The Politics of Documentary

Shifting Perspectives on Marginal Bodies and Spaces: Relationality, Power, and Social Difference in the Documentary Films Babilônia 2000 and Estamira

“…The difficult task with which socially concerned documentary continues to wrestle is neatly surmised in Chanan's words as the ‘effort to acquire public visibility and simultaneously to counter the stereotypes and clichés which inevitably accompanied such visibility’ (Chanan, 2007: 243). In this article I have drawn attention to several films that I believe demonstrate highly contrasting attempts to thoughtfully negotiate this challenging dynamic.…”

“…Arguing that cinema is foremost a spatial rather than a textual system, Shiel highlights its ‘special potential to illuminate the lived spaces of the city and urban societies' (Shiel and Fitzmaurice, 2001: 6). Documentary film is especially pertinent in this respect given the history of its development in Latin America, described by critic Michael Chanan as being driven by a shared ‘preoccupation to give voice to people normally excluded from public speech and outside the political power structures' (Chanan, 2007: 203). It is thus to spaces frequently neglected and marginalised by the state that many ‘socially concerned’ films turn.…”

Carl Marzani and Union Films: Making Left-Wing Documentaries during the Cold War, 1946–53

“…Postwar left-wing filmmakers recognized that documentary, as Michael Chanan puts it, "is one of the forms through which new attitudes enter wider circulation." 126 And for this reason they were viciously attacked by corporations and the political right. It should not surprise us that these determined cineastes did not surrender quietly to McCarthy-era darkness.…”

La doble lectura de Canciones para después de una guerra explicada desde el marco teórico de las problemáticas del documental

“…Desde las imágenes de ficción a la propaganda franquista oficial, la publicidad, los fragmentos de noticieros, las simples "tomas" -si utilizamos este término en el sentido en el que Chanan (2007) hablaba del montaje Zapruder-, hasta una imagen de un pueblo de la URSS colocada como si se tratase de una localidad española, todos los elementos adquieren un nuevo significado dentro de Canciones para después de una guerra. Lo que importa es esta reescritura, esta reinscripción, a la que quedan subordinados todos los elementos del discurso que propone la película, en busca de una memoria reflexiva y no tanto objetiva.…”