Documenting Cityscapes
Documenting Cityscapes

Author: Iván Villarmea Álvarez

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-05-12

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0231850786

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While film studies has traditionally treated the presence of the city in film as an urban text operating inside of a cinematic one, this approach has recently evolved into the study of cinema as a technology of place. From this perspective, Documenting Cityscapes explores the way the city has been depicted by nonfiction filmmakers since the late 1970s, paying particular attention to three aesthetic tendencies: documentary landscaping, urban self-portraits, and metafilmic strategies. Through the formal analysis of fifteen works from six different countries, this volume investigates how the rise of subjectivity has helped to develop a kind of gaze that is closer to citizens than to the institutions and corporations responsible for recent major transformations. Documenting Cityscapes therefore reveals the extent to which cinema has become an agent of urban change, in which certain films not only challenge the most controversial policies of late capitalism but also are able to produce spatiality themselves.

Play Among Books
Play Among Books

Author: Miro Roman

Publisher: Birkhäuser

Published: 2021-12-06

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 3035624054

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How does coding change the way we think about architecture? This question opens up an important research perspective. In this book, Miro Roman and his AI Alice_ch3n81 develop a playful scenario in which they propose coding as the new literacy of information. They convey knowledge in the form of a project model that links the fields of architecture and information through two interwoven narrative strands in an “infinite flow” of real books. Focusing on the intersection of information technology and architectural formulation, the authors create an evolving intellectual reflection on digital architecture and computer science.

Ruin Porn and the Obsession with Decay
Ruin Porn and the Obsession with Decay

Author: Siobhan Lyons

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-07-03

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 3319933906

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This collection is the first book to comprehensively analyse the relatively new and under-researched phenomenon of ‘ruin porn’. Featuring a diverse collection of chapters, the authors in this work examine the relevance of contemporary ruin and its relationship to photography, media, architecture, culture, history, economics and politics. This work investigates the often ambiguous relationship that society has with contemporary ruins around the world, challenging the notions of authenticity that are frequently associated with images of decay. With case studies that discuss various places and topics, including Detroit, Chernobyl, Pitcairn Island, post-apocalyptic media, online communities and urban explorers, among many other topics, this collection illustrates the nuances of ruin porn that are fundamental to an understanding of humanity’s place in the overarching narrative of history.

The Documentary Filmmaker's Intuition
The Documentary Filmmaker's Intuition

Author: Shannon Walsh

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-12-13

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1003811124

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This book is an introduction to the art and craft of documentary filmmaking with a focus on ethics and impact from development through distribution. Author Shannon Walsh explores point-of-view storytelling, writing for nonfiction, and the art of social change documentary. Offering an overview of the documentary filmmaking process – from idea to pitch to a final film and impact campaign – this book provides nonfiction filmmakers with the methods required to find a voice, style, and cinematic approach to documentary filmmaking. Key areas covered include definition of styles and genres of documentary film; project development and proposal writing; basic elements of documentary storytelling such as interview techniques, vérité filming, use of archives, stills, and point of view; the process of preparing and delivering a project pitch; pre-production; and finding the necessary elements to tell a story cinematically. With a specific focus on ethics and character-driven storytelling, Walsh shares her own personal insights on talking to strangers and the importance of empathetic listening skills and intuition and provides useful worksheets that filmmakers can use for their own projects. This book is ideal for both students of documentary filmmaking and aspiring documentary filmmakers who are interested in creating ethical and impactful films.

I-Docs
I-Docs

Author: Judith Aston

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2017-02-28

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 0231851073

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The history of documentary has been one of adaptation and change, as docu-mentarists have harnessed the affordances of emerging technology. In the last decade interactive documentaries (i-docs) have become established as a new field of practice within non-fiction storytelling. Their various incarnations are now a focus at leading film festivals (IDFA DocLab, Tribeca Storyscapes, Sheffield DocFest), major international awards have been won, and they are increasingly the subject of academic study. This anthology looks at the creative practices, purposes and ethics that lie behind these emergent forms. Expert contributions, case studies and interviews with major figures in the field address the production processes that lie behind interactive documentary, as well as the political, cultural and geographic contexts in which they are emerging and the media ecology that supports them. Taking a broad view of interactive documentary as any work which engages with 'the real' by employing digital interactive technology, this volume addresses a range of platforms and environments, from web-docs and virtual reality to mobile media and live performance. It thus explores the challenges that face interactive documentary practitioners and scholars, and proposes new ways of producing and engaging with interactive factual content.

