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Summary: This collection of essays presents new formulations of ideas and practices within documentary media that respond critically to the multifaceted challenges of our age. As social media, augmented reality, and interactive technologies play an increasing role in the documentary landscape, new theorizations are needed to account for how such media both represents recent political, socio-historical, environmental, and representational shifts, and challenges the predominant approaches by promoting new critical sensibilities. The contributions to this volume approach the idea of "critical distance" in a documentary context and in subjects as diverse as documentary exhibitions, night photography, drone imagery, installation art, mobile media, nonhuman creative practices, sound art and interactive technologies. It is essential reading for scholars, practitioners and students working in fields such as documentary studies, film studies, cultural studies, contemporary art history and digital media studies.

Summary: This collection of essays presents new formulations of ideas and practices within documentary media that respond critically to the multifaceted challenges of our age. As social media, augmented reality, and interactive technologies play an increasing role in the documentary landscape, new theorizations are needed to account for how such media both represents recent political, socio-historical, environmental, and representational shifts, and challenges the predominant approaches by promoting new critical sensibilities. The contributions to this volume approach the idea of "critical distance" in a documentary context and in subjects as diverse as documentary exhibitions, night photography, drone imagery, installation art, mobile media, nonhuman creative practices, sound art and interactive technologies. It is essential reading for scholars, practitioners and students working in fields such as documentary studies, film studies, cultural studies, contemporary art history and digital media studies.

The article offers a criticism of the documentary films "Stories We Tell People," directed by Sarah Polley, and "Out-Takes From the Life of a Happy Man" directed by Jonas Mekas. Focusing on how both films address subjective experiences of being and memory, the author discusses how Polley and Mekas explore the state of representation as well as the use of image for personal and public examinations of the self.

The article offers the author's insights on topics related to the American history. Topics mentioned include the social aspects of the American history, the management of divisive and fragmented culture, and the role of patriotism in the American history. Also mentioned are the documentary films on the American history by film director Ken Burns and the effects of postmodernism in the American history.

An essay is presented on Chinese nonfiction films in China. It examines the Chinese visual works in the context of nonfiction stories, which are defined by multiple-screen epistemologies. It also examines how Chinese film and video makers tend to experiment outside the feature-film format and often use documentary films to define their works.

This article examines how the documentary Lost in La Mancha (Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe) reflects on the production process of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, a movie inspired by Cervantes' Quixote that Terry Gilliam never actually finished. First, it is suggested that the documentary in question represents Gilliam's movie in a very "Cervantine" fashion: in the way the documentary blurs authority, and plays with different authors, voices and perspectives, it metafictionally holds up for exhibit, and at the same time questions, the mechanisms of film-making similar to what Cervantes did with the genre of the novel itself. Second, this approach to the documentary might itself be questioned if we take into account that the documentary's directors unwaveringly insist that they strove for an authentic, truthful and respectable rendering of the shooting of Gilliam's film. This view on the documentary might then further be linked to Cervantes in a very different way, in the sense that it would be considered as a baroque 'desengaño' in which the exuberant fantasies of Terry Gilliam are parodied. In that sense, we could interpret Lost in La Mancha not only as the unmaking of Gilliam's film, but also as the unmasking of Gilliam as a writer of chivalresque movies rather than of a truly quixotic story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article lists several Australian documentary films discussed in the book "Australian Post-War Documentary Film: An Arc of Mirrors" by Deane Williams including "The Back of Beyond," "Captain Thunderbolt," and "The Coaster."

A bibliography on the subject of Australian post-war documentary film is presented which includes the book "The Back of Beyond: A Compilation by Eric Else for Use in Studying John Heyer's "Film of Inland Australia," by E. Else, the article "Housing Film Shown in Street," and the film "Interview," directed by Graham Shirley.

Chapter 5 of the book "Australian Post-War Documentary Film: An Arc of Mirrors" by Deane Williams is presented. It explores the impetus of settler culture that can be seen in the never-ending journey structure of several Australian documentary films including "Mike and Stefani," "The Land," and "Industrial Britain." It describes the concept of settler culture as a constant ongoing struggle to render the landscape, to provide meaning to the land and the culture.

Chapter 4 of the book "Australian Post-War Documentary Film: An Arc of Mirrors" by Deane Williams is presented. It explores the neo-realism of a 34-minute documentary-drama "Mike and Stefani," directed by R. Maslyn Williams. It notes that the narrative of the film was based on the real-life experiences of the couple Mycola and Stefani S., who were reenacted their lives for the film.

Chapter 8 of the book "History Teacher's Movie Guide: Choosing & Using the Right Films for Your Classroom," by Richard Di Giacomo is presented. It focuses on the use of dramatic and documentary films in classrooms. It discusses how bias in films or teachers' political views may lead to belittling, oversimplifying or stereotyping of the views.

