Crafting Truth: Documentary Form and Meaning

294 Pages·2010·1.835 MB·English

by  Louise Spence

cr af ting
t r u t h
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cr af ting
t r u t h
Documentary Form and Meaning
louise spence
and vinicius navarro
rutgers university press
new brunswick, new jersey, and london
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spence, Louise.
Craft ing truth : documentary form and meaning / Louise Spence and Vinicius Navarro.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–8135–4902–6 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978–0–8135–4903–3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Documentary fi lms—History and criticism. 2. Documentary fi lms—Production and direction.
I. Navarro, Vinicius, 1967–II. Title.
PN1995.9.D6S5955 2010
070.1’8—dc22
2010008406
A British Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copyright © 2011 by Louise Spence and Vinicius Navarro
Chapter 10 Copyright © 2011 by Louise Spence, Vinicius Navarro, and Carl Lewis
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechani-
cal, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without writt en permission from the publisher.
Please contact Rutgers University Press, 100 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8099. Th e
only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defi ned by U.S. copyright law.
Visit our Web site: htt p://rutgerspress.rutgers.edu
Manufactured in the United States of America
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Para Afonso e Lourdes,
and for Regina and Milton,
our fi rst teachers
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part One. General Concepts
1. Authenticity 11
2. Evidence 36
3. Authority 59
4. Responsibility 83
Part Two. Structural Organization
5. Argument 113
6. Dramatic Stories, Poetic and Essay Documentaries 135
Part Three. Formal Techniques
7. Editing 161
8. Camerawork 187
9. Th e Profi lmic 213
10. Sounds (Coauthored with Carl Lewis) 239
Index 265
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Acknowledgments
Writing acknowledgements is a most pleasurable, yet diffi cult, task. Th e thanks
we owe to the people who assisted, encouraged, and endured us during the fi ve
years we were working on this project are enormous. It is clear that this book was
built on the wisdom and generosity of many people, especially Karen Backstein,
Lemi Baruh, Melis Behlil, Julie Par Cadenhead, Dino Capone, Yunsun Chae, Mi-
chael Chanan, Elizabeth Corbett , Alfredo Dias D’Almeida, Martin Duncan, Jayne
Fargnoli, Joseph Goldberg, Frances Grodzinsky, Ahmet Gürata, Roger Hallas,
Roald Hoff mann, Jeff rey Howlett , John L. Jackson Jr., Lynne Jackson, Aslı Kota-
man, Alisa Lebow, Michael Nitsche, Augusta Palmer, Robert Sklar, Qi Wang, and
Mark Wyers.
We are especially grateful to Hardy Griffi n, whose keen interest in our project
and insightful reading of the manuscript are unsurpassed, Doğa Aytuna (Mac ex-
pert extraordinaire), who facilitated the photos, and Carl Lewis, who came to our
rescue with his att entive ear for music.
And we must also thank a slew of fi lm and video makers who loaned us works
and answered questions, among them Kamal Aljafari, Magnus Bärtås, Alan Ber-
liner, Jean Carlomusto, Kavery Dutt a, Connie Field, Richard Fung, Louis Massiah,
Abraham Ravett , Larissa Sansour, and Jalal Toufi c, and a whole mess of librar-
ians who helped us to fi nd material we were looking for, especially Didem Önal
and Sachi Spohn. Th anks as well to Videofi lmes, Zeitgeist Films, Documentary
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