American Documentary Filmmaking in the Digital Age: Depictions of War in Burns, Moore, and Morris (Routledge Advances in Film Studies) - Hardcover

Ricciardelli, Lucia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415840120 ISBN 13: 9780415840125

Publisher: Routledge, 2014

Synopsis

American Documentary Filmmaking in the Digital Age examines the recent challenges to the conventions of realist documentary through the lens of war documentary films by Ken Burns, Michael Moore, and Errol Morris. During the twentieth century, the invention of new technologies of audiovisual representation such as cinema, television, video, and digital media have transformed the modes of historical narration and with it forced historians to assess the impact of new visual technologies on the construction of history. This book investigates the manner in which this contemporary Western "crisis" in historical narrative is produced by a larger epistemological shift in visual culture. Ricciardelli uses the theme of war as depicted in these directors’ films to focus her study and look at the model(s) of national identity that Burns, Morris, and Moore shape through their depictions of US military actions. She examines how postcolonial critiques of historicism and the advent of digitization have affected the narrative structure of documentary film and the shaping of historical consciousness through cinematic representation.

About this title

About the Author:

Lucia Ricciardelli is Assistant Professor in the School of Film and Photography at Montana State University, US.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0415840120
• ISBN 13: 9780415840125
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 174