ABSTRACT
American Documentary Filmmaking in the Digital Age examines the recent challenges to the conventions of realist documentary through the lens of war documentary films by Ken Burns, Michael Moore, and Errol Morris. During the twentieth century, the invention of new technologies of audiovisual representation such as cinema, television, video, and digital media have transformed the modes of historical narration and with it forced historians to assess the impact of new visual technologies on the construction of history. This book investigates the manner in which this contemporary Western "crisis" in historical narrative is produced by a larger epistemological shift in visual culture. Ricciardelli uses the theme of war as depicted in these directors’ films to focus her study and look at the model(s) of national identity that Burns, Morris, and Moore shape through their depictions of US military actions. She examines how postcolonial critiques of historicism and the advent of digitization have affected the narrative structure of documentary film and the shaping of historical consciousness through cinematic representation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|45 pages
The Realist Documentary Tradition in the Postmodern Age
chapter |14 pages
Introduction
chapter 2|12 pages
The Demise of the Academic Critique of Realism
part II|29 pages
Audiovisual Historical Narration in the Age of Digitization
chapter 4|11 pages
From Nanook of the North to Social Networking Websites
part III|72 pages
American Documentary Filmmaking in the Postmodern Age