Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film provides a clear and compelling introduction to the basic theoretical issues that ground any in-depth study of documentary film and video.

A comprehensive look at film adaptations of Shakespeare's plays.

Everyone knows the thrill of being transported by a film, but what is it that makes movie watching such a compelling emotional experience? In Moving Viewers, Carl Plantinga explores this question and the implications of its answer for aesthetics, the psychology of spectatorship, and the place of movies in culture. Through an in-depth discussion of mainstream Hollywood films, Plantinga investigates what he terms "the paradox of negative emotion" and the function of mainstream narratives as ritualistic fantasies. He describes the sensual nature of the movies and shows how film emotions are often elicited for rhetorical purposes. He uses cognitive science and philosophical aesthetics to demonstrate why cinema may deliver a similar emotional charge for diverse audiences.

This book offers a conceptual overview of documentary filmmaking practice. It addresses numerous social issues and how they are presented to the viewer by means of style, rhetoric, and narrative technique. The volume poses questions about the relationship of the documentary tradition to power, the body, authority, knowledge, and our experience of history. This study advances the pioneering work of Nichols's earlier book, Ideology and the Image. The rigorous discussion of modes of documentary representation, the relationship between narrative and nonfiction, and the representation of the body (including a chapter on pornography, ethnography, and power), give this book enormous value for the study of visual anthropology and ethnographic film. The often neglected relationship between signifier and referent is the special focus of this intensive study of documentary film. The concluding discussion of the representation of the body will also be of special interest to semioticians.

Trevor Ponech has written a serious and pathbreaking study of how to define non-fiction cinema. Working from the position that no cinematic representation is wholly factual, Ponech argues that what determines whether a film is fiction or non-fiction is the filmmakers intention. Persuasively defending this unique position, the author provides a philosophically rigorous analysis of the communicative practices of filmmakers. In What Is Non-Fiction Cinema? Trevor Ponech has written a serious and pathbreaking study of how to define non-fiction cinema. Working from the position that no cinematic representation is wholly factual, Ponech argues that what determines whether a film is fiction or non-fiction is the filmmakers intention. Persuasively defending this unique position, the author provides a philosophically rigorous analysis of the communicative practices of filmmakers. In making his case, Ponech cogently presents the other major theoretical positions regarding documentary cinema and shows why each is incomplete. The result is a cutting-edge philosophical inquiry into purposiveness in film.

The Encyclopedia of the Documentary Film is a fully international reference work on the history of the documentary film from the Lumière brothers' Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1885) to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 (2004). This Encyclopedia provides a resource that critically analyzes that history in all its aspects. Not only does this Encyclopedia examine individual films and the careers of individual film makers, it also provides overview articles of national and regional documentary film history. It explains concepts and themes in the study of documentary film, the techniques used in making films, and the institutions that support their production, appreciation, and preservation.

A New History of Documentary Film includes new research that offers a fresh way to understand how the field began and grew. Retaining the original edition's core structure, there is added emphasis of the interplay among various approaches to documentaries and the people who made them. This edition also clearly explains the ways that interactions among the shifting forces of economics, technology, and artistry shape the form. New to this edition: - An additional chapter that brings the story of English language documentary to the present day - Increased coverage of women and people of color in documentary production - Streaming - Black Lives Matter - Animated documentaries - List of documentary filmmakers, organized chronologically by the years of their activity in the field