This lively introduction to television documentaries spotlights their history, production and reception, principal forms and functions and their adaptation to today’s programming needs. What impact has television's growing commercialisation had on the type of documentary broadcast? What has led to the introduction of an increasing number of hybridised forms? These questions are addressed within an examination of the role of institutions, documentary’s 'special relationship' with the real, and an insight into how audiences interpret the documentaries they view. Confronting reality has been written with the requirements of media studies students in mind, yet it is a must for everyone concerned with recording reality in the fast-changing world of television today.

Loss is an inescapable reality of life, and individuals need to develop a capacity to grieve in order to mature and live life to the full. Yet most western movie audiences live in cultures that do not value this necessary process and filmgoers finding themselves deeply moved by a particular film are often left wondering why. In Cinema as Therapy, John Izod and Joanna Dovalis set out to fill a gap in work on the conjunction of grief, therapy and cinema. Looking at films including Million Dollar Baby, The Son's Room, Birth and The Tree of Life, Cinema as Therapy offers an understanding of how deeply emotional life can be stirred at the movies. Izod and Dovalis note that cinema is a medium which engages people in a virtual dialogue with their own and their culture's unconscious, more deeply than is commonly thought. By analysing the meaning of each film and the root cause of the particular losses featured, the authors demonstrate how our experiences in the movie theatre create an opportunity to prepare psychologically for the inevitable losses we must all eventually face. In recognising that the movie theatre shares symbolic features with both the church and the therapy room, the reader sees how it becomes a sacred space where people can encounter the archetypal and ease personal suffering through laughter or tears, without inhibition or fear, to reach a deeper understanding of themselves. Cinema as Therapy will be essential reading for therapists, students and academics working in film studies and looking to engage with psychological studies in depth as well as filmgoers who want to explore their relationship with the screen. The book includes a glossary of Jungian and Freudian terms which enhances the clarity of the text and the understanding of the reader.

"Screen, Culture, Psyche" illuminates recent developments in Jungian modes of media analysis, and illustrates how psychoanalytic theories have been adapted to allow for the interpretation of films and television programmes, employing post-Jungian methods in the deep reading of a whole range of films. Readings of this kind can demonstrate the way that some films bear the psychological projections not only of their makers but of their audience, and assess the manner in which films engage the writer's own psyche. Seeking to go beyond existing theories, John Izod explores the question of whether Jungian screen analysis can work for ordinary filmgoers - can what functions for the scholar be said to be true for people without a background in Jung's ideas?
Through detailed readings of a number of films and programmes, John Izod builds on the work previously done by Jungian film analysts, and moves on to contemplate the level of audience engagement. Offering deep readings of films directed by Kubrick and Bernardo Bertolucci, as well as satirical comedy, documentaries and twenty-first century Westerns, the book explores the extent to which they manage to make the psychological impact on spectators that films of a similar kind have done on Jungian writers. The author concludes that the screen texts with the best likelihood of impacting the culture of the audience through their collective psychological force fall at opposite ends of the size and budget range: highly personal documentaries, and the most affecting of mainstream genre movies.
This innovative text will be essential reading for psychoanalysts and therapists, as well as students and scholars of film with an interest inunderstanding how screen products work psychologically to engage the viewer.

This systematic attempt to apply Jungian theory to the analysis of films covers 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Silence of the Lambs and The Piano as well as a variety of cultural icons and products such as Madonna, Michael Jackson and televised sport. Through these and other examples, John Izod demonstrates how Jungian theory can bring new tools to film and media studies and new ways of understanding screen images and narratives.

Loss is an inescapable reality of life, and individuals need to develop a capacity to grieve in order to mature and live life to the full. Yet most western movie audiences live in cultures that do not value this necessary process and filmgoers finding themselves deeply moved by a particular film are often left wondering why. In Cinema as Therapy, John Izod and Joanna Dovalis set out to fill a gap in work on the conjunction of grief, therapy and cinema. Looking at films including Million Dollar Baby, The Son's Room, Birth and The Tree of Life, Cinema as Therapy offers an understanding of how deeply emotional life can be stirred at the movies. Izod and Dovalis note that cinema is a medium which engages people in a virtual dialogue with their own and their culture's unconscious, more deeply than is commonly thought. By analysing the meaning of each film and the root cause of the particular losses featured, the authors demonstrate how our experiences in the movie theatre create an opportunity to prepare psychologically for the inevitable losses we must all eventually face. In recognising that the movie theatre shares symbolic features with both the church and the therapy room, the reader sees how it becomes a sacred space where people can encounter the archetypal and ease personal suffering through laughter or tears, without inhibition or fear, to reach a deeper understanding of themselves. Cinema as Therapy will be essential reading for therapists, students and academics working in film studies and looking to engage with psychological studies in depth as well as filmgoers who want to explore their relationship with the screen. The book includes a glossary of Jungian and Freudian terms which enhances the clarity of the text and the understanding of the reader.

This systematic attempt to apply Jungian theory to the analysis of films covers 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Silence of the Lambs and The Piano as well as a variety of cultural icons and products such as Madonna, Michael Jackson and televised sport. Through these and other examples, John Izod demonstrates how Jungian theory can bring new tools to film and media studies and new ways of understanding screen images and narratives.

In a long and varied career, Lindsay Anderson made training films, documentaries, searing family dramas and blistering satires, including This Sporting Life, O Lucky Man , and Britannia Hospital.Students of British cinema and television from the 1950s to 1990s will find this book a valuable source of information about a director whose work came to public attention with Free Cinema but who, unlike many of his peers in that movement did not take the Hollywood route to success. What emerges is a strong feeling for the character of the man as well as for a remarkable career in British cinema.The book will appeal to admirers, researchers, and students alike. Making use of hitherto unseen original materials from Anderson's extensive personal and professional records, it is most valuable as a study of how the films came about: the production problems involved, the collaborative input of others, as well as the completed films' promotion and reception.It also offers a finely argued take on the whole issue of film authorship, and achieves the rare feat of being academically authoritative whilst also being completely accessible. It prompts renewed respect for the man and the artist and a desire to watch the films all over again.