ABSTRACT
The work of Bill Nichols and Vivian Sobchack has contributed greatly to people's understanding of documentary ethics, and their ideas can be productively extended to a consideration of the ethics of appropriation. Since nearly the beginning of cinema, documentary filmmakers have been reusing pre-existing footage in new films in order to produce new narratives and arguments. One of the primary attractions of Tom and Jeannie's recordings is their sense of being private. The status of the footage as documentary evidence then begins to be further undercut as diary entries of Adam Czerniakov, the head of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Council, about the Nazi film crew's activities are read on the soundtrack. In any case of appropriation, however, the ethics of the original gaze played against the ethics of the gaze of the appropriator will determine whether people read the appropriation as ethical or unethical.