Chapter 10 of the book "The Praxis of Alain Badiou," edited by Paul Ashton, A. J. Bartlett and Justin Clements is presented. It explores the characteristics of documentary plays in the fringes of the ontico-ontological division. It notes that documentary is engaged in the struggle to overcome mere repetition of the pro-filmic or material world. It emphasizes the elaboration of mathematical orientations that are similarly contesting the nature of ontology.

Chapter 7 of the book "Unknown Soldiers: How Terrorism Transformed the Modern World" is presented. It discusses the documentary film "The Basque Ball: The Skin Against the Stone," directed by Julio Medem, an entry on the 151st San Sebastián film festival in September 2003. It also narrates various Irish's conflicts involving Catholic community and Irish Republican Army (IRA), which led to terrorism as well as the beginning of Palestinian terrorism.

An autobiography of film editor Lidia Zonn is presented. Zonn was born in Vilnius, Lithuania in 1934 and moved to Warsaw, Poland with her parents in 1938. She finished her studies in 1959 at Lodz Film School and started working as an assistant to editors at the Documentary Film Studies (Wytwornia Filmsiv Dokumentalnych) in Warsaw. Zonn's film editing career is explored.

The article focuses on the study about multimedia investigation of historical documentary film "The Civil War," by Ken Burns. The intent of the study is to exercise the teaching methods of the teachers based on the historians' writings. Moreover, the students have investigated various aspects of the war and the impact to the American society.

This article explores the motion picture Forbidden Love, a hybrid documentary organized loosely around the phenomenon of lesbian pulp fiction. The film takes tow routes in addressing these novels: it builds its own four-part forbidden love, girl-meets-girl narrative within the film, the opening and closing segments of which frame the documentary, and it also uses the novels as a starting point for talking-head interviews with older Canadian lesbians who recollect their experiences of the emergent urban lesbian culture in Canadian cities in the nineteen fifties.

This article discusses the role of home video for the queer community. Home-viewing plays a social role that can be further distinguished in terms of the forms of affectivity it might command. Because gay and lesbian films have historically circulated in festival venues, the home video market makes films in a number of genres much more widely accessible. Many of the feature films that have appeared in festivals without gaining distribution theatrically go straight to video for the queer market. In a list of more than 130 videos for sale by mail, the documentary genre listing includes films such as Blood Sisters, It's Elementary, and Paris Was a Woman. The proliferation of queer work is not simply a concomitant process of democratization.

This article looks at the significance of the Singapore-as-New Asia concept to the formation of queer culture in Singapore. The theory of cybernetics helps to explain how New Asian regional sexuality is characterized by a consumption of Asian values organized in a system that restructures information as New Asian capital. The film Sambal Belacan in San Francisco, directed by Madeleine Lim, documents the lives of some members of the Singapore and Malaysian Bisexual and Lesbian Network in San Francisco, California. The film uses food as a site for cultural maintenance and negotiation. Consuming sambal belacan requires a form of cultural capital that is acquired through the privilege of shared knowledge.

This article discusses the films of Japanese documentarist Hara Kazuo against the backdrop of Japanese nonfiction film in order to consider larger questions about realism of the documentary moving image. Hara's filmography reveals a considerable variety of subject matter, a portrait of a victim of cerebral palsy, a deeply personal account of his relationships with women, a radical investigation into wartime atrocities, and the biographies of a novelist and a filmmaker. While Hara is always undergoing transformation, the concern of his films and style in which these issues are worked out are inevitably affiliated with the filmmaker's sense of his own subjectivity as both social actor and artist. Hara's approach to postwar Japanese history eschews any easy realism, as it is a representation of the world linked to the measure of his own sight.

This article discusses the view of André Bazin on the essence of cinema. Marginal films, such as documentaries, newsreels, poetic films or live-record films, allow Bazin to formulate precisely what for him is a fundamental law, which states that whenever it is possible to enclose two heterogeneous objects in the same frame, editing is prohibited. It can be seen that what justifies the prohibition of editing, or of fragmentation, is not only the exploitation of depth of field, the birth of cinemascope, or the ever-greater mobility of the camera in an increasingly homogenous space but also the nature of what is being filmed, the status of the protagonists who are forced to share the screen, sometimes at the risk of their lives.

Presents an essay on the documentary film "The Bullfight," created by Pierre Braunberger. Goal in editing the film; Approach used in presenting the history of bullfighting in the film; Main topic of the film.

The article reports that documentary film enthusiasts will gather for the 40th Robert Flaherty Film Seminar on August 6 to 12, 2001 in Wells College, Aurora, New York. This year's gathering will be coordinated by former film coordinator for the Asia Society Somi Roy. The festival will feature a selection of films by Asian-American and Asian filmmakers.

