Table of Contents

At the Center of Our Age
Representative Qualities and Questions of Documentary Film
What Photography Calls Thinking: Theoretical Considerations on the Power of the
Photographic Basis of Cinema
Cinematic Representation and Spatial Realism: Reflections After/Upon André Bazin

Chapter 3: Documentary Traces: Film and the Content of Photographs
The Limits of Appropriation: Subjectivist Accounts of the Fiction/Nonfiction
Distinction
Inscribing Ethical Space: Ten Propositions on Death and Documentary
Before Documentary: Early Nonfiction Films and the “View” Aesthetic
Ruminating on the Ideologies of Nature Film
Jean Rouch’s Cine-trance and Modes of Experimental Ethnofiction Filmmaking
The Ecstasy of Time Travel in Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Habitats of Documentary: Landscapes, Color Fields, and Ecologies in the
Avant-Docs of Vincent Grenier
Promises and Contracts Found in the Archive Are Not About the Past:
Renewing Civil Alliances—Palestine 1947–48
“See and Remember”: The Golden Days of Said Otruk
Intimacy, Modesty, Silence: Documentary Filmmaking in the Face of Trauma
Provoking the Truth: Applying the Method of Cinéma Vérité
Reenvisioning Dziga Vertov: 10 Enduring Diktats for Documentary Cinema
Whose Strife is it Anyway? The Erosion of Agency in the Cinematic Production of
Kitchen Sink Realism
Redefining Documentary Materialism: from Actuality to Virtuality in Victor Erice’s
Four and a Half Film Fallacies
The Dogma 95 Manifesto and The Vow of Chastity
Minnesota Declaration: Truth and Fact in Documentary Cinema
Omission and Oversight in Close Reading—The Final Moments of Frederick
Wiseman’s High School
Cinematic Consciousness: Animal Subjectivity, Activist Rhetoric, and the Problem
of Other Minds in Blackfish
Understanding (and) the Legacy of the Trace: Reflections After Carroll, Currie, and
Plantinga
: Adam McKay’s Vehicle for Truth Claims
Letter to Errol Morris: Feelings of Revulsion and the Limits of Academic Discourse
“You are Never Alone”: On Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s Zidane:
On Patience (After Sebald): Documentary as a True Portrait of Sensibility
Fiction and Nonfiction in Chantal Akerman’s Films
Vérité Fiction, Dramatized Documentary: On Michelle Citron’s Aesthetic Provocations
“Deceiving into the Truth”: The Indirect Cinema of Stories We Tell and
A Reality Rescinded: The Transformative Effects of Fraud in I’m Still Here
David LaRocca

About the Author

David LaRocca is visiting assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York College at Cortland.

Reviews

This anthology is a gem! Bringing together documentary filmmakers, philosophers, and film theorists, this volume will be an important resource for all those interested in this important genre of filmmaking, be they students, professors, scholars, or just serious film viewers. Get it for yourself and see!
*Thomas E. Wartenberg, Mount Holyoke College*

The Philosophy of Documentary Film undoubtedly bears witness to the complexity and the density of its subject matter. The texts included in the volume cover a wide range of topics and approaches, and they raise multiple philosophical questions inherent to documentary films.
*Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image*

With the pervasive and facile use of digital manipulation of images in public and private communications, few questions are more important than the question raised by this richly rewarding book—‘What is real and what is fake?’ In 1960 my executive producer at NBC warned us to be careful of what we put on the screen because he said ‘people will believe it.’ David LaRocca in his fulsome and well-articulated introduction reminds us that a critical mind has never been more essential to acquire ‘a fuller, truer, experience of reality.’ As a successful documentarian for over 60 years, I know of no other book that is more useful in the pursuit of that goal.
*Bill Jersey, winner of two Peabodys, Emmys, and Oscar nominations*

This anthology is a gem! Bringing together documentary filmmakers, philosophers, and film theorists, this volume will be an important resource for all those interested in this important genre of filmmaking, be they students, professors, scholars, or just serious film viewers. Get it for yourself and see!
*Thomas E. Wartenberg, Mount Holyoke College*

With the pervasive and facile use of digital manipulation of images in public and private communications, few questions are more important than the question raised by this richly rewarding book—‘What is real and what is fake?’ In 1960 my executive producer at NBC warned us to be careful of what we put on the screen because he said ‘people will believe it.’ David LaRocca in his fulsome and well-articulated introduction reminds us that a critical mind has never been more essential to acquire ‘a fuller, truer, experience of reality.’ As a successful documentarian for over 60 years, I know of no other book that is more useful in the pursuit of that goal.
*Bill Jersey, winner of two Peabodys, Emmys, and Oscar nominations*

This is the collection of essays on documentary film that I have been waiting for. It brings together many of the best classic pieces on documentary theory and practice, and a trilling assortment of new essays by philosophers, film scholars devoted to aesthetic issues and close reading, and documentary filmmakers who teach. The writing throughout is of the highest order, and the promise of genuine (as opposed to tinker toy) philosophical inquiry is amply kept. David LaRocca has done an exemplary job of editing, and his lengthy overview essay which serves as the volume's Introduction is incisive and indispensable.
*George Toles, University of Manitoba*

As far as documentary film and philosophy are concerned, David LaRocca has summoned a cloud of reliable witnesses and all the usual suspects, or so it seems. Once readers enter the critical conversations that these estimable writers provoke and sustain, the criteria for reliability and suspicion themselves become productively volatile, and that volatility will lead readers to surprising insights and reflections. From considerations of Plato to Cavell and well beyond, these memorable essays fruitfully explore both truth and make believe in documentary film, as well as the manifold challenges of discerning the elusive differences between them.
*Lawrence Rhu, University of South Carolina*

Timely. Vital. Engaging. An essential companion to any thinking about documentary cinema. LaRocca is especially attuned not just to the voices at the heart of theoretical debates but, to my liking, also to those who push out into the practice and craft of documentary filmmaking.
*Paul Cronin, School of Visual Arts*

At the center of many of these observations and discussions—now receiving new and expert engagements in The Philosophy of Documentary Film—has been the taunting power of cinematic reality, nowhere more concentrated than in the quintessential art of the real, the provocative revelator of truth, documentary cinema. . . . These works in hand are contemporary perspectives on, for me, the most vibrant practice in contemporary cinema. They call us to think carefully and seriously not only about the truth claims and strategies of specific documentary films but also about why documentaries are so central to our age.
*Timothy Corrigan, University of Pennsylvania*

An impressive selection, including some of the most interesting voices in documentary thought.
*Jonathan Kahana, University of California, Santa Cruz*

A marvelous collection that promises to inform the teaching of nonfiction film for years to come.
*J.P. Sniadecki, Northwestern University, director of Chaiqian/Demolition, Foreign Parts, and The Iron Ministry and co-director of El Mar La Mar*

The Philosophy of Documentary Film is a welcomed addition to the scholarly study of a mischievous praxis—one that continues to expand, contract, merge, and mangle in its attempts to explore versions of “real life” on film. Periodic, thoughtful reflection on this rogue form is necessary, and this book provides it. The leading lights of nonfiction film scholarship are well represented, and especially pleasing to me, as a documentary filmmaker, is the fact that documentarians have also been enlisted to write about our craft. Furthermore, just for good measure, The Dogma 95 Manifesto is included as both a beacon and dangerous shoal to filmmakers exploring the choppy waters around the fiction/nonfiction whirlpool. Great idea!
*Ross McElwee, Director, Sherman’s March, Bright Leaves, Professor of the Practice of Filmmaking, Harvard University*