Creating Experimental Documentary Films: Theory and Practice Beyond Convention

This book explores the continued development and practice of experimental documentary film making with evolving trends in still photography, visual arts, journalism, installation art, docudrama, interactive media, music, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Through examples, observations, analyses, and exercises, readers will gain an understanding of the traditional principles of documentary and simultaneously challenge those conventions.

While exploring the responsibilities of a documentary director to be fair and objective, the book weaves through arguments around truth and propaganda and offers practical lessons about how to create hybrid forms of documentary films. Written by a documentary filmmaker with decades of experience, the text provides a comprehensive overview of how documentary narratives are written and created in the research, pre-production, production and post-production phases. New, inclusive audiences and methods of distribution, interactivity, and immersion are also introduced as part of the changing landscape of the documentary genre.

This book is designed for students who are approaching documentary for the first time as well as documentary filmmakers who are searching for new approaches, new subject matter, and languages of cinematic expression.

Pablo Frasconi studied with Stan Brakhage at the University of New Hampshire and with documentarians from the National Film Board of Canada in Toronto at York University. His films are in hundreds of collections, including UC Berkeley, the NY Public Library, and the Smithsonian. He has received 20 grants and fellowships for filmmaking, including from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Film Institute, and Park Foundation. His work, including Towards the Memory of a Revolution, Survival of a Small City, The Woodcuts of Antonio Frasconi, and The Light at Walden, has been featured at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NYC, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) national broadcast, and in WIRED Magazine, Filmmaker Magazine, and The New York Times. Frasconi is a professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, where he teaches editing, poetic cinema, documentary, and critical making.