This article deals with the influence of fast food chain McDonald's in global and local family cultures. Referencing the documentary film McLibel, Helen Steel and Dave Morris probes on issues like the effects of global and transnational capital on workers and animals, ethics versus profit, and concern about the effect of advertising on children. Furthermore, the author argues that the example of McDonald's creation of a global family can be used to problematise those practices that are seen to be transparently good and ethical. While McDonald's offers a cosy standardised world, ethical forms of eating tend to give a blueprint for conduct that place individuals within strict moral systems. In different ways these models fail to allow for a recognition of the ambiguities and the contradictions of living in an interconnected world. The company's advertising campaigns demonstrate its rhetoric of caring, global citizenship through images of families and community, transcending regions and nations, class, ethnicity and age. As the human face of the cyber network, McDonald's plays on the interconnectedness of regions, peoples, time and space. On the other hand, the McDonaldisation of the workforce is obviously part of the climate of 'labour precariousness' that now characterises the economy.

This chapter examines films and videos that excavate memories from objects. Movements through space and time can be read in the image; movement among cultures, like the passage of time, creates disjunctive, illegible images. Documentaries claim the privileged position of representing reality. Consequently, it is especially pressing for them to explain the transformations and disarticulations of reality under the pressure of intercultural movements. A film may fail to connect a recollection-object to memory, so that the object remains illegible, a fossil trace of forgotten or inexplicable histories. These failures are just as informative as successful connections are, for by maintaining the incompossibility of different cultural discourses they demonstrate the unending struggle over meaning that characterizes intercultural life.

The article explains various terms and issues related to feminism. The term second wave feminism was coined by activist Marsha Weinman Lear to refer to the formation of women's liberation groups in America, Britain and Germany in the late 1960s. The term second wave implies that first wave feminism ended in the 1920s. Disillusionment with the politics of Civil Rights, the anti-war movement and Students for a Democratic Society led American women to form their own consciousness-raising groups. The main change in second wave feminist theory since 1970 has been the move from minimising differences between men and women to celebrating a woman-centred perspective. E. Ann Kaplan, in her book "Women and Film," charts the realist debate in feminist film. She observes that the documentary film has been the traditional exemplar of the realist film. She notes that the documentary form of realist film has provoked much theoretical debate. However, Kaplan fails to make a clear conceptual distinction between feminist film and films by and about women.

Chapter 8 of the novel "Cactus Blood," by Lucha Corpi, is presented. Gloria Damasco relayed María Baldomar's account of events to Justin Escobar. In turn, Justin told Gloria that one of the policemen following Josie Baldomar works for the San Quentin Department of Corrections, at which Gloria deduced that the police was looking for Ramón Caballos, the man who blew up the pesticide tank in 1973 and was filmed in Art Bello's documentary. According to María Baldomar, Caballos had died from cancer years ago.

Chapter 1 of the novel "Cactus Blood," by Lucha Corpi, is presented. The protagonist Gloria Damasco was informed by private investigator Justin Escobar that Sonny Mares, an old acquaintance of theirs, was found dead in his apartment under mysterious circumstances. Inside Sonny's apartment, Gloria found a videotaped documentary of the 1973 United Farm Workers' Strike playing in the television set, made by Sonny's friend Art Bello. The film's ending showed a man walking away from a pesticide tank, which exploded without a warning.

Presents a narrative on the making of the documentary film "The Panama Deception," which is about the invasion of Panama by the U.S. in 1988. Budget constraints encountered during the making of the film; Security threats experienced during filming; Award received by the film.

The article discusses about women's voice in British television documentaries. It states that informational genres on British television are coming under increasing pressure in the 1990s to locate the popular pulse. News bulletins have responded in part with an added injection of human interest; documentaries, longer habituated to giving issues a human face, are defining this as an emphasis on the intimate or the quirky to catch the scheduler's eye. For feminist critics, greater intimization and personalization in informational television have produced a curious ambivalence. Suggestive, on the one hand, of a corrective move beyond a masculinized agenda and discourse, these trends can also be seen as reinforcing old gendered hierarchies, with rational debate of public issues still valued over affective explorations of personal or social relationships. The slogan the personal is political, successful in epitomizing the feminist project to dismantle this ideological opposition, nevertheless oversimplifies the issues.

Chapter 7 of the book "History Teacher's Movie Guide: Choosing & Using the Right Films for Your Classroom," by Richard Di Giacomo is presented. It focuses on anachronism in the films, used in classrooms. It defines anachronism as blunders in films, caused by lack of research or fact checking. It dicusses anachronism with reference to the films like "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc," and "Malcolm X."