"Powerfully posing questions of ethics, ideology, authorship and form, documentary film has never been more popular than it is today. Edited by one of the leading British authorities in the field, 'The Documentary Film Book' is an essential guide to current thinking on documentary film. In a series of fascinating essays, key international experts discuss the theory of documentary, outline current understandings of its history (from pre-Flaherty to the post-Griersonian world of digital 'i-Docs'), survey documentary production (from Africa to Europe, and from the Americas to Asia), consider documentaries by marginalised minority communities, and assess its contribution to other disciplines and arts. Brought together here in one volume, these scholars offer compelling evidence as to why, over the last few decades, documentary has come to the centre of screen studies."--Page 4 of cover.

Documentary has never attracted such audiences, never been produced with such ease from so many corners of the globe, never embraced such variety of expression. The very distinctions between the filmed, the filmer and the spectator are being dissolved. The Act of Documenting addresses what this means for documentary's 21st century position as a genus in the "class" cinema; for its foundations as, primarily, a scientistic, eurocentric and patriarchal discourse; for its future in a world where assumptions of photographic image integrity cannot be sustained. Unpacked are distinctions between performance and performativy and between different levels of interaction, linearity and hypertextuality, engagement and impact, ethics and conditions of reception. Winston, Vanstone and Wang Chi explore and celebrate documentary's potentials in the digital age

Cinema has long shaped not only how mass violence is perceived but also how it is performed. Today, when media coverage is central to the execution of terror campaigns and news anchormen serve as embedded journalists, a critical understanding of how the moving image is implicated in the imaginations and actions of perpetrators and survivors of violence is all the more urgent. If the cinematic image and mass violence are among the defining features of modernity, the former is significantly implicated in the latter, and the nature of this implication is the book's central focus. This edited anthology brings together a range of newly commissioned essays and interviews from the world's leading academics and documentary filmmakers, including Ben Anderson, Errol Morris, Harun Farocki, Rithy Phan, Avi Mograbi, Brian Winston, and Michael Chanan.

Leading expert Brian Winston's new book is one of the first to take the ethical issue seriously. Looking at the recent crises of confidence in public service broadcasting and the controversy surrounding docusoaps, his major new study provides a foundational study of ethics and the documentary. This accessible but comprehensive treatment will be an important contribution to academic debates over the role of the media and to the ongoing debates in the documentary community.

This work rewrites the history of documentary film to take account of technological change. Winston explores the role of such figures as Grierson, Flaherty and Dziga Vertov, and examines both the principles and practice of the major movements in documentary, such as cinema verite. He offers a revised definition of the essential difference between fiction and documentary, and identifies the ethical base of any film practice which attempts to capture truth.

This work suggests that Humphrey Jennings' re-enacted documentary about the London Blitz, Fires Were Started, is an understated propaganda masterpiece. The book provides an account of how Jennings recaptured the reality of the Blitz for his cumbersome camera through a process of meticulous research.