Keith Beattie

This volume is the first book-length study of the extensive career and prolific works of D.A. Pennebaker, one of the pioneers of direct cinema, a documentary form that emphasizes observation and a straightforward portrayal of events. With a career spanning decades, Pennebaker's many projects have included avant-garde experiments (Daybreak Express), ground-breaking television documentaries (Primary), celebrity films (Dont Look Back), concert films (Monterey Pop), and innovative fusions of documentary and fiction (Maidstone). Exploring the concept of "performing the real," Keith Beattie interprets Pennebaker's films as performances in which the act of filming is in itself a performative transgression of the norms of purely observational documentary. He examines the ways in which Pennebaker's presentation of unscripted everyday performances is informed by connections between documentary filmmaking and other experimental movements such as the New American Cinema. Through his collaborations with such various artists as Richard Leacock, Shirley Clarke, Norman Mailer, and Jean-Luc Godard, Pennebaker has continually reworked and redefined the forms of documentary filmmaking. This book also includes a recent interview with the director and a full filmography.

D.A. Pennebaker

Dont Look Back, a documentary film of Bob Dylan's 1965 England tour, is recognised as a landmark work in the field of documentary film-making, contributing to the cultural life of an era. This text examines the aesthetic, thematic and social dynamics of the film in order to elucidate how and why it was a groundbreaking piece of documentary cinema.

Dont Look Back

In The Scar That Binds, Keith Beattie examines the central metaphors of the Vietnam War and their manifestations in American culture and life. Blending history and cultural criticism in a lucid style, this provocative book discusses an ideology of unity that has emerged through widespread rhetorical and cultural references to the war. A critique of this ideology reveals three dominant themes structured in a range of texts: the "wound," "the voice" of the Vietnam veteran, and "home." The analysis of each theme draws on a range of sources, including film, memoir, poetry, written and oral history, journalism, and political speeches.

American Culture and the Vietnam War

The Scar That Binds

The Black church is often praised for its contribution to Black culture and politics. More recently Islam has been recognized as an important force in African American liberation. Anthony Pinn's new anthology By These Hands demonstrates the crucial, often overlooked role that Humanism has played in African American struggles for dignity, power and justice. Pinn collects the finest examples of African American Humanism and shows how its embrace by a variety of prominent figures in African American thought and letters has served as the basis for activism and resistance to American racism and sexism. Pinn uncovers little known treasures of African American Literature such as The Slave Narrative of James Hay, where an abused slave decides to rely on himself, rather than God, for deliverance from the horrors of slavery, and a letter from Frederick Douglass which scandalized his religious friends by proclaiming that "One honest Abolitionist was a greater terror to slaveholders than whole acres of camp-meeting preachers shouting glory to God." Essays by Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright demonstrate the profound influence of Humanism in the Harlem Rennaisance, and pieces by James Farmer, Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) and Huey Newton show Humanism's impact on the civil rights and Black Power movements. Designed for classroom use, this radical reconsideration of African American history will be a must read for anyone interested in African American History, African American Religion and Philosophy, and American History. Contributors: Norm Allen, Jr., Herbert Aptheker, James Baldwin, Amiri Imamu Baraka, J. Mason Brewer, Sterling Brown, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B.Du Bois, James Foreman, Duchess Harris, Hubert H. Harrison, Harry Haywood, Zora Neale Hurston, William R. Jones, William Loren Katz, Benjamin E. Mays, Huey P. Newton, Daniel Payne, J. Saunders Redding, William L. Van DeBurg, Alice Walker, and Richard Wright.

The Scar that Binds

Keith Beattie's study offers a clear and comprehensive analysis of documentary film and television by adopting a 'documentary studies' approach in which non-fictional work is situated within historical, economic and disciplinary contexts.

