Dear friends and colleagues,
I am delighted to announce the publication of Post-1990 Documentary: Reconfiguring Independence (Edinburgh University Press) edited by Camille Deprez and myself.
Find the table of contents below. For more information, you can also visit the book’s dedicated webpage here, and download a free sample chapter (introduction) here.
Abstract:
In a post-1990 context of unrivalled creativity in documentary filmmaking, what does ‘independence’ really mean? With a broad selection of contributors, this is the first collection of in-depth case studies to cut across different media, formats, subject matters, purposes and national divides. Writing from a wide range of academic perspectives, contributors shed new light on historical, theoretical and empirical issues concerning independent documentary, to better comprehend the radical transformations of the form over the past twenty-five years.
While the digital turn has been widely acknowledged as decisive in reshaping film practices, especially independent ones, this anthology aims at assessing its consequences without overestimating the impact of technology on other political, economic, social and cultural changes. Continuities as well as breaks are therefore put in perspective, with a particular focus on the interactions between these new practices and the established film and television industries.
Divided into three main sections on ‘History and Spaces of Resistance’, ‘The Personal Experience’ and ‘Displacement, Participation and Spectatorship’, Post-1990 Documentary: Reconfiguring Independence provides an innovative interpretation of under-studied subject matters and styles, and rare analysis of differing production, distribution and exhibition strategies. It not only helps to rethink the notion of independence, but also contributes to a fundamental change in our perception of documentary filmmaking.
Best regards,
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 1
Camille Deprez and Judith Pernin
Part I History and Spaces of Resistance
1 Post-unification (East) German Documentary and the Contradictions of Identity 23
Barton Byg
2 No Going Back: Continuity and Change in Australian Documentary 38
Deane Williams and John Hughes
3 A Space in Between: The Legacy of the Activist Documentary Film in India 52
Camille Deprez
4 Languages, Speech and Voice: The Heritage of Jean Rouch and Pier Paolo Pasolini in Convention: Black Wall / White Holes 68
Eric Galmard
5 Chris Marker: Interactive Screen and Memory 82
Kristian Feigelson
Part II The Personal Experience
6 The Survivor–Perpetrator Encounter and the Truth Archive in Rithy Panh’s Documentaries 97
Raya Morag
7 Contesting Consensual Memory: The Work of Remembering in Chilean Autobiographical Documentaries 112
Juliette Goursat
8 ‘We All Invented Our Own Algeria’: Habiba Djahnine’s Letter to My Sister as Memory-Narrative 125
Sheila Petty
9 From the Ashes: The Fall of Apartheid and the Rise of the Lone Documentary Filmmaker in South Africa 138
Liani Maasdorp
10 A Personal Vision of the Hong Kong Cityscape in Anson Mak’s Essayistic Documentary Films One Way Street on a Turntable and On the Edge of a Floating City, We Sing 151
Mike Ingham
Part III Displacement, Participation and Spectatorship
11 Documentary Filmmakers on the Circuit: A Festival Career from Czech Dream to Czech Peace 171
Aida Vallejo
12 Material Traces of Lebanon: A Documentary Aesthetics of Feeling in the Art Gallery 188
Tess Takahashi
13 Autonomous Navigation? Multiplicity and Self-reflexive Aesthetics in Sergio Basso’s Documentary Film Giallo a Milano and Web Documentary Made in Chinatown 203
Hilary Chung and Bernadette Luciano
14 Fukushima and the Shifting Conventions of Documentary: From Broadcast to Social Media Netizenship 217
Mick Broderick and Robert Jacobs
15 Independent Documentaries and Online Uses in China: From Cinephilia to Activism 233
Judith Pernin
Conclusion 247
Camille Deprez and Judith Pernin