Speaking Truths with Film: Evidence, Ethics, Politics in Documentary

295 Pages·2016·7.88 MB·English

by  Bill Nichols

Speaking Truths with Film
Evidence, Ethics, Politics in Documentary
BILL NICHOLS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
SPEAKING TRUTHS WITH FILM

Speaking Truths with Film
Evidence, Ethics, Politics in Documentary
BILL NICHOLS
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
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University of California Press
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© 2016 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Nichols, Bill, author.
Title: Speaking truths with film : evidence, ethics, politics in
documentary / Bill Nichols.
Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press,
[2016] | “2016 Includes bibliographical references and index.
I dentifiers: lccn 2015045232 | isbn 9780520290396 (cloth : alk. paper)
| isbn 9780520290402 (pbk. : alk. paper) | isbn 9780520964587 (ebook)
S ubjects: lcsh: Documentary films—History and criticism.
C lassification: lcc PN1995.9.D6 N5425 2016 | ddc 070.1/8—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045232
Manufactured in the United States of America
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In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible
and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on
Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and
meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r 1997)
(Permanence of Paper).
For Victoria Costello,
an inspiring presence in my life

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
PART I. DOCUMENTARY MEETS THE NEIGHBORS:
THE AVANT-GARDE AND FICTION FILM 7
1. Documentary Film and the Modernist Avant-Garde 13
2. Documentary Reenactment and the Fantasmatic Subject 34
FURTHER REFLECTIONS: EXPERIMENTAL DOCUMENTARY
3. Letter to Lynn Sachs on Investigation of a Flame 51
4. Breaking the Frame: Gender, Violation, and the Avant-Garde 54
PART II. THE AUDIO IN AUDIOVISUAL 57
5. Documentary Film and the Coming of Sound 61
6. To See the World Anew: Revisiting the Voice of Documentary 74
FURTHER REFLECTIONS: MUSIC IN DOCUMENTARY
7. The Sound of Music 90
PART III. BEYOND “JUST THE FACTS”: EVIDENCE,
INTERPRETATION, AND SOCIAL CONTEXT 95
8. The Question of Evidence: The Power of Rhetoric and the
Documentary Film 99
9. The Terrorist Event 111
FURTHER REFLECTIONS: THE MANY FORMS OF EVIDENCE
10. Remaking History: Jay Leyda and the Compilation Film 131
11. Restrepo: A Case of Inadvertent Evidence 140
12. The Symptomatic Biopic: Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine 146
PART IV. ETHICS AND IRONY IN DOCUMENTARY 149
13. Documentary Ethics: Doing the Right Thing 154
14. Irony, Paradox, and the Documentary: Double Meanings
and Double Binds 164
FURTHER REFLECTIONS: NOTES ON TRAUMA
15. Letter to Errol Morris: Feelings of Revulsion and the Limits
of Academic Discourse 181
16. Perpetrators, Trauma, and Film 191
PART V. POLITICS AND THE DOCUMENTARY FILM 197
17. San Francisco Newsreel: Collectives, Politics, Films 201
18. The Political Documentary and the Question of Impact 220
Notes 231
Index 265
Preface
This book is a selective collection of essays spanning more than forty years
of writing about documentary film. It brings together work that arose from
a variety of circumstances, most notably graduate seminars on selected top-
ics in documentary and various invitations to present lectures. The essays
complement my three books on the documentary film. As a whole they
explore issues of documentary form, structure, and aesthetics; the question
of ethics and how standards and conventions can be both honored and pro-
ductively violated; evidence and how it is constructed and used; and politics
as a vital dimension to the documentary form. Each Part features two major
essays that explore the key issues and stand in a complementary or contra-
puntal relation to each other. These issues receive additional elaboration in
the Further Reflections segments, which consist of shorter, more occasional
pieces that take up more local or specific questions and films.
This book is not designed primarily as a textbook though it certainly can
be used as one. It is also not a monograph that systematically examines the
topics identified, nor is it a comprehensive treatment of a limited swath of
documentary work but, instead, offers a wide-ranging series of explorations
into crucial topics, drawing from a wide range of examples both historical
and contemporary. Since the essays have been written over an extended
period they also possess an internal historical dimension as evidence of the
evolution of my thinking (priorities, questions, issues) over the course of
my career. The field has changed, and I have as well. Whether the changes
are in parallel or at some angle to each other I cannot say, though I am
struck, for example, by the radical shift from the 1970s, when a radical film-
making group struggled to remain solvent (Newsreel, the group discussed
in the final part to this book), and the number of social-justice-minded
filmmakers who gain financial support for their work today. Over the
ix