Contemporary Documentary

Contemporary Documentary offers a rich survey of the rapidly expanding landscape of documentary film, television, video, and new media. The collection of original essays addresses the emerging forms, popular genres, and innovative approaches of the digital era.

The anthology highlights geographically and thematically diverse examples of documentaries that have expanded the scope and impact of non-fiction cinema and captured the attention of global audiences over the past three decades. It also explores the experience of documentary today, with its changing dynamics of production, collaboration, distribution, and exhibition, and its renewed political and cultural relevance.

The twelve chapters – featuring engaging case studies and written from a wide range of perspectives including film theory, social theory, ethics, new media, and experience design – invite students to think critically about documentary as a vibrant field, unrestricted in its imagination and quick in its response to new forms of filmmaking.

Offering a methodical exploration of the expansive reach of documentary as a creative force in the media and society of the twenty-first century, Contemporary Documentary is an ideal collection for students of film, media, and communication who are studying documentary film.

Author Biography

Daniel Marcus teaches media and documentary studies at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. He is the author of Happy Days and Wonder Years: The Fifties and the Sixties in Contemporary Cultural Politics, and editor of ROAR! The Paper Tiger Television Guide to Media Activism.

Selmin Kara is an Assistant Professor at OCAD University. She is interested in digital aesthetics and sound in post-cinema and documentary. Her work has appeared in Studies in Documentary Film, The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media, and Music and Sound in Nonfiction Film.