Direct Cinema? Innovative Documentary Studies Online

Image from Subdivided (Dean Terry, US 2007)

Film Studies For Free is keepin' it real today with a choice selection of links to mostly very recent, definitely innovative, and freely-accessible online documentary studies (last updated April 10, 2009):

• On the 'Rocumentary': Keith Beatty, 'It's Not Only Rock and Roll: 'Rockumentary', Direct Cinema, and Performative Display', Australasian Journal of American Studies. December 2005
• On Animation and Documentary: David Bordwell, 'Showing What Can't Be Filmed', Observations on Film Art and Film Art, March 24, 2009


• On Spectacle and Documentary: Elizabeth Cowie, 'The Spectacle of Reality and Documentary Film,' Documentary Box, #10 (Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival) (1997) (Also see HERE; and do visit the main site Documentary Box Online Journal for many other great articles on documentary)


• On Music and Documentary: Leonardo D'Amico, 'People and sounds”: Filming African music between visual anthropology and television documentary', Revista Transcultural de Música/Transcultural Music Review, #11 (2007)
• On Direct Address and Documentary: Alex Gerbaz, 'Direct Address, Ethical Imagination, and Errol Morris’s Interrotron', Film-Philosophy, 12.2, September 2008


• On Activism and Documentary: John Haynes, 'Documentary as Social Justice Activism: The Textual and Political Strategies of Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films', 49th Parallel, Vol.21 (Autumn 2007)


• On 'the Personal' in Japanese Documentary: Nada Hisashi, 'Self-Documentary: Its Origins and Present State', Documentary Box, #26 (Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival), 2005


• On Adaptation and Documentary: David T. Johnson, 'Playgrounds of Unlimited Potential: Adaptation, Documentary, and Dogtown and Z-Boys', Adaptation Vol. 2 , No. 1 , pp. 1 – 16 (2009) (a free sample article from this new Oxford Journals periodical)


• On Performativity and Science Documentary: John Arthur Little, 'The Power and Potential of Performative Documentary Film', e-thesis April 2007, Montana State University
• On New Approaches to Documentary: B. Ruby Rich, 'Documentary Disciplines: An Introduction'
  
• On New Media and Documentary: Bjørn Sørenssen, 'Digital video and Alexandre Astruc’s caméra-stylo: the new avant-garde in documentary realized?', Studies in Documentary Film, vol. 2, no. 1 (March 2008): 47-59 (see abstract; temporarily free online. Thanks a lot to Watching YouTube for the link)


• On Stylization, Abstraction and Documentary: Billy Budd Vermillion, 'The "Wondrous Truth" of Microcosmos', 16:9 - April 2007 - 5. årgang - nummer 21

Also see the great articles for the 'New worlds of documentary' Special Section of Jump Cut, issue no. 48, winter 2006, edited by Julia Lesage:

Introduction: new worlds of documentary by Julia Lesage; Emergency analysis, Terri Schiavo: introduction The cutting edge: emergencies in visual culture by Janet Staiger; Schiavo videos' context and reception: timely triage by Diane Waldman; Emergency analysis: the academic traffic in images by Catherine L. Preston; The videographic persistence of Terri Schiavo by Janet Walker Walker; A walk on the wild side: the changing face of TV wildlife documentary by Richard Kilborn; Strange Justice: sounding out the Right: Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, and constructing spin in the name of justice by Steve Lipkin; Giving voice: performance and authenticity in the documentary musical by Derek Paget and Jane Roscoe; Video Vigilantes and the work of shame by Gareth Palmer; Audio documentary: a polemical introduction for the visual studies crowd by Chuck Kleinhans; TV news titles: picturing the planet by Sean Cubitt; Les Archives de la Planète: a cinematographic atlas by Teresa Castro; Cinephilia and the travel film: Gambling, Gods and LSD by Catherine Russell; Dark Days: a narrative of environmental adaptation by Joseph Heumann and Robin L. Murray; Feminist history making and Video Remains by Alexandra Juhasz.