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There are any number of fiction and non-fiction texts which challenge, articulate or reinterpret many of the central tensions within the documentary form. Of the non-fiction texts, the most significant have perhaps been reflexive documentaries. This book is primarily intended to introduce ideas about mock-documentary to students and academics working within media and documentary studies. It examines those fictional texts which to varying degrees 'look' (and sound) like documentaries. This group of texts have been labelled using a variety of terms; 'faux documentary', 'pseudo-documentary', 'mocumentary', 'cinéma vérité with a wink', 'cinéma un-vérité', 'black comedy presented as in-your-face documentary', 'spoof documentary' and 'quasi-documentary'. The book includes some discussion of the tensions within the genre, in particular where different codes and conventions appeal to competing, often contradictory, cultural understandings of how 'reality' can be represented. It looks to outline the nature of the more recent expansion of textual concerns and representational strategies employed by documentary filmmakers. Mock-documentary represents only one instance of a continuum of fictional texts which are characterised by a blurring of the line between fact and fiction. The book compares these contrasting screen forms, concentrating especially on the nature of the distinctive relationships which they each construct towards the documentary genre. It introduces a schema of three 'degrees' of mock-documentary, in part reflecting the diversity in the nature and extent of these texts' appropriation of documentary aesthetics. A speculative genealogy for the mock-documentary as a distinctive screen form is outlined.
inhabitants of Val Fourré and the conventions of self-portraiture. They foreground the inherent links between forms of documentary and fiction and the inextricable relationship between what happens to the self and what happens to others. L’Autre Côté de la mer: the politics of belonging Documentary aesthetics and a continuing interest in the relationship between place and identity
. The mock-documentary form is a complex one, incorporating as it does a variety of filmmakers’ intentions and a range of appropriations of documentary aesthetics, and encouraging layered interpretations from audiences. Our aim here is especially to promote discussion on mock-documentaries which acknowledges the evident complexity of the form, and especially the degree of reflexivity which these texts construct towards the
emphasis to the last of these three aspects. We argue that all mock-documentary texts contain the potential for critical reflexivity, as an inherent part of their appropriation of documentary aesthetics, and that it is this role constructed for the viewer that consistently marks the mock-documentary out from other recent fact-fiction screen forms. Central to our understanding of the mock-documentary form is
more recent expansion of textual concerns and representational strategies employed by documentary filmmakers. The focus of discussion here is especially on those documentary texts which suggest a separation of the close association between documentary aesthetics and the underlying assumptions and expectations which define factual discourse (performative and reflexive documentaries). To a large extent, these are generic
toward the social world, while utilising documentary aesthetics to ‘mock’ the underlining discourses of documentary. The discussion below is divided into sections which discuss the differences between mock-documentaries and drama-documentaries. Following Nichols’s efforts to construct a definition of documentary ( 1991 ) we utilise his three-part model to examine the mock-documentary and drama
-documentary’ itself, 1 and the objective here is particularly to outline the increased range and complexity of fictional forms of representation within film and television media, which we argue have collectively led to the development of this distinctive type of text. Listed below are television and cinematic fictional texts which appear to be early examples of the appropriation of documentary aesthetics: texts which
examples of a degree 2 mock-documentary, with the ambivalence towards factual discourse which characterises this Degree represented at a variety of levels. This mock-documentary episode of a dramatic television series is consequently able to develop an unusual complexity in its relationship with documentary aesthetics. The title of the series refers to a fictional Emergency Room of a Chicago hospital, and this was the premiere
p. 192. Attempts to analyse Jennings’ films as poetry include J. Leach, ‘The Poetics of Propaganda: Humphrey Jennings and Listen to Britain’, in B. K. Grant and J. Sloniowski (eds), Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), pp. 154–70, and B. Sorenssen, ‘The Documentary Aesthetics of Humphrey Jennings’, in J. Corner (ed.), Documentary and the Mass Media (London: Edward Arnold, 1986), pp. 47–64. 30 W. Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books in
( London : Routledge , 1995 ), pp. 85–104 . Lesage , Julia . ‘Feminist documentary: aesthetics and politics’ , in T. Waugh (ed.), Show Us Life: Towards a History and Aesthetics of Committed Documentary ( Metuchen, NJ : Scarecrow Press , 1984 ), pp. 231–46 . López , Ana M. ‘Revolution and dreams: the Cuban documentary today’ , Studies