Product Description

" . . . this engaging, thoughtful, accessible, and comprehensive work will stimulate many." -- Choice

Noted film scholar Bill Nichols provides a one-of-a-kind overview of the most important topics and issues in documentary history and criticism. Designed for students in any field that makes use of visual evidence and persuasive strategies, from the law to anthropology, and from history to journalism, this book spells out the issues and concepts that characterize documentary film and video production and provides the foundational key to further explorations in this exceptionally vital area of filmmaking today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #179444 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 223 pages

Review
"Bill Nichols' succinct Introduction to Documentary would make an ideal textbook, and that's no backhanded compliment. Patiently, almost tenderly, the author leads the reader step by step through the thicket of moral, political, aesthetic and technological issues documentary film raises - writing in a clean style that doesn't simplify ideas so much as distil them." - SIGHT AND SOUND, August 2002

Review

"There is a large literature on the scholarship and pedagogy of documentary film, much of it published in the last decade and much of it indebted to Nichols's previous work in the field, notably Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (CH, Jul'92). Nichols (Univ. of Rochester) organizes the present wonderful book by eight basic questions -- for example, How Do Documentaries Differ from Other Types of Film? and What Types of Documentary Are There? -- each answered with clarity, with plenty of examples and visual illustrations drawn from a century of documentary film, and with a degree of sophistication belied by the straightforward, functional prose. Students will appreciate Nichols's fondness for categories (for example, his seven modes of documentary) and will enjoy his instructions for writing about documentary film, embedded in invented student essays on Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922). Although scholars in film studies will find much of the content and analysis familiar, this engaging, thoughtful, accessible, and comprehensive work will stimulate many. An essential volume for libraries and an instant classroom classic, this book is recommended for readers at all levels." -- W. Graebner, SUNY College at Fredonia, Choice, May 2002

From the Publisher
A comprehensive introduction to the issues and concepts that characterize documentary film and video production.

Customer Reviews

A fine introduction.
I don't think I've written a review on Amazon.com in almost ten years, but when I saw that this fine book had one review -- for one star -- I wanted to offer something of a corrective.

As its title states, this is an introduction to the critical study of documentary films, and it is a good one at that. While it introduces a lot of elementary concepts and questions that are fundamental to the genre -- What makes a film a documentary? What ethical issues are unique to the genre? etc -- it does so in a voice that is engaging, scholarly and literate. Put another way, this book manages to be an introduction to a subject without resorting to a dumbed-down, "Documentaries for Dummies" approach.

A worthwhile read for students of the genre and aspiring documentarians.

Intro to Documentary
Book is in great condition as described and it arrived on time and with no trouble.

Bad Introduction
How to take seriously a comparatively recent book that first claims that all films are documentaries and than goes on to explain how there are various kinds of documentaries (some of which are obviously not documentaries at all)? Naturally, the terminology in film studies is not very well systematized, but there is no need to forget the work done in this field so far - this contemporary book, in a sense, seems to have been written immediately after classical (but somewhat dated) writings of John Grierson and Andre Bazin! A great deal of Grierson's and Bazin's writing is still interesting, much of it still holds water, but this is a diluted and clumsily combined version of their respective approaches.
"Reality" is a dangerous concept if we don't explain or define it, so is "realism" and of course, in this book particularly, so is the "documentary".
After the start that confuses the issues, some lucid observations and potentially explanatory examples lead nowhere and promote confusion. It's a pity.