Library Representatives: MFA Social Documentary Film

Industry veteran Jon Fitzgerald has developed a new manual for making socially relevant films on a low budget, from concept development through production, from marketing through distribution. In straightforward sections, with descriptive breakdowns for each category, the book presents a new paradigm for filmmaking in the modern age, including case studies on numerous films and advice from industry professionals on each topic.

Contents: Introduction: Brazil and the Afro Atlantic Diaspora: Recontextualizing Abolition Ch. 1. "Order and Progress": Elite Objectives and the Shaping of Abolition Ch. 2. Self Determination: The Politics of Identity Ch. 3. Sao Paulo: The New City The New Negro Ch. 4. The Politics of Race in Sao Paulo Ch. 5. Salvador: Afro Bahia in an Era of Change Ch. 6. The Politics of Culture in Salvador Conclusion: "Full Free."

In this book, David MacDougall, one of the leading ethnographic filmmakers and film scholars of his generation, builds upon the ideas from his widely praised Transcultural Cinema and argues for a new conception of how visual images create human knowledge in a world in which the value of seeing has often been eclipsed by words.

David MacDougall is a pivotal figure in the development of ethnographic cinema and visual anthropology. As a filmmaker, he has directed in Africa, Australia, India, and Europe. His prize-winning films (many made jointly with his wife, Judith MacDougall) include The Wedding Camels, Lorang's Way, To Live with Herds, A Wife among Wives, Takeover, PhotoWallahs, and Tempus de Baristas. As a theorist, he articulates central issues in the relation of film to anthropology, and is one of the few documentary filmmakers who writes extensively on these concerns. The essays collected here address, for instance, the difference between films and written texts and between the position of the filmmaker and that of the anthropological writer.

Please visit:

www.directingthedocumentary.com

for the book's companion website.

Documentary Storytelling offers advice for producers, directors, editors, and cinematographers seeking to make ethical and effective nonfiction films, and for those who use these films to educate, inform, and inspire. Special interview chapters explore storytelling as practiced by renowned producers, directors, and editors. This third edition has been updated and expanded, with discussion of newer films including Waltz with Bashir and Why We Fight.

Comes with a supplementary DVD. Inquire at the front desk.

A New History of Documentary Film, Second Edition offers a much-needed resource, considering the very rapid changes taking place within documentary media. Building upon the best-selling 2005 edition, Betsy McLane keeps the same chronological examination, factual reliability, ease of use and accessible prose style as before, while also weaving three new threads - Experimental Documentary, Visual Anthropology and Environmental/Nature Films - into the discussion. She provides emphasis on archival and preservation history, present practices, and future needs for documentaries. Along with preservation information, specific problems of copyright and fair use, as they relate to documentary, are considered.

Finally, A History of Documentary Film retains and updates the recommended readings and important films and the end of each chapter from the first edition, including the bibliography and appendices. Impossible to talk learnedly about documentary film without an audio-visual component, a companion website will increase its depth of information and overall usefulness to students, teachers and film enthusiasts.

Experimental film and ethnographic film have long been considered separate, autonomous practices on the margins of mainstream cinema. By exploring the interplay between the two forms, Catherine Russell throws new light on both the avant-garde and visual anthropology.
Russell provides detailed analyses of more than thirty-five films and videos from the 1890s to the 1990s and discusses a wide range of film and videomakers, including Georges Méliès, Maya Deren, Peter Kubelka, Ray Birdwhistell, Jean Rouch, Su Friedrich, Bill Viola, Kidlat Tahimik, Margaret Mead, Tracey Moffatt, and Chantal Akerman. Arguing that video enables us to see film differently—not as a vanishing culture but as bodies inscripted in technology, Russell maps the slow fade from modernism to postmodern practices.

Mondo Cane in 1962 was the blueprint for a shocking, controversial and influential documentary film cycle. Known collectively as "mondo films" or "shockumentaries," this enduring series of films is a precursor of the reality TV show.

A box-office draw for three decades and now a staple of the video rental market, these explosive exposs would often pass fabricated scenes as fact in order to give the public a sensationalist, highly emotive view of the world. Sweet & Savage is the first-ever English-language book devoted exclusively to the mondo documentary film. A study of mondo as a global film phenomenon, it includes a detailed examination of the key films and includes exclusive interviews with the godfathers of this cult genre.