© Columbia University Press
Documentary Display: Re-Viewing Nonfiction Film and Video
December, 2008
Paper, 224 pages,
ISBN: 978-1-905674-72-5
Wallflower Press
$29.50
Cloth, 224 pages,
ISBN: 978-1-905674-73-2
$90.00
Not all documentary films and videos are sober depictions of the real world. Documentary representations can present expressive, entertaining and spectacular images. This book examines such innovative approaches as they occur within the process of “documentary display”—a practice which emphasizes the visual attractions of documentary representation. Works of documentary display explore modes of exhibitionistic “showing” in which sensation is frequently the vehicle of cognition and knowledge. Such a display is analyzed within the popular and prominent forms of found-footage film, “rockumentary”, the city film, nonfiction surf film and video and certain views of natural science topics. This accessible and informed study, with its focus on entertaining, popular, spectacular and sensational forms of representation, makes an important contribution to theoretical analyses of documentary film and video.