Documentary Mode Research Articles

Against observation: the panoramic legacy of Sergei Loznitsa

ABSTRACT Critical reception of Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa’s documentary films typically concludes that the director privileges observational techniques to depict historical events and political movements, resulting in conflicting judgements on his films’ significance and reducing Loznitsa’s own involvement in the depicted events. This article addresses the techniques and visual grammar of Loznitsa’s 2014 film Maidan and challenges the film’s status as an example of the observational documentary mode. This article proposes approaching Maidan through a recognition of the influence of the panorama on realist representation from its inception in the late eighteenth century to its transformation of cinema in the twentieth century, showing how Loznitsa has developed a panoramic filmmaking language since his early short films. Maidan contrasts the ideas of objectivity and passivity typically assigned to observational films by constructing a historical narrative about the events that occurred in Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti during the Euromaidan movement of 2013–2014. This renegotiation of Loznitsa’s filmmaking mode reveals Maidan’s unique contribution to non-fiction representational forms as well as to narratives of national identity within the post-Soviet context.

Speculative worlds: anthropocentric realities and world-building in speculative documentaries

ABSTRACT This paper examines the anti-anthropocentric world-building in documentaries that employ aspeculative mode of inquiry and reckon with the ecological crisis. Dubbed speculative documentaries, they move beyond the Griersonian creative treatment of actuality toward a speculative treatment of subjectivity. Understanding their world-building encourages us to place the documentary within the interdisciplinary, multidimensional, and collective undertaking to address the Anthropocene and the increasing climate crisis. Slow Action (2010) imagines the evolution of species and ecosystems when isolated and surrounded by unsuitable habitats envisioning a science fiction future of island biogeography in face of extinction. Truth or Consequences (2020) considers the possible cataclysmic futurity as its present-day setting. It seeks to define the mode of speculative documentary as documentary footage placed into a fictionalized context where, as if it were science fiction, takes what is nascent today and treats it as though it is already happening. Jan Ijäs’s documentary series Waste (2016-ongoing) assumes a more-than-human approach to anthropogenic habitats by expanding on the concept of waste and critiquing the devastating human effect on the earth. The results are part ethnographic, part science fiction, offering a space for contemplation on constructed and natural environments that bewail and anticipate Earth’s transformation over time.

Imaginative Animated Non-Fiction: Educating Adults about Child Soldiers

This case study investigates the overlapping categories of animated documentary, useful animation, and fiction inspired by real events. It analyzes a training video for adults who work with child soldiers that was created by IoM Media and the Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace, and Security. This video incorporates elements of animated narrative fiction, children’s television animation, reenactment, and photographic and auditory indexicality. Ultimately, no one form has a greater claim to the truth than the others; rather, truth is constructed through the interrelation of disparate elements, and the video’s pedagogical and activist ends are served by abstraction and anti-realism as much as by indexicality. The video also prompts wider questions about temporality and degrees of abstraction in different modes of documentary. The arguments this article presents about the case study are more broadly applicable to non-fiction animated film and to both live-action and animated documentary.

Contemporary Art’s Thanatic Work

Contemporary art has insistently turned to the experience of migration with a view to making us see, and possibly to making us indirectly experience and reflect on the embodied politics of migration. The documentary mode has featured prominently in art’s attempt at accounting for the reality of global migration. Other strategies have privileged a combination of allegory and empiricist experientiality, artists thus aiming at triggering an embodied thought experiment and pondering the brutal and tragic truth of migration. In order to analyze such thought experiments and the experiential contract they elaborate, the essay first turns to exhibitions that have explored the complex aesthetic experience entailed in a collective reflection on mass migration: Persona Grata, the 2019 show jointly imagined by MAC VAL and the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration in Paris, and When Home Won’t Let You Stay: Migration Through Contemporary Art, a show that toured, between 2019 and 2021, from the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University. Building on the analysis of some of the works featuring in these two shows (works by Ben, Kader Attia, or Mona Hatoum), the essay then focuses on the works of Adel Abdessemed (Hope, 2011) and Enrique Ramírez (Les Incertains, 2012–2020), two artists who imagine spectatorial experience as the locus of a political self-reflexive confrontation with the “necropolitics” (Achille Mbembe) of global migration or forced exile. In the shows and works here explored, visual experimentation harnesses the sensorial to a rehistoricizing of the gaze. Art thus becomes the contested site of an embodied unhinging of spectatorship endowed with a renewed, if paradoxical, sense of collective political accountability.

