Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Documentaries such as Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman's Born into Brothels , Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 , Jeffrey Blitz's Spellbound , along with March of the Penguins and An Inconvenient Truth have achieved critical as well as popular success. Although nonfiction film may have captured imaginations, many viewers enter and leave theaters with a nanve concept of "truth" and "reality"-for them, documentaries are information sources. But is truth or reality readily available, easily acquired, or undisputed? Or do documentaries convey illusions of truth and reality? What aesthetic means are used to build these illusions?



A documentary's sounds and images are always the product of selection and choice, and often underscore points the filmmaker wishes to make. Crafting Truth illuminates the ways these films tell their stories; how they use the camera, editing, sound, and performance; what rhetorical devices they employ; and what the theoretical, practical, and ethical implications of these choices are. Complex documentary concepts are presented through easily accessible language, images, and a discussion of a wide range of films and videos to encourage new ways of thinking about and seeing nonfiction film.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1 General Concepts
• 1 Authenticity
• 2 Evidence
• 3 Authority
• 4 Responsibility
• Part 2 Structural Organization
• 5 Argument
• 6 Dramatic Stories, Poetic and Essay Documentaries
• Part 3 Formal Techniques
• 7 Editing
• 8 Camerawork
• 9 The Profilmic
• 10 Sounds (coauthored with Carl Lewis)
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The better part of a century ago, John Grierson gave documentary film both its name and its earliest rudiments of criticism and theory. "Documentaries" are now being released at an unprecedented pace, and Grierson's basic notion--documentary is the creative treatment of actuality--is reeling, thanks to a vigorous pummeling by myriad, newly energized, "reality based" media forms and by ever-evolving computer technology, with its increasing creative potential. Creativity has begun to overwhelm reality, to cloud both the genre's sense of authenticity and the veracity of its evidence. In his meticulous Claiming the Real (1st ed., CH, Apr'96, 33-4403; 2nd ed., 2008), which looks at "Grierson and beyond," Brian Winston perspicaciously dissects these and other issues from both historical and theoretical points of view. Spence (Kadir Has Univ., Istanbul) and Navarro (Georgia Institute of Technology) provide the next logical perspective; having absorbed Winston's analysis, they examine the form and aesthetic of the genre. They carefully and methodically link the creation of specific visual and aural elements of a wide variety of films to the themes and intents of those films, creating a sophisticated blueprint for new filmmakers to emulate. Perhaps mandatory for students of film, mass communication, and journalism. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. J. B. DeMasi Nassau Community College