Screening reality : how documentary filmmakers reimagined America / Jon Wilkman.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York, NY : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020Copyright date: ©2020Description: 503 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9781635571035
- 1635571030
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Main Library | NonFiction | 070.18 W687 | Available | 33111010515274 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
"A towering achievement, and a volume I know I'll be consulting on a regular basis."--Leonard Maltin
"Authoritative, accessible, and elegantly written, Screening Reality is the history of American documentary film we have been waiting for." --Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic
From Edison to IMAX, Ken Burns to virtual environments, the first comprehensive history of American documentary film and the remarkable men and women who changed the way we view the world.
Amidst claims of a new "post-truth" era, documentary filmmaking has experienced a golden age. Today, more documentaries are made and widely viewed than ever before, illuminating our increasingly fraught relationship with what's true in politics and culture. For most of our history, Americans have depended on motion pictures to bring the realities of the world into view. And yet the richly complex, ever-evolving relationship between nonfiction movies and American history is virtually unexplored.
Screening Reality is a widescreen view of how American "truth" has been discovered, defined, projected, televised, and streamed during more than one hundred years of dramatic change, through World Wars I and II, the dawn of mass media, the social and political turmoil of the sixties and seventies, and the communications revolution that led to a twenty-first century of empowered yet divided Americans.
In the telling, professional filmmaker Jon Wilkman draws on his own experience, as well as the stories of inventors, adventurers, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, and activists who framed and filtered the world to inform, persuade, awe, and entertain. Interweaving American and motion picture history, and an inquiry into the nature of truth on screen, Screening Reality is essential and fascinating reading for anyone looking to expand an understanding of the American experience and today's truth-challenged times.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 449-484) and index.
Prologue : Facing the facts -- The world on a screen -- Reality under fire and projected Americanism -- Bijou safaris and truthful lies -- Rebels, government agents, and reenactors -- War, peace, and propaganda, take two -- Fun facts, gawking mother nature, molding minds, and homemade history -- Small screens, big stories -- Zooming in -- For the people, by the people -- Three windows, one landscape -- Additional takes -- 60 minutes, mock and mega truth, the multiverse, and life through the looking glass -- Getting real in a golden age -- Epilogue : Virtual reality and then what?.
"Even with claims of a new 'post-truth' era, documentary filmmaking has experienced a golden age. Today, more nonfiction movies are made and widely viewed than ever before, illuminating and compounding our increasingly fraught relationship with what's true in politics and culture. How did this happen? Providing answers, Screening Reality is a widescreen view of the rarely examined relationship between nonfiction movies and American history--how 'reality' has been discovered, defined, projected, televised, and streamed during more than one hundred years of dramatic change, through World Wars I and II, the dawn of mass media, the social and political turmoil of the sixties and seventies, and the communications revolution that led to a twenty-first century of empowered yet divided Americans"-- Provided by publisher.