Stranger Than Fiction

The success of American documentaries over the recent past has prompted social critics and film commentators to herald the renaissance of a vibrantly innovative nonfiction cinema. When a political documentary like Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 grosses a staggering $120 million domestically, playing almost as well in European and other markets outside North America, you know that the documentary has arrived.
What is the story behind this phenomenon?

Acclaimed interpreter of the international social impact of the Academy Awards (And the Winner Is., Oscar Fever, and All about Oscar--all published by Continuum), biographer Emanuel Levy is now the first to tell this story, profile the filmmakers, and interpret the impact of these films on our lives.

The past decade alone has seen Roger and Me, Paris Is Burning, Hoop Dreams, Bowling for Columbine, Crumb, and Inconvenient Truth.

Once relegated to public-broadcasting stations, cable channels, and regional independent-film festivals, the nonfiction genre of the documentary is increasingly viewed as popular entertainment worthy of multiplexes, shown at full-admission prices. One measure of the new cache is the willingness of both established and new directors to spend long, hard years on their work. A growing number of Hollywood's key players, such as Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Oliver Stone, and James Cameron, all better known for the features, have now contributed to the genre with personal, often idiosyncratic docus that have further elevated the art form.

The book chronicles the careers and works of all those in the vanguard of a movement that shows no signs of slowing down. Michael Moore, Barbara Kopple, Errol Morris, Michael Apted, James Klein, Julia Reichert, Fred Marx, Steve James, Peter Gilbert, Al Gore, and many others are featured in this groundbreaking study, which also includes valuable information on Oscar-winning documentaries as well as the most-commerical documentaries of all time.