Non-Fiction Film and Television

Documentary Screens

This volume is the first book-length study of the extensive career and prolific works of D.A. Pennebaker, one of the pioneers of direct cinema, a documentary form that emphasizes observation and a straightforward portrayal of events. With a career spanning decades, Pennebaker's many projects have included avant-garde experiments (Daybreak Express), ground-breaking television documentaries (Primary), celebrity films (Dont Look Back), concert films (Monterey Pop), and innovative fusions of documentary and fiction (Maidstone). Exploring the concept of "performing the real," Keith Beattie examines the ways in which Pennebaker's presentation of unscripted everyday performances is informed by connections between documentary filmmaking and other experimental movements such as the New American Cinema. Through his collaborations with such various artists as Richard Leacock, Shirley Clarke, Norman Mailer, and Jean-Luc Godard, Pennebaker has continually reworked and redefined the forms of documentary filmmaking. This book also includes a recent interview with the director and a full filmography.

D. A. Pennebaker

Geoff Mayer

From The Story of the Kelly Gang in 1906 to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Australia and New Zealand have made a unique impact on international cinema. This book celebrates the commercially successful narrative feature films produced by these cultures as well as key documentaries, shorts, and independent films. It also invokes issues involving national identity, race, history, and the ability of two small film cultures to survive the economic and cultural threat of Hollywood. Chapters on well known films and directors, such as The Year of Living Dangerously (Peter Weir, 1982), The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993), Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001), and Rabbit Proof Fence (Philip Noyce, 2002), are included with less popular but equally important films and filmmakers, such as Jedda (Charles Chauvel, 1955), They're a Weird Mob (Michael Powell, 1966), Vigil (Vincent Ward, 1984), and The Goddess of 1967 (Clara Law, 2000).

The Cinema of Australia and New Zealand

At the height of the Vietnam War, American society was so severely fragmented that it seemed that Americans may never again share common concerns. The media and other commentators represented the impact of the war through a variety of rhetorical devices, most notably the emotionally charged metaphor of "the wound that will not heal." References in various contexts to veterans' attempts to find a "voice," and to bring the war "home" were also common. Gradually, an assured and resilient American self-image and powerful impressions of cultural collectivity transformed the Vietnam war into a device for maintaining national unity. Today, the war is portrayed as a healed wound, the once "silenced" veteran has found a voice, and the American home has accommodated the effects of Vietnam. The scar has healed, binding Americans into a union that denies the divisions, diversities, and differences exposed by the war. In this way, America is now "over" Vietnam. In The Scar That Binds, Keith Beattie examines the central metaphors of the Vietnam war and their manifestations in American culture and life. Blending history and cultural criticism in a lucid style, this provocative book discusses an ideology of unity that has emerged through widespread rhetorical and cultural references to the war. A critique of this ideology reveals three dominant themes structured in a range of texts: the "wound," "the voice" of the Vietnam veteran, and "home." The analysis of each theme draws on a range of sources, including film, memoir, poetry, written and oral history, journalism, and political speeches. In contrast to studies concerned with representations of the war as a combat experience, The Scar That Binds opens and examines an unexplored critical space through a focus on the effects of the Vietnam War on American culture. The result is a highly original and compelling interpretation of the development of an ideology of unity in our culture.

Trent Griffiths

This wide-ranging and insightful collection of interviews with D. A. Pennebaker (b. 1925) spans the prolific career of this pioneer of observational cinema. From the 1950s to the present day, D. A. Pennebaker has made documentary films that have revealed the world of politics, celebrity culture, and the music industry. Following his early collaborations with Robert Drew on a number of works for television, his feature-length portrait of Bob Dylan on tour in England in 1965 (the landmark film Dont Look Back) established so-called direct cinema as a form capable of achieving broad theatrical release. With Monterey Pop, Pennebaker inaugurated the popular mode of rock concert film (or "rockumentary"), a style of filmmaking he has expanded on through a number of films, including Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars and Depeche Mode: 101. Pennebaker has always regarded collaboration as an integral part of his filmmaking methods. His long-running collaboration with Richard Leacock and subsequently his work with Chris Hegedus have enriched his approach and, in the process, have instituted collaboration as a working practice integral to American direct cinema. His other collaborations, particularly those with Jean-Luc Godard and Norman Mailer, resulted in innovative combinations of observational techniques and fictional aesthetics. Such films as The War Room, which was about the 1992 Democratic primaries and was nominated for an Academy Award, and the 2009 Kings of Pastry continue to explore the capacities of observational documentary. In 2012 Pennebaker was the first documentary filmmaker to be awarded an Academy Honorary Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Keith Beattie

Books

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