The fourth edition of Bill Nichols's best-selling text, Introduction to Documentary, has been vastly altered in its entirety to bring this indispensable textbook up to date and reconceptualize aspects of its treatment of documentaries past and present. Here Nichols, with Jaimie Baron, has edited each chapter for clarity and ease of use and expanded the book with updates and new ideas.
Featuring abundant examples and images, Introduction to Documentary, Fourth Edition is designed to facilitate a rich understanding of how cinema can be used to document the historical world as it is seen by a wide variety of filmmakers. Subjectivity, expressivity, persuasiveness, and credibility are crucial factors that move documentary film away from objective documentation and toward the thought-provoking realm of arguments, perceptions, and perspectives that draw from a filmmaker's unique sensibility to help us see the world as we have not seen it before. Exploring ethics, history, different modes of documentary, key social issues addressed, and both the origins and evolution of this form, this updated volume also offers guidance on how to write about documentaries and how to begin the process of making one.
Introduction to Documentary, Fourth Edition will be of use not only to film students but also those in adjacent fields where visual representations of reality play an important role: journalism, sociology, anthropology, feminist and ethnic studies, among others.
Industry Reviews
"Since its first edition in 2001, Bill Nichols' Introduction to Documentary is the leading textbook on nonfictional cinema. Not exactly a how-to-do guide, a history of documentaries, or an assessment of the specific ethical and aesthetic issues of this production, Nichols's book became an instant classic discussing all of this with clarity and originality for the beginner and the academic, the filmmaker and the viewer. Each part organically updated with new questions and filmic variations, its fourth edition, co-written with Jaimie Baron, offers an even more complex and current approach to the essential book that has been guiding us through the mist of documentary film."-Amir Labaki, author of Introduction to Brazilian Documentary
"In Introduction to Documentary, Bill Nichols created the first comprehensive taxonomy of documentary film form-one that has given generations of students and scholars a critical language with which they can critically analyze and understand the many complex forms of documentary film. This fourth edition, now joined by scholar Jaimie Baron, uses the latest films from mainstream to the avant-garde to analyze ever-evolving documentary film practices in relation to recent theoretical debates including relationships between fact and fiction, the ethics of representation, point of view, new technologies, and hybrid forms. Written with clarity and generosity, the volume is an essential resource for film and media students, scholars and filmmakers alike."-Jeffrey Skoller, editor of Postwar: The Films of Daniel Eisenberg