Autopoiesis through agency in virtual reality nonfiction

ABSTRACT Documentary filmmakers are gradually embracing immersive media to create novel Virtual Reality Nonfiction (VRNF) content. Over the past twenty years initial experimentation in this new medium has brought forward numerous linearly structured 360° documentaries that maintain a close link to traditional documentary modes. More recently, we have observed a shift from the relatively passive 360° cinema towards more open-world, non-linear, game-like interactive experiences that challenge traditional definitions of the documentary genre. Volumetric world-building techniques provide nonfiction creators with additional tools that afford ‘viewer-users’ spatial and interactive agency, leading to a heightened autopoietic realisation of the storyworld. VRNF creators have the potential to allow their viewer-users enhanced control over framing, temporal ordering of the plot and spatial unfolding of the diegetic world, thus inviting them to become actual co-creators of a deeply personal and personalized experience. This article addresses how VRNF may go beyond the mere ‘documentation’ of people, places or past events that existed in a pre-filmic reality and provide viewer-users through augmented agency a unique present-tense autopoietic experience that pushes the boundaries of traditional 2D documentary.

The Big Short's Incoherence, Documentary Aesthetics, and Use of Direct Address

<i>The Big Short</i>'s Incoherence, Documentary Aesthetics, and Use of Direct Address

‘Do you want to film yourself?’ Narrating the personal and rewriting reality in Agostino Ferrente’s Selfie (2019)

ABSTRACT Focusing on two teenagers grappling with the difficult reality of Naples, Agostino Ferrente’s Selfie (2019) is a powerful depiction of an entire community at a significant time, when limited perspectives and the pervasive presence of organized crime – with a value system that is intrinsic to the Camorra – deeply influence the present and the future of a generation. Shot by two 16-year-old boys from the Traiano district (Naples), the film is a powerful example of how self-representation can be a strategic and political tool to immerse in a life and its context. Within the framework of studies on first-person filmmaking and self-representation, and mobilizing concepts from the theory of mobile films, this article argues that, through the filming carried out by the two teenagers, Selfie is able to offer us a wider glimpse of a generation, of its everyday life and imagination, and of its perception of the contemporary media imaginary. I argue that, by employing a reflexive mode of documentary and the linguistic forms of the photographic selfie, the film engages the spectator in an intimate flow of images, questioning authorial instances, the relationship of the iGeneration with filming devices, and the different approaches and aesthetic choices that form the basis of every representation of reality.

DOCUDRAMA GENRE TO REPRESENT RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN OBAT MALAM AND SOLUSI TV PROGRAM: A CASE STUDY

Genre is an important thing in planning film or TV program. This paper focuses on exploring two national TV programs that use docudrama genre to deliver people’s real past to represent their religious experience. By conducting interview with the producer of Obat Malam and Solusi TV program, the aim of this paper is to examine why docudrama genre used to represent religious experience in Obat Malam and Solusi TV program. The interview was conducted online via zoom meeting and involved the producer manager as the single participant. The open ended questions were used in the interview. A mix coding technique was applied in the interview data collection analysis. The findings show that producer’s perspective puts emphasis on docudrama genre as a configuration of particular elements, highlights visual narrative aspects, and accentuates qualities of docudrama modes of documentary. It can be concluded that docudrama genre meets the need of creative and contextual way to present religious experience to the viewers.

Documentary(‘s) Challenges in the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT This article engages with the obstacles confronting documentary-oriented artists when engaging with the multifaceted problem of the era of climate change. The label ‘documentary’ evokes several assumptions and suggests that such artworks represent events in an objective, neutral and unmediated way. Consequently, the premise of representing reality-as-it-is is attached to these kinds of documentary artworks. Despite the large body of theoretical reflections on the limitations of the documentary mode, these false assumptions and promises endure. By revisiting the genealogy of the documentary tradition, and with particular reference to Hannes Dereere and Silke Huysmans’ 2019 performance Pleasant Island, this article points at some challenges and possible solutions for documentary artists to cope with the overwhelming complexity that characterises our current period.

The Audiovisual Turn of Recent Korean Documentary Cinema: The Time-Image, Place, and Landscape

Abstract This article discusses several documentary films since the 2010s that portray the place and the landscape related to Korea's social reality or a personal or collective memory of its past, classifying their common trope as the “audiovisual turn.” The trope refers to the uses of the poetic and aesthetic techniques to highlight the visual and auditory qualities of the images that mediate the landscape or the place. This article argues that the films’ experiments with these techniques mark formal and epistemological breaks with the expository and participatory modes of the traditional Korean activist documentary, as they create an array of Deleuzian time-images in which a social place or natural landscape is reconfigured as the cinematic space liberated from a linear time and layered with the imbrication of the present and the past. The images, however, are read as updating the activist documentary's commitment to politics and history, as they renew the viewer's sensory and affective awareness of the place and the landscape and thereby render them ruins.

