Crafting Truth: Documentary Form and Meaning

Author:   Louise Spence ,  Vinicius Navarro
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
ISBN:  

9780813549033


Pages:   296
Publication Date:   16 December 2010
Recommended Age:   From 18 to 99 years
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained
The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you.

Our Price $71.15 Quantity:  
Add to Cart

Share |

Crafting Truth: Documentary Form and Meaning


Add your own review!

Overview

"Documentaries such as Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman's Born into Brothels, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, Jeffrey Blitz's Spellbound, along with March of the Penguins and An Inconvenient Truth have achieved critical as well as popular success. Although nonfiction film may have captured imaginations, many viewers enter and leave theaters with a nanve concept of ""truth"" and ""reality""-for them, documentaries are information sources. But is truth or reality readily available, easily acquired, or undisputed? Or do documentaries convey illusions of truth and reality? What aesthetic means are used to build these illusions? A documentary's sounds and images are always the product of selection and choice, and often underscore points the filmmaker wishes to make. Crafting Truth illuminates the ways these films tell their stories; how they use the camera, editing, sound, and performance; what rhetorical devices they employ; and what the theoretical, practical, and ethical implications of these choices are. Complex documentary concepts are presented through easily accessible language, images, and a discussion of a wide range of films and videos to encourage new ways of thinking about and seeing nonfiction film."

Full Product Details

Author:   Louise Spence ,  Vinicius Navarro
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
Imprint:   Rutgers University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 17.80cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 25.40cm
Weight:   0.739kg
ISBN:  

9780813549033


ISBN 10:   0813549035
Pages:   296
Publication Date:   16 December 2010
Recommended Age:   From 18 to 99 years
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Awaiting stock   Availability explained
The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction PART ONE. GENERAL CONCEPTS 1. Authenticity 2. Evidence 3. Authority 4. Responsibility PART TWO. STRUCTURAL ORGANIZATION 5. Argument 6. Dramatic Stories, Poetic and Essay Documentaries PART THREE. FORMAL TECHNIQUES 7. Editing 8. Camerawork 9. The Profilmic 10. Sounds (coauthored with Carl Lewis) Index

Reviews

Crafting Truth addresses all the main issues involved in studying the documentary, cleverly illustrated by recent examples while not forgetting necessary consideration of the canon--a very valuable account. --Brian Winston University of Lincoln, UK (07/26/2010)


A novel and illuminating introduction to key concepts in documentary. The distinctive cast to the book makes it an extremely welcome contribution to the field. --Bill Nichols author of Engaging Cinema: An Introduction to Film Studies Crafting Truth introduces readers to some of the basic questions guiding contemporary discussions of the documentary. Authors Louise Spence and Vinicius Navarro structure their book around thoughtful considerations of general concepts like authenticity, evidence, and responsibility; structural organization of rhetoric and argument; and formal techniques like editing, camerawork, and sound in order to ask: how do documentaries proclaim themselves authentic? -- Cineaste Crafting Truth addresses all the main issues involved in studying the documentary, cleverly illustrated by recent examples while not forgetting necessary consideration of the canon--a very valuable account. --Brian Winston University of Lincoln, UK Crafting Truth delivers an intelligent and inspiring introduction to documentary studies through an original framework that powerfully attends to the complex politics, aesthetics, ideas, and forms at the heart of the genre. --Alexandra Juhasz co-editor of F is for Phony and documentary videomaker Highly recommended. Perhaps mandatory for students of film, mass communication, and journalism. -- Choice Spence and Navarro create a beautiful, accessible synthesis of the ideas underpinning documentary thinking, the key scholars addressing these ideas, and a diverse filmography representing those texts. It sets the foundation for understanding the form as it has developed so far and provides a starting point for understanding the form as it will evolve in the future. -- Studies in Documentary Film


Author Information

LOUISE SPENCE is a professor of cinema studies at Kadir Has University in Istanbul and the coauthor of the award-winning Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films, and His Audiences (Rutgers University Press). VINICIUS NAVARRO is an assistant professor of film studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions
Latest Reading Guide

wl

Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty
Shopping cart
Mailing List