Documents of Utopia
Documents of Utopia

Author: Paolo Magagnoli

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-05-12

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0231850778

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This timely volume discusses the experimental documentary projects of some of the most significant artists working in the world today: Hito Steyerl, Joachim Koester, Tacita Dean, Matthew Buckingham, Zoe Leonard, Jean-Luc Moulène, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead, and Anri Sala. Their films, videos, and photographic series address failed utopian experiments and counter-hegemonic social practices. This study illustrates the political significance of these artistic practices and critically contributes to the debate on the conditions of utopian thinking in late-capitalist society, arguing that contemporary artists' interest in the past is the result of a shift within the temporal organization of the utopian imagination from its futuristic pole toward remembrance. The book therefore provides one of the first critical examinations of the recent turn toward documentary in the field of contemporary art.

The Handbook of Field Recording
The Handbook of Field Recording

Author: Frank Dorritie

Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 9781931140201

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"The Handbook of Field Recording" is the essential book by author Frank Dorritie on the topic. Coming complete with an audio CD, this book will teach you how to make good field recordings in any situation. Getting a good recording in the field is still one of the most challenging tasks in the recording industry. From environmental factors and room acoustics to equipment problems, field recording can be filled with potential roadblocks. "The Handbook of Field Recording" provides you with the knowledge you need to solve these problems and excel at making the best recording possible of any subject at any location. In clear terms, the book explains how to record documentary audio, film sound, underwater sounds, and much more. Veteran music and recording educator Frank Dorritie, author of the popular MixBooks title "Essentials of Music for Audio Professionals," brings his formidable recording experience to light in "The Handbook of Field Recording." This is an exciting, authoritative title that will demystify the challenging process of recording subjects outside of the studio.

Voyages of Discovery
Voyages of Discovery

Author: Barry Keith Grant

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2023-05-16

Total Pages: 570

ISBN-13: 0231556373

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Frederick Wiseman is America’s foremost chronicler of public institutions. His films have focused on city, state, and local governments; hospitals; asylums; creative organizations and museums; schools; libraries; and more. In recent years, Wiseman’s work has reached a new level of popularity, with films such as In Jackson Heights (2015), Monrovia, Indiana (2018), and City Hall (2020) all earning widespread acclaim. Voyages of Discovery is the definitive account of Wiseman’s career, offering a comprehensive analysis of the work of the leading documentary filmmaker in the United States. In this updated edition, Barry Keith Grant adds new material exploring the documentarian’s works since the 1990s, discussing every film in Wiseman’s remarkable sixty-year career. He examines the core concerns running across Wiseman’s work from the early films, which focus on documenting institutional failure, through an expanding interest in cultural institutions and ideology, to a blossoming embrace of democracy in later films. He pays particular attention to Wiseman’s strategies for involving and implicating the spectator in the institutional processes the films document. Grant also places Wiseman within the history of the documentary and other traditions of American art and considers the relationship between documentary film and authorship. Voyages of Discovery is an important book for anyone interested in Wiseman’s work or how documentary film can reveal the fabric of our shared civic life.

Filming History from Below
Filming History from Below

Author: Efrén Cuevas

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 0231551576

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Traditional historical documentaries strive to project a sense of objectivity, producing a top-down view of history that focuses on public events and personalities. In recent decades, in line with historiographical trends advocating “history from below,” a different type of historical documentary has emerged, focusing on tightly circumscribed subjects, personal archives, and first-person perspectives. Efrén Cuevas categorizes these films as “microhistorical documentaries” and examines how they push cinema’s capacity as a producer of historical knowledge in new directions. Cuevas pinpoints the key features of these documentaries, identifying their parallels with written microhistory: a reduced scale of observation, a central role given to human agency, a conjectural approach to the use of archival sources, and a reliance on narrative structures. Microhistorical documentaries also use tools specific to film to underscore the affective dimension of historical narratives, often incorporating autobiographical and essayistic perspectives, and highlighting the role of the protagonists’ personal memories in the reconstruction of the past. These films generally draw from family archives, with an emphasis on snapshots and home movies. Filming History from Below examines works including Péter Forgács’s films dealing with the Holocaust such as The Maelstrom and Free Fall; documentaries about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Rithy Panh’s work on the Cambodian genocide; films about the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War such as A Family Gathering and History and Memory; and Jonas Mekas’s chronicle of migration in his diary film Lost, Lost, Lost.