Diplominiame darbe „Eksperimentinis dokumentinis filmas“, nagrinėjama kaip dokumentinis kino žanras, perteikia realybę ekrane, kiek tiksliai ir nuosekliai dokumentiniai filmai sugeba fiksuoti realų gyvenimą. Dokumentinio žanro pakilimas, prasidėjo nuo XXI a. ir žengė koja kojon su dokumentalumo stiprėjimu šiuolaikiniame mene. Tai nurodo bendrumą tarp videomeno ir dokumentinio kino žanro. Menininkai norėdami išplėsti dokumentinio kino reprezentacijos rėmus pradėjo eksperimentuotu su dokumentinio kino raiška. Eksperimentai videomene ir dokumentiniame kine prasideda nuo bendro pagrindo – dokumentinio kino kalbos. Videomeninkai naudodami dokumentinio kino kalbas, sukuria realistinę atmosferą savo filmuose, eksperimentuodami menininkai nori pasakyti, kad ne tik standartinė dokumentinio kino raiška gali atspindėti realybę. Dokumentiniame videomene eksperimentės strategijos yra dokumentalumo sampratos laužymas ir kvestionavimas. Diplominiame darbe siekiama išanalizuoti videomeninkų eksperimentus su dokumentinio kino kalba ir kaip baigiamą rezultatą sukuti eksperimentinį dokumentinį filmą apie emigrantę iš Lietuvos. / Work "Experimental documentary film", examines how the documentary film genre, record and represent the reality on the screen, as an objective documentary shots may reflect real life. Strengthening of a documentary genre that began in the twenty-first century, entered and was held in conjunction with documentary brightening discourse in contemporary art. It encourages the consideration of video art and documentary genres in close contact. While artists can‘t fit representation in documentary film frames, experiment with the documentary film resolution and try to expand. Experimental video art and documentary cinema took off from the same ground - a documentary film language, it has become a constant of real representation on the screen. Video artists taking over the documentary film strategies, wants to create a realistic atmosphere of his films, with experiments artists wants to update the definition of documentary, through an extraordinary visual material, as the documentary shots, who pretends to be a direct reflection of reality, also mediated images. My work aims to analyze video artists experiments with language and as a culminating result create documentary film about the emigration from Lithuania.

Postmodernism, with its interrogation of reality and the im/possibility of representation, presented a legitimation crisis for the documentary which would potentially signal the end. Gauging by the renewed interest in the documentary tradition (in theory and practice) it is obvious that postmodernism had the reverse effect on documentary, freeing a filmmaking practice that had become hopelessly trapped within its own representational contradictions. In response to the challenge postmodernism presented, documentary theorists and filmmakers cleared a new space for documentary, and in the process reconsidered the limitations of Western epistemology and the ideal of 'representing reality'. This new space is reflected in the renewed interest in a new and more self-reflexive documentary theory and practice from the early 1980's onward. This essay will examine the transition which the documentary tradition has undergone in light of the shift from modernity to postmodernity: the shift from Grierson's heavily didactic social documentary to cinema verite and direct cinema and, finally, to the self-reflexive postmodern documentary. A textual analysis of Patricia Gruben's Leylines (1993), a recent postmodern documentary, will allow me to demonstrate how the contemporary documentary deals with the postmodern questions of history, representation, authority, knowledge, and subjectivity. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

No description available.

This dissertation formulates a poetics of performance in nonfiction film and television. Building on a large body of converging research that calls for an acknowledgment of: the constructedness of documentary texts; the performative nature of identity; and the significance of screen performance, I illustrate the way in which documentary subjects must finally be seen as creative agents who (consciously or not) play a significant role in determining the meanings, functions, and effects of the films in which they appear. A first chapter lays the groundwork for this discussion, setting out a means of understanding and investigating the documentary performer’s work. It is argued that nonfiction performance is a three-tiered process, wherein everyday performative activity (tier #1) is shaped by and often tailored to the camera (tier #2) within specific nonfiction film frameworks (tier #3). In addition to providing a flexible and generally applicable model of what the nonfiction subject’s work entails, this conceptualization suggests an appropriate means of analysing individual documentary performances, indicating the necessity of attending to the way in which twice modified everyday self-presentational tools serve as signifiers in any given nonfiction text. Subsequent chapters turn from the issue of what nonfiction performance involves to a consideration of what it accomplishes. Drawing from scholarship devoted to each of the three levels of the documentary ‘social actor’s’ work, I posit three major functions for nonfiction performance. Chapter 2 demonstrates the way in which the individuals who appear in documentaries play a significant role in the construction of ‘characters’, which, in turn, exert an indelible influence on the meaning(s) of the texts in which they figure. Chapter 3 argues that nonfiction performance helps to bolster and/or to destabilize normative understandings of identity categories such as gender, sexuality, age, ethnicity, race, class and dis/ability. Finally, the concluding chapter discusses the way in which documentary performers help to invite affective reactions from spectators, and – in so doing – contribute significantly to nonfiction texts’ ability to effectuate social change. Detailed analyses of a wide range of documentaries provide support for these contentions.

