Aufderheide divides the book into three somewhat long chapters. The first, titled “Defining the Documentary,” explores just that, going through the naming process, exploring some of the early developments and founders, and even unpacking the ideas behind cinema verite.

The second chapter, titled “Subgenres,” outlines some of the different groupings of documentary, their authors, and their applications. In particular, the chapter addresses public affairs, government propaganda, advocacy, historical, ethnographic, and nature. Aufderheide’s information here is not just listing of titles, but a more in-depth look at the involved organizations, the historical backdrop, and the current issues of each one.

The conclusion is the last chapter, which brings together some of they key ideas and introduces some of the key pieces of scholarship on documentary. In particular, this section offers an appreciation for Erik Barnouw’s seminal history of the form, as well as an overview of some of the key theorists, notably Bill Nichols and Michael Renov. Aufderheide’s calls for future research on the form provide a good starting point for scholars looking to contribute in a more meaningful way. (I am following one of those calls myself in my own research.)

Two things really amaze me about this book. One, Aufderheide manages to address so many of the key issues in a meaningful way with such brevity and grace. Two, she manages not only to touch on the canonical titles and makers, but also to integrate less-known titles and makers.

The new history coming out is an update of a 2005 book, A New History of Documentary Film by Jack C. Ellis and Betsy A. McLane. The 2012 edition bears only McLane’s name, and the promotional materials suggest some new sections. It comes out May 10 (hopefully).

A vegetable seller in India who gets loans from SEWA in The Shape of Water.

The other night I showed Kum-Kum Bhavnani’s The Shape of Water in my globalization class. (I also showed this documentary once before as part of a course on women and documentary.) This time, we watched the documentary as part of a session on global documentary and women’s issues. While we had touched on women’s issues and representations on an off throughout the semester, this session addressed them most specifically.

The Shape of Water explores women’s advocacy issues from different parts of the world. With Susan Sarandon’s narration and map-based intertitles, the documentary jumps around various continents and countries, talking with women associated with them.

In India, The Shape of Water introduces us to two areas of the country. In one, we learn about SEWA, which serves as a bank and a trade union for rural women. In another, we learn about Navdanya, a collective space that raises awareness about biodiversity issues, particularly through biopiracy and through corporate agriculture, and through its resistance with seed preservation. The documentary includes some brief interviews with the recognizable Vandana Shiva, who has written multiple books and appeared in countless documentaries on these and other issues.

In Brazil, we learn about women working as rubber-tappers. Instead of cutting down the rubber trees, as is commonly practiced, rubber-tappers carefully harvest the rubber from the trees without killing them.

In Senegal, we learn about the movement to end female genital cutting and the efforts undertaken to raise awareness against the practice. There, we meet a female hip-hop group, an advocate, and some teenagers all with their views on the subject.

In Israel, we meet members and outsiders of the Women in Black in Jerusalem.

In almost all of the countries, the documentary shows these women living in extreme poverty. Despite those conditions, though, they are trying to make change in their communities. The documentary does raise some connections to corporate exploitation of resources, such as through Shiva’s comments on RiceTec and Suez. It also carefully silences many of the men’s voices, either through their omission or through the represented women silencing them.

This documentary addresses several types of issues — including health, environment, and politics — something that might make this documentary difficult to follow or understand. But The Shape of Water allows little room or time for pitying these women. Instead, we are asked to see them as strong and dedicated to what they are doing no matter the conditions in their lives. It is that positive message that brings these very different stories together.

I recently worked my way through Dave Saunders’ Documentary (Routledge Film Guidebooks). The back cover touts the key films covered in depth: Nanook of the North, The Man with the Movie Camera, Night Mail, Night and Fog, Roger and Me, Tarnation, My Winnipeg, Sicko, Waltz with Bashir, Say My Name, and Anvil: The Story of Anvil. In general, the book offers some coverage of the “must” titles (Nanook, Camera, Night and Fog, Roger), and it gets into some question marks for me (Tarnation, Winnipeg). Waltz, Anvil, and Say My Name I thought were “interesting” choices, and I actually held onto a little hope for their discussions.

