Companion to Contemporary Documentary Film

Alexandra Juhasz is Professor of Media Studies at Pitzer College. She is the author of AIDS TV (1995), Women of Vision (2001), F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing, co-edited with Jesse Lerner (2005), and Learning from YouTube (2011). Dr. Juhasz is also the producer of the fake documentary feature films The Watermelon Woman (1997) and The Owls (2010), as well as many “real” documentaries.Alisa Lebow is a Reader in Film Studies at the University of Sussex. Her publications include First Person Jewish (2008) and The Cinema of Me (2012) and numerous articles on aspects of documentary ranging from art and documentary to questions of “the political” in documentary. Lebow has also made several documentaries including Outlaw (1994), Treyf (1998), and For the Record: The World Tribunal on Iraq (2006).

• Notes on Contributors ixIntroduction: A World Encountered 1Alexandra Juhasz and Alisa LebowPart I Planet 19Juan Francisco SalazarIntroduction 21Juan Francisco Salazar1 Crude Aesthetics: The Politics of Oil Documentaries 28Imre Szeman2 Anticipatory Modes of Futuring Planetary Change in Documentary Film 43Juan Francisco Salazar3 Projecting Sea Level Rise: Documentary Film and Other Geolocative Technologies 61Janet WalkerPart II Migration 87Anikó ImreIntroduction 89Anikó Imre4 Videogeographies 92Ursula Biemann5 Rates of Exchange: Human Trafficking and the Global Marketplace 108Leshu Torchin6 Documenting What? Auto-Theory and Migratory Aesthetics 124Mieke BalPart III Work 145Silke PanseIntroduction 147Silke Panse7 The Work of the Documentary Protagonist: The Material Labor of Aesthetics 155Silke Panse8 Old School Capitalism in Post-Socialism: The Struggles of ?elimir ?ilnik’s Workers 176Ewa Mazierska9 Capturing the Labors of Sex Work: The Pedagogical Role of Documentary Film 191Anna E. WardPart IV Sex 209Laura Hyun Yi KangIntroduction 211Laura Hyun Yi Kang10 Documentary Practice and Transnational Feminist Theory: The Visibility of FGC 217Patricia White11 Transforming Terror: Documentary Poetics in Lourdes Portillo’s Señorita Extraviada (2001) 233Rosa-Linda Fregoso12 Reading Realness: Paris Is Burning, Wildness, and Queer and Transgender Documentary Practice 252Eve OishiPart V Virus 271Bishnupriya GhoshIntroduction 273Bishnupriya Ghosh13 Animating Informatics: Scientific Discovery Through Documentary Film 280Kirsten Ostherr14 HIV on Documentary Television in Post-Apartheid South Africa 298Rebecca Hodes15 Digital AIDS Documentary: Webs, Rooms, Viruses, and Quilts 314Alexandra JuhaszPart VI Religion 335Alexandra Juhasz and Alisa LebowIntroduction 337Alexandra Juhasz and Alisa Lebow16 Rising in the East, Sett(l)ing in the West: The Emergence of Buddhism as Contemporary Documentary Subject 341Angelica Fenner17 The New Religious Wave in Israeli Documentary Cinema: Negotiating Jewish Fundamentalism During the Second Intifada 366Raya Morag18 Tran Van Thuy’s Story of Kindness: Spirituality and Political Discourse 384Dean WilsonPart VII War 401Jeffrey SkollerIntroduction 403Jeffrey Skoller19 Second Thoughts on “The Production of Outrage: The Iraq War and the Radical Documentary Tradition” 410Jane M. Gaines20 One, Two, Three Montages … Harun Farocki’s War Documentaries 431Nora M. Alter21 The Unwar Film 454Alisa LebowPart VIII Torture 475Alisa LebowIntroduction 477Alisa Lebow22 (In)visible Evidence: The Representability of Torture 482Susana de Sousa Dias23 Interviewing the Devil: Interrogating Masters of the Cambodian Genocide 506Deirdre Boyle24 The Female Perpetrator: La Flaca Alejandra and Operation Atropos 524Macarena Gómez-Barris25 Toward the Dark Side: Seeing Detainee Bodies in Documentary Film 536Anjali NathPart IX Surveillance 557Elizabeth CowieIntroduction 559Elizabeth Cowie26 Architectures of Control and Points of Resistance: Surveillance Culture and Digital Documentaries 566Sharon Lin Tay27 The World Viewed: Documentary Observing and the Culture of Surveillance 580Elizabeth Cowie28 Surveillance in the Service of Narrative 611Brian Winston29 Face Blind: Documentary Media and Subversion of Surveillance 629Patrik SjöbergIndex 647