Saturday, December 26, 2009

Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction



I wanted to mention Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction by Patricia Aufderheide again as it has now gone on sale at Amazon. Great intro / refresher text for documentary basics, focusing on issues that are essential -- but not production techniques.

It has a good overview of the standard approaches to documentary filmmaking as well as a helpful critique for these approaches. Its main virtue is that it is very, very clear in handling complicated issues, and not afraid to point out what a problematic field documentary can be. I highly recommend it to any one starting out in the field or re-thinking how they'd like to work.

A good time of year to reconsider the ethics of the practice, no?

2 comments:

Pat Aufderheide said...

Thank you so much for the kind words! It's a wonderful thing to know that this book is useful. Since you are interested in ethics, I also wanted to call your attention to a report I recently co-authored specifically on documentary ethics challenges. It's here: www.centerforsocialmedia.org/.../honest_truths_documentary_filmmakers_on_ethical_challenges_in_their_work. And thanks again! Pat Aufderheide

Ted Fisher said...

Thanks!

tf