That little hope was quickly dashed amid turgid writing, lacking scholarship, and, well, missing points. The writing in this book is an adventure in finding the meaning. Some sentences covered an unwieldy half page, oftentimes coupled with a block quote paragraph. Some sentences’ meanings disappeared within the phrase after phrase that interrupted whatever the intended point. Here is an example from the discussion on Waltz with Bashir:

One event in particular, during IDF’s merciless siege of Beirut, seemed to have had a devastating psychological effect on those soldiers (including the amnesia-troubled Folman) who found themselves on the periphery: the Sabra and the Shatila refugee camp massacre, committed by Israel-allied Christian Phalangists in revenge for the bomb-blast assassination, days before he was due to be sworn in as Lebanon’s new president, of charismatic leader Bashir Gemayel (from whose name cmes Folman’s title) — an atrocity in which around 3,000 civilians were killed (168).

Within that quote appear 86 words, two parenthetical statements, one colon, one dash, five extra phrases, and about six other sentences. Had this quote been representative of just an occasional sentence in the book I would not be bringing this up, but too many sentences in this book read this way.

Saunders does cite an impressive array of scholarship related to documentary, and his bibliography does have some good starting points in it. But there are some notable omissions. A key one related to the discussion of Tarnation is Jim Lane’s The Autobiographical Documentary in America. Another significant omission is more from Waugh. Further, the bibliography includes almost no scholarship from women writers about the form. Though older, Heck-Rabi for example offers an excellent discussion on Esfir Shub.

While the book’s introduction does outline some purposes, I remain overall unsure about what this book is trying to do. Saunders weaves an impressive set of quotes throughout his commentary on the films, but those quotes often feel disconnected from the main ideas. The key ideas about his discussions get buried in the writing and the quotes. Many quotes attribute their authors as opining, averring, remarking, and commenting, instead of the more neutral (and less distracting) “wrote” or “said.” I kept waiting for a new insight that might inspire readers new to documentary, but I never found one.

The biggest problem with this book is that it repeats the same problems from some other books on documentary, most notably overlooking the key contributions from women throughout the history of the form. Say My Name, Nirit Peled’s documentary about women in hip-hop, offered an enormous chance to make a real contribution, but instead the piece got rolled into a discussion on “rockumentary” with Anvil. Of all the titles listed on the back cover, Peled’s is the only woman-directed and woman-focused piece. Occasional mentions of other makers (Kopple, in particular) do appear, but not much by way of sustained discussion.

The next book I am reading is Belinda Smaill’s The Documentary: Politics, Emotion, Culture. It has an entire chapter on Kim Longinotto, so I am looking forward to reading that.

I get a lot of information and heads-ups through Twitter, many of which I cannot or will not follow through on for various reasons. If you would like to get my attention through that venue and seek support or information from me, here are some things to keep in mind:

Cool

1. Follow me if you want me to support you. I tend not to retweet things unless the account is following me already.

2. Keep your Tweets shy of the 140-character limit, maybe 120 characters if you can. That makes retweeting faster because then I don’t have to edit to make everything fit, and nothing gets cut off in case I forget to edit.

3. Send me something interesting to check out, such as a summary page, a trailer, director interviews, or even a rough cut.

4. If I am interested in more information, I will ask for your contact e-mail, or I will ask you to contact me. E-mail is quite liberating after that 140-character limit!

Not cool

1. Do not send a Tweet with just a shortened link in it and nothing else. Sometimes those links are spam and malicious, and I don’t want to find out the hard way. Put some context to your link so that it’s clear what’s on the other end.

2. Do not make your first contact with me a request to “like” you on Facebook. If you’re making a documentary, I probably already like you. Don’t make me use Facebook to prove it. I gave up using that infernal mess a while ago.

3. Do not send me promotional “documentaries,” such as the one for Levis a couple years ago about the “decline” in masculinity. I am more interested in social, cultural, and political documentaries than industrial, training, and promotional ones.

4. Do not use your Twitter feed to raise complaints about broken links and content that I have posted without citing which Tweets and which links aren’t working. I won’t see it. Instead, reply to the Tweet with the broken links or questionable content to let me know that they need fixing.

5. Please do not be offended if I don’t reply right away or not at all. I have a full-time job and a part-time one, in addition to writing for POV, maintaining this site, and maintaining the Twitter account. Oh, and looking for a full-time job, among other things.