Harmonious Discourse Analysis and Its Application in CCTV Documentary &amp;lt;i&amp;gt;Amazing China&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;

This thesis aims to present Harmonious Discourse Analysis (HDA) and its application in CCTV documentary Amazing China. HDA is a new attempt embedded with Chinese characteristics. The theory was first proposed by Huang Guowen on the basis of reviewing and comparing western dominant approaches, and the necessity of localizing linguistic theory in a Chinese context, as well as the emphasis of developing ecolinguistics from a transdisciplinary perspective. Combined with ecological philosophy and linguistic theory, the analytical framework of HDA is designed as an integrative one. One the one hand, HDA places harmony at its core position, and the whole research is conducted under its general assumption (human-orientedness) and three principles (conscience, proximity and regulation). On the other hand, Systemic Functional Linguistics (henceafter SFL) is taken as the theoretical basis of HDA, and the language system also takes three variables of the register (field, tenor, mode) as the entry point of the research to analyze the ecological discourses. The transitivity analysis of documentary field exhibits the rationality of ecological behaviors guided by the conscience principle. The identity-status analysis of documentary tenor exhibits the authority of ecological discourses guided by the proximity principle. The word-sentence-paragraph analysis of documentary mode exhibits the effectiveness of publicity communication guided by the regulation principle. This thesis has realized its research values of exploration localization, data publicity, and image ecologicalization in the ecological discourses analysis of overseas publicity documentary. It is expected that this study can provide some necessary references for discourse analysis of overseas publicity documentaries in the future, and with wider application of HDA, the ecological consciousness will see its further development in our society, which also undoubtedly benefits ecological protection in various contexts.

Project Review: SwampScapes

Project Review: <i>SwampScapes</i>

Using Documentary to Make the Teaching of Environmental Literacy Engaging among Market Communities in the Three Senatorial Districts of Ogun State

This study aimed at assessing the deplorable state of environmental degradation and waste disposal compliance in markets across the three senatorial districts in Ogun State. This study investigated the literacy level of waste disposal among the traders in the markets in relation to the principles of sustainable development. In doing so, this work considered the use of documentary mode of teaching in making environmental literacy more engaging and realistic through environmental education. This will help in formulating guidelines on how positive attitude towards waste disposal can be achieved through environmental literacy as a vehicle to realize the educational agenda of sustainable development which cannot be over-emphasized. The research employed a mixed-method research. Focus groups were selected from the markets within the sampled three districts of the state. 270 traders of different groups of interest were selected into the focus groups and 16 market heads were also interviewed. Result showed that the market users have to be educated of the various possible dangers of the degradations they engage in unconsciously. Government is therefore expected to partner market communities, cooperate bodies and non-governmental agencies with interest in healthy and safe environment to raise the awareness level of the market communities in environmental management.

A Critical Inquiry on Data Visualization Based Interactive Documentary: “The Fallen of World War II” as an example

In its historical development, documentary cinema has always utilized new mediums and produced new modes of representation. In recent times, especially with the big data surrounding different realms of our life, the production of interactive documentary based on data visualization has appeared as a new mode. In this context, “The Fallen of World War II” &lt;http://www.fallen.io/ww2/&gt; is one of the best examples of this mode of interactive documentary. The Fallen interactive documentary exposes mainly “the human cost of the Second World War.” The visual channel of the documentary operates mainly with data visualization of the number of dead soldiers and civilians of all countries attending the World War II, with their statistical distributions in the form of charts and archival photographs used on dramatic moments of the War. The audio channel is structured by an interpretive voice-over that is strengthened by affective sound design and musical score. The visual and audio channels are tightly interwoven to support each other in an entangled form. Within its linear cinematographic structure, viewers can pause the flow at two key moments of the data visualization narrative and interact with the charts and make their own interrogation in the data. In this paper, my aim is to make a critical analysis of the dynamic data visualization and archival photograph use in this interactive documentary. I will elaborate how the data sets are represented with visual(ization) and aural methods to call the viewer into interaction and encourage her to become an agent of interrogation.

