The Intellect Handbook of Documentary
Published on 7. April 2025
Book
Hardback
518 pages
978-1-83595-068-5 (ISBN)
Description
The Handbook of Documentary is an important go-to resource for practitioners, scholars and students in this burgeoning field. It tackles key topics and debates - from the role of documentary in post-truth culture to the rise of streaming giants (and the implications for national documentary cultures) and the shifting (increasingly hybrid) practices of documentary activism and the professionalization of impact. Featuring work by key figures in international documentary scholarship and talented emerging scholars, the Handbook is a landmark publication for documentary studies in the twenty-first century.
The Handbook is broad in its scope, incorporating historical, theoretical, empirical, and practical scholarship. It is organized around ten key themes/debates: What and where is documentary (studies)?; Documentary in an Age of epistemic uncertainty; Documentary histories; Documentary and the Archive; Audio/Visualities; Documentary Relationalities; Beyond the Anthropocene?; Digital/documentary practices; Documentary and (new) politics?; A golden age? Documentary distribution and funding. Importantly, the Handbook challenges the dominance of Western voices in documentary scholarship, incorporating the voices and practices of practitioners from the Global South.
The Handbook is broad in its scope, incorporating historical, theoretical, empirical, and practical scholarship. It is organized around ten key themes/debates: What and where is documentary (studies)?; Documentary in an Age of epistemic uncertainty; Documentary histories; Documentary and the Archive; Audio/Visualities; Documentary Relationalities; Beyond the Anthropocene?; Digital/documentary practices; Documentary and (new) politics?; A golden age? Documentary distribution and funding. Importantly, the Handbook challenges the dominance of Western voices in documentary scholarship, incorporating the voices and practices of practitioners from the Global South.
Reviews / Votes
'The Intellect Handbook of Documentary is a welcome, comprehensive and substantial guide to the subject, incorporating chapters by leading authors on the subject, and covering many areas of historical and topical interest. The editors have a long and distinguished association with the field, and the Handbook will add to that.' -- Ian Aitken, Professor Emeritus, Hong Kong Baptist UniversityMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Intellect
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
32 Halftones, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 250 mm
Width: 175 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
1067 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-83595-068-5 (9781835950685)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Kate Nash | Deane Williams
The Intellect Handbook of Documentary
E-Book
04/2025
Intellect Books
€138.99
Available for download
Persons
Kate Nash is Professor of Media and Communication at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has published widely in the areas of documentary ethics, interactive documentary and on the relationship between documentary and politics. Her books include New Documentary Ecologies (2014 with Craig Hight and Catherine Summerhayes) and Interactive Documentary: Theory and Debate (2020). She is Co-Editor (with Craig Hight) of Studies in Documentary Film.
Deane Williams is Associate Professor of Film and Screen Studies at Monash University, Melbourne. From 2007-2017 he was editor of the journal Studies in Documentary Film, and his books include Australian Post-War Documentary Film: An Arc of Mirrors (2008), Michael Winterbottom (with Brian McFarlane, 2009), the three-volume Australian Film Theory and Criticism (co-edited with Noel King and Constantine Verevis, 2013-2017), The Cinema of Sean Penn: In and Out of Place (2016) and (with Julia Vassilieva) editor of Beyond the Essay Film: Subjectivity, Textuality and Technology (2021).
Deane Williams is Associate Professor of Film and Screen Studies at Monash University, Melbourne. From 2007-2017 he was editor of the journal Studies in Documentary Film, and his books include Australian Post-War Documentary Film: An Arc of Mirrors (2008), Michael Winterbottom (with Brian McFarlane, 2009), the three-volume Australian Film Theory and Criticism (co-edited with Noel King and Constantine Verevis, 2013-2017), The Cinema of Sean Penn: In and Out of Place (2016) and (with Julia Vassilieva) editor of Beyond the Essay Film: Subjectivity, Textuality and Technology (2021).
Content
Handbook of Documentary - Kate Nash and Deane Williams
Section 1: Where and what is documentary (studies) in an age of epistemic crisis?
Saying More about Documentary? Notes on Formation, Continuity and Change in the Field of Study - John Corner
Next Steps: Post-Narrativity, Post-Truth (Post-Trump?) and Post-Digital is Poetry - Alexandra Juhasz
The Documentary Disposition - Michael Renov
Section 2: Documentary in the Anthropocene
'We Are Dead and We Are Going to Die': The Apocalypse Documentary - Alisa Lebow
Cinema of Qi: A Daoist Approach to Ecological, Sensory and Affective Cinema Through Vital Energy - Kiki Tianqi Yu
The Possible Worlds of VR Documentary - Mandy Rose
Documentary Realism in the Anthropocene - Selmin Kara
Section 3: Audio/Visualities: Polyphony, Complexity and Representation
Reflection, Staging and Documentary Film: The Monadic Camera-Subject - Fernao Pessoa Ramos
Documentary Says 'We': Lyrical Polyphony as Practice - Simona Schneider
Flee and the Failure of Empathy - Annabelle Honess Roe
Section 4: Re-viewing the Ethics and Politics of Representation
Shirley Clarke's The Connection and the Event of (Fake) Documentary - Jaimie Baron
Towards a History of the International Association of Documentary Filmmakers: The Congress of Algiers 1968 - Mariano Mestman
Recycling Indigenous Images: Archiveology and the National Film Board of Canada - Catherine Russell
Wang Bing's Documentary Po/ethics of the Maoist Chaos and the Paradigm of Western Testimony: Unwitnessing, Victims, Collaborators, Followers, Cadres and Dissidents - Raya Morag
South Somewhere Else: Decolonising the Documentary, Cross-Cultural Collaborative Filmmaking in the Global South - Deane Williams and Antonio Traverso
Section 5: Documentary and Politics
The Case of Nuclear Documentary - Helen Hughes
Radical Civic Media: Equipe Media, Western Sahara and Global Documentary Ecologies - Ryan Watson
Documentary Storytelling for Social Change in the Participatory Media Age: Understanding Nonfiction's Social Impact and Future Challenges - Caty Borum
Entertainment with a Purpose: Netflix and Documentary Today - Annie Goldson
Documentary-on-Demand: Researching Audience Engagements with (Political) Documentary on Netflix - Kate Nash and Craig Hight
From Testimony to the Cinema of Action in the Video nas Aldeias Project - Gilberto Alexandre Sobrinho
Section 6: Production, Distribution, Audiences: The Changing Documentary 'Industry'
Utility for the Utilitarian: Documentary's Uses for Other Kinds of Non-Fiction Film - Grace Russell
Documentary Funding in the Age of the Streamers - Inge Sorensen and Nick Higgins
Audience Engagement: Streaming Factuality in the Nordic Region - Annette Hill
Section 7: Digital Documentary Practices
Compilationism and Digital Media: From Documentaries to Audio-Visual Essays - Chiara Grizzaffi
Augmented Reality Documentary - Dale Hudson, Claudia Costa Pederson and Patty Zimmerman
Tilting at Windmills: The Technicizing of Empathy - Brian Winston with an introduction by Kate Nash