ReFocus: The Films of Barbara Kopple

Jeff Jaeckle is the editor of Film Dialogue (Wallflower Press, 2013) and co-editor (with Sarah Kozloff) of ReFocus: The Films of Preston Sturges (EUP, 2015). His scholarship on language in cinema, aesthetics and Hollywood film has also appeared in Film Quarterly, New Review of Film and Television Studies and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. He holds a doctorate from the University of Texas-Austin and teaches at Portland Community College. Susan Ryan holds a doctorate in Cinema Studies from NYU and teaches documentary production and film studies at The College of New Jersey. She worked with Barbara Kopple for several years as a producer and archival researcher on Fallen Champ, Defending Our Daughters, My Generation, A Conversation with Gregory Peck, and several other documentaries. She is also the producer/director of From the ‘Burg to the Barrio (2012).

• Notes on contributorsForeword, Bill NicholsBarbara Kopple: A Career of Personal Crises and Creative Tensions, Jeff Jaeckle　Historical Contexts & Cultural CommentaryHarlan County USA and the Documentary Form: A 40-Year Retrospective, E. Ann KaplanAmerican Dream in God’s Country: Odysseys in Documentary, Hospitality, Place, Paula RabinowitzThe Kopple Effect: Women Directing Documentaries, Tom ZanielloGender Agency: Harlan County USA, Shut Up & Sing, and This is Everything: Gigi Gorgeous, Kate HearstThe Peekskill Projects: Race, Riots, and Paul Robeson, Jeff JaeckleCelebrity and Vulnerability in Three Documentaries by Barbara Kopple, Heather McIntosh　Technique: Interviews, Music, Funding, and Fiction FilmmakingFallen Champ: Poetics of the Documentary Interview, Leger GrindonWhich Side Are You On: An Intersectional Approach to Music in Three Films by Barbara Kopple, Augusta Palmer 　Blurring Lines and Intersecting Realities in Barbara Kopple’s Fictional Work, Susan RyanKopple’s Work Within the Changing Documentary Business Ecology, Patricia AufderheideExposing the Lethal Gaze in Shut Up & Sing and Running from Crazy, Jaimie Baron　Impacts: Critical Reception and Ongoing InfluenceBarbara Kopple: Acolyte to Leading Light, Betsy A. McLaneKopple & Her Critics, Gregory Brown　Afterword: Getting Inside, John Corner

With over a dozen contributors weighing in on Kopple's methodologies, influences and history, not to mention the history of documentary film itself, this volume has something for everyone...a welcome addition to the bookshelves of film schools, film scholars and film aficionados alike.