Survival on the shores of a sacrifice zone: Thinking ecological emergencies together

How to address and cope with the complexity of the ecological breakdown as a documentary moving image artist? This text contends that the causes and the consequences of the current ecological situation create some challenges for documentary-orientated artistic practices. These challenges are on the one hand related to the overwhelming complexity of the Anthropocene. On the other hand, as addressed in this text, these challenges are connected to dominant assumptions related to the label ‘documentary’. By revisiting the roots of the documentary this article examines how the documentary mode can be productive for the planet’s present and future challenges. This endeavour will be illustrated by the way Belgian artists Hannes Dereere and Silke Huysmans use and present documentary footage in their documentary-performance Pleasant Island. Their thoughtful use of today’s most omnipresent device, the smartphone, problematizes the traditional responses of the documentary mode on climate emergency, whilst at the same time, their use of moving images and the instrument that produced these images insists to think today’s emergencies together.

Avoiding the (tourist) gaze: pursuit of the ‘authentic’ in the Tbilisi edgelands

The making of Micro-district II, a digital film made by the author in the edgelands of Tbilisi, Georgia, is used as a vehicle for exploring the tourist gaze and the observer’s paradox amongst ethnographic filmmaking methods and documentary modes of observation. The observer’s paradox describes how the receiver of the gaze may become influenced through the processes of being observed, altering the quality of observing ‘naturalistic’ events. The tourist gaze is a similarly two-way process where the pursuit of the authentic is negotiated or constructed according to the type of gaze encountered. Whilst this article is more about the observation of urban landscapes, architecture and street ephemera, than human subjects, the mode of observation and the gaze play a vital role in the author’s personalised accounts of ways of ‘avoiding the gaze’ and getting to what is perceived as filming an ‘authentic’ experience of the ex-soviet micro-districts of Tbilisi. Through a process of autoethnography the author examines ways of avoiding the tourist gaze including navigating the streets, filmmaking techniques and by experimenting with documentary styles of realism. Drawing on the field notes of the author/filmmaker, the problematic quest for the ‘authentic’ and ‘naturalistic’ experience of the tourist are discussed, in terms of the complex elements which determine the constructive gaze, with a conclusion that suggests the impossibility of avoiding the tourist gaze.

Structural Change and Mode Innovation Based on Recommendation Algorithm and 5G Technology -- a New Format Brought by Streaming Media for China’s Documentary Industry

The streaming media platform represented by Netflix is constantly promoting the vertical integration of content and platform providers by using algorithms and data, changing the previous transmission mode of documentary. Documentary is no longer limited by the schedule threshold of traditional media and film festivals. It has a wider transmission channel and obtains positive marketing under the agenda setting. Virtual reality technology and Web online interaction technology will also change documentary from recording the reality to experiencing the reality in the future. With the introduction of Netflix algorithm and mode, the industrial trend in North America will also affect the documentary production in Chinese speaking areas. Compared with the documentary industry in North America, this paper predicted the structural changes and mode innovation of Chinese documentary industry brought by streaming media algorithm and technology, and discussed the opportunities and challenges that Chinese documentary creation will face in the streaming media era.

When Gala met Colometa: Silvia Munt’s Documentary on the Dalinian Muse

As Colometa, folk-heroine of Rodoreda’s La plaça del Diamant brought to the screen in 1982 by Francesc Betriu, Silvia Munt became typecast as Catalonia’s downtrodden girl next door. So it is not surprising that, as director, the subject of her 2003 documentary should be the complete antithesis: Dalí’s irrepressible and empowered muse, Gala. In this essay, Munt not only offers a defence of this vamp, sphynx and scarlet-lady—as imagined biographically by the insecure male psyche—but offers an alternative role model for Catalan women and, with appreciable expertise in the documentary mode, offers a re-definition of Catalan national cinema.

Introduction: The Documentary Mode

Introduction: The Documentary Mode

Risking Representation: Abstraction, Affect, and the Documentary Mode in Birgit Weyhe’sMadgermanes

Birgit Weyhe’s Madgermanes was reviewed primarily as an attempt to recuperate a forgotten aspect of GDR history, but it also can be understood as an experiment with graphic documentary. In Madgermanes Weyhe employs a complex visual style to recount the history of Mozambican labour migration to the GDR and to recall the troubled history of visual representations of Africa and Africans in Germany. Weyhe’s aesthetic strategy—which in part mimics documentary styles but also includes self-referential, affective, and abstract images—makes truth claims at the same time that it rejects conventional documentary forms. This approach can be viewed as an attempt to forge a visual language appropriate to the transnational dimensions of the historical period on display, a language that also probes the legacies of colonialism embedded in popular culture. Unbound by a realist mode, Madgermanes challenges the boundaries of conventional documentary and complicates the notion of documentary as a source of immediate access to lived experience.