Re: Film Group leads

From: Jeff Kreines (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Dec 30 2006 - 13:10:19 PST


On Dec 30, 2006, at 10:22 AM, Jonathan Kahana wrote:

> woefully under-acknowledged in standard accounts of nonfiction film
> history.

There is very little good written history of non-fiction film. In
fact, no book really comes to mind -- maybe G. Roy Levin's
"Documentary Explorations" because it was new and filled with
interviews with filmmakers I hadn't yet met when it came out 35 years
ago -- but what else? Barnouw's three-part history of broadcasting
is great, but the one-part consolidated version is awful. Mamber's
"Cinema Verite in America" is ok, but a bit dated. He does write
about the great film "Elizabeth and Mary" which Pennebaker made for
medical study in '64 or so. No one writes about William Klein's
great "Ali" film, oddly enough. (The B&W part, which was a film by
itself before the color section was added.)

There are of course some self-serving and just-plain-bad books -- all
of Rosenthal's books come to mind, and a certain book about personal
non-fiction film that I have already trashed enough on Frameworks as
an excellent imitation of Stalinist revisionism.

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