The thesis identifies a development integral to contemporary German documentary cinema that has not yet been taken into academic consideration: namely a new will to depict the regional, the rural, or Heimat. I have organised the research under precisely these three thematic motifs: the rural (Chapter One), the regional (Chapter Two), and Heimat (Chapter Three). The importance of the rural and the regional has to date been largely overlooked by academics in the field of film studies. Yet in the context of Germany they are key cultural markers – both are fundamental to the deep‐rooted German cultural concept of Heimat. Heimat, on the other hand, has attracted the recent attention of film scholars; their focus, however, has been mainly limited to historical analyses. I have implemented a number of theoretical frameworks in order to model a much‐needed understanding of this emerging German cinema. My examination of representations of the rural is rooted in a geographic approach to the medium of film, with an emphasis on the shaping (or lack thereof) of cinematic landscapes. My investigation of representations of the regional benefits from ethnographic concepts such as Other‐ing and exoticism. My discussion of a revival of Heimat on screen is based on historical analyses of the genre of the Heimat film. These theoretical frameworks are guided by close textual analysis of eight case study films spanning the period 1999 – 2007: Die Blume der Hausfrau (Dominik Wessely, 1999), Out of Edeka (Konstantin Faigle, 2001), Schotter wie Heu (Wiltrud Baier and Sigrun Baier, 2002), Herr Wichmann von der CDU (Andreas Dresen, 2003), Ich kenn’ keinen – Allein unter Heteros (Jochen Hick, 2003), Die Blutritter (Douglas Wolfsperger, 2004), Durchfahrtsland (Alexandra Sell, 2005), Full Metal Village (Sung‐Hyung Cho, 2007). The thesis not only identifies and analyses this new development in German cinema but also contextualises it in an academic framework.

This thesis consists of two parts: an autobiographical documentary film and a written exegesis. The film, My Lovers Both, is a record of two journeys back to my native South Africa wherein I confront aspects of my past. These two trips offer a means to explore a personal history around the experiences of immigration, displacement and exile. In the exegesis, I argue that autobiography is changing and rather than offering catalogues of public achievement, contemporary personal histories deal with sites of trauma and challenge dominant narratives of official memory. Likewise, the New Documentary is embracing fictional strategies and moving towards increased subjectivity and introspection. As a consequence, new forms are created that generate novel insights into causality and time. The exegesis goes on to examine the major influences on my work as a filmmaker and then articulates a reflective analysis of the creative process which produced My Lovers Both.

There are two distinct but related parts to this exegesis. Firstly there is the production of a fifty-five minute documentary Return of the Trojan Horse, and secondly a written exegesis. The latter advances an academic argument centred around the research question - how to motivate the role of the expository documentary at a time when the documentary field is dominated by the debate between philosophical scepticism and empirical realism, while in aesthetic terms, the documentary mode itself is led by perfomative/interactive documentaries such as Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. My response to this question is informed in theoretical terms by the Critical Realist paradigm. The use of Critical Realism enables the exegesis to supply an integrated approach which seeks to transcend both the sceptical and the empirical realist positions. In doing so, the exegesis makes a contribution both to documentary theory and the Critical Realist paradigm itself by applying it to the field of documentary film theory. As such the exegesis addresses an absence of aesthetic theorising within the Critical Realist paradigm. As part of the process I review, analyse and synthesise the key theoretical arguments of authors Bill Nichols, Michael Renov, Brian Winston, John Corner and Noel Carroll. The documentary sub-genres are then located within the context of these theoretical debates while the emphasis is placed on the expository sub-genre as utilised in my own documentary film, Return of the Trojan Horse. The exegesis then critically discusses Return of the Trojan Horse from a Critical Realist perspective and reflects on the strategies involved in the production of the film. As the topic of the film deals with the negative impacts of economic liberalisation, the mass media is briefly discussed within the context of a deregulated market and right-wing politics, while reviewing Herman and Chomsky's 'A Propaganda Model' in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, 2002.

Social documentary filmmaking cannot be undertaken in a theoretical void, regardless of the intentions of the filmmaker. Each film's textual, stylistic and aesthetic composition is dictated by the ideological intent of the filmmaker, either consciously or subconsciously. As a result, social documentary films are a product of either conservative or subversive filmmakers and can be viewed as cultural products of social control by the dominant capitalist ideology or as tools promoting class awareness, class struggle and revolutionary praxis by those sympathetic to Marxist doctrine. This dissertation examines how Marxist ideology, in particular theories relating to class structure and the class struggle, can be used by filmmakers to analyse social documentary films. It enables the construction of a methodological 'toolkit' for filmmakers from which they are able to determine if individual social documentary films can be regarded as Marxist or not. This 'toolkit' is comprised of the theories of Lenin, Comolli and Narboni, Brecht, Althusser, and Weber among others. Once a methodological framework is constructed, it is used to evaluate a number of social documentary case studies including 7-Up, Harlan County USA, Roger and Me, and my own film, A Shit of a Job (which was produced by myself for broadcast on SBS television), as to their adherence to the principles of Marxist aesthetics and allegiance to the proletarian cause of class awareness and the class struggle.

No description available.

This thesis argues that Māori popular music, regardless of genre, is a valuable resource in the formulation of a vibrant and relevant Māori rangatahi (youth) identity. Specifically, the research investigates the complex relationship between popular music, social space, and Māori culture and community in Aotearoa. The researcher interviewed six participants from within the Māori music community and practiced participant observation at popular music events. The findings of this qualitative research are framed by an in-depth literature review into questions of Māori identity, as well as an application of ethnomusicology theories on the relationship of music to place and community. The research output includes both a 30-minute documentary and this accompanying exegesis, which frames the documentary within relevant fields of scholarship and presents a critical analysis of its successes and weaknesses. The researcher elected to create a documentary in recognition of the medium’s ability to maintain the voice of the research participants, capture the dynamism of the Māori popular music scene, and increase the potential for the research to reach a wider audience. The use of documentary also allows for an exploration of the relationship between music and documentary, and begins a discussion on the potential of socially-conscious rockumentaries to reveal crucial social issues. Finally, the exegesis questions the ethics of outsider filmmaking, and explores how the concept of ‘Kaupapa Māori filmmaking’ influenced the process of making the film.