documentary Theory of States and Their Existence as Quasi-Abstract Entities

This article is concerned with the existence of states as a matter of fact, and it approaches that subject within the context of the ontology of social reality as a whole. It argues, first, that states do not have a place in the traditional Platonist duality of the concrete and the abstract. Second, that states belong to a third category – the quasi-abstract – that has received philosophical attention with a recently emerging theory of documentality. Documentality, derived from Austin’s theory of performative utterances, claims that documents acts can bring quasi-abstract objects, such as states into being. Third and finally, it argues that the existence of quasi-abstract states should not be rejected on the basis of the Principle of Parsimony, because geopolitical theories that recognise the existence of quasi-abstract states will have greater explanatory power than theories that deny their existence.