The documentary, a genre as old as cinema itself, has traditionally
aspired to objectivity. Whether making ethnographic,
propagandistic, or educational films, documentarians have pointed
the camera outward, drawing as little attention to themselves as
possible. In recent decades, however, a new kind of documentary has
emerged in which the filmmaker has become the subject of the work.
Whether chronicling family history, sexual identity, or a personal
or social world, this new generation of nonfiction filmmakers has
defiantly embraced autobiography.
In The Subject of Documentary, Michael Renov focuses on how
documentary filmmaking has become an important means for both
examining and constructing selfhood. By looking at key figures in
documentary filmmaking as well as noncanonical video art and
avant-garde artists, Renov broadens the definition of what counts
as documentary, and explores the intersection of the personal and
political, considering how memory can create a way into asking
troubling questions about identity, oppression, and resiliency.
Offering historical context for the explosion of personal
nonfiction filmmaking in the 1980s and 1990s, Renov analyzes films
in which the subjectivity of the filmmaker is expressly defined in
relation to political struggle or historical trauma, from Haskell
Wexler's Medium Cool to Jonas Mekas's Lost, Lost, Lost. And,
looking beyond the traditional documentary, Renov contemplates such
nontraditional modes of autobiographical practice as the essay
film, the video confession, and the personal Web page.
Unique in its attention to diverse expressions of personal
nonfiction filmmaking, The Subject of Documentary forges a new
understanding of theheightened role and function of subjectivity in
contemporary documentary practice.
Michael Renov is professor of critical studies at the USC School
of Cinema-Television. He is the editor of Theorizing Documentary
and the coeditor of Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices
(Minnesota, 1996) and Collecting Visible Evidence (Minnesota,
1999).
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