Aufderheide - Documentary film: a very short introduction

These documentaries have been widely seen and discussed, and have been in many cases at the center of controversies; in other cases they have provided valuable teaching resources. They are all accessible for renting or buying for your private collection. You can use the index to this book and other books mentioned in the references, imdb.com, your local library, Netflix, Google, and the Library of Congress to find out more about why these films have attracted attention and esteem. Viewing this collection will set you up nicely with a context to watch your latest favorite, argue with this list, and build your own top one hundred.

Nanook of the North, 1922

Grass, 1925

Berlin, Symphony of a Great City, 1927

The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, 1927

Man with a Movie Camera, 1929

Rain, 1929

Land without Bread (Las Hurdes), 1932

Man of Aran, 1934

Song of Ceylon, 1934

Triumph of the Will, 1934

Night Mail, 1936

The Plow that Broke the Plains, 1936

Spanish Earth, 1937

Power and the Land, 193940

Listen to Britain, 1942

Why We Fight, 1942

Battle of San Pietro, 1945

Farrebique, 1946

Matres Fou, Les (Crazy Masters), 1955

Night and Fog, 1955

Tire Die, 1958

Primary, 1960

Chronicle of a Summer, 1961

Mothlight, 1963

Battle of Culloden, 1964

Tokyo Olympiad, 1965

Dont Look Back, 1967

Titicut Follies, 1967

Warrendale, 1967

Hour of the Furnaces, 1968

Salesman, 1968

High School, 1969

Sorrow and the Pity, 1969

Selling of the Pentagon, 1971

World at War, 1973

Hearts and Minds, 1974

Ax Fight, 1975

Battle of Chile, 197579

The Wedding Camels, 1976

Harlan County USA, 1976

How the Myth Was Made, 1978

The Last Waltz, 1978

With Babies and Banners, 1978

Trobriand Cricket, 1979

The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter, 1980

N!ai: The Story of a !Kung Woman, 1980

Garden of Earthly Delights, 1981

Atomic Caf, 1982

Burden of Dreams, 1982

Sans Soleil (Sunless), 1982

First Contact, 1983

When the Mountains Tremble, 1983

Cabra Marcado para Morrer (Twenty Years Later, a.k.a. A Man Listed to Die), 1984

Shoah, 1985

From the Pole to the Equator, 1986

Handsworth Songs, 1986

Shermans March, 1986

Eyes on the Prize, 198790

Cane Toads, 1988

The Emperors Naked Army Marches On, 1988

The Thin Blue Line, 1988

Roger & Me, 1989

Tongues Untied, 1989

Body Beautiful, 1990

The Civil War, 1990

Paris Is Burning, 1990

Allah, Tantou, 1991

Afrique, Je Te Plumerai, 1992

Lumumba, Death of a Prophet, 1992

The War Room, 1993

The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl, 1993

Hoop Dreams, 1994

Celluloid Closet, 1995

Taking Pictures, 1996

4 Little Girls, 1997

Chile, Obstinate Memory, 1997

42 Up, 1998

What Farocki Taught, 1998

Cinma vrit, 1999

Gleaners and I, 2000

Stranger with a Camera, 2000

Dogtown and Z-Boys, 2001

Fighter, 2001

Winged Migration, 2001

Amandla!, 2002

Bus 174, 2002

The Day I Will Never Forget, 2002

Rivers and Tides, 2002

Checkpoint, 2003

Fog of War, 2003

Control Room, 2004

Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004

From the Ikpeng Children to the World, 2004

The New Americans, 2004

Super Size Me, 2004

Tintin and I, 2004

Video Letters, 2004

A Decent Factory, 2005

Three Rooms of Melancholia, 2005

An Inconvenient Truth, 2006

I have included here the most important texts I consulted in writing the book (in the case of prolific authors not all their books are referenced). Grant and Sloniowski, Warren and Izod, et al. are all essay collections featuring authors I have referred to in the text. The place where I and almost everybody else started was, of course, Erik Barnouw.

McLaren, Les, and Annie Stiven. Taking Pictures. First Run Icarus, 1996.

Mller, Ray. The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl. Kino on Video, 1998.

Stoney, George. How the Myth Was Made. Available on the Home Vision DVD of Man of Aran, 1978.

Wintonick, Peter. Cinema vrit: Defining the Moment. National Film Board of Canada, 1999.

Aitken, Ian. Film and Reform: John Grierson and the Documentary Film Movement. London: Routledge, 1990.

_____. The Documentary Film Movement: An Anthology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998.

Alexander, William. Film on the Left: American Documentary Film from 1931 to 1942. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Anderson, Joseph L., and Donald Richie. The Japanese Film: Art and Industry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982.

Aufderheide, Patricia. The Daily Planet: A Critic on the Capitalist Culture Beat. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.

Aufderheide, Patricia, and Peter Jaszi, Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers. Washington, DC: Center for Social Media, American University, 2004.

Barnouw, Erik. Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

_____. Documentary: A History of the Non-fiction Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

_____. Media Marathon: A Twentieth-Century Memoir. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996.

Barsam, Richard. Nonfiction Film: A Critical History. New York: Dutton, 1973.

Beattie, Keith. Documentary Screens: Non-fiction Film and Television. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Benson, Thomas W., and Carolyn Anderson. Reality Fictions: The Films of Frederick Wiseman. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989.

Bernard, Sheila Curran. Documentary Storytelling for Film and Videomakers. Boston: Focal Press, 2004.

Bluem, A. William. Documentary in American Television: Form, Function [and] Method. Hastings House, 1965.

Bous, Derek. Wildlife Films. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

Boyle, Deirdre. Subject to Change: Guerrilla Television Revisited. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Burton, Julianne. The Social Documentary in Latin America. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.

Campbell, Richard. 60 Minutes and the News: A Mythology for Middle America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991.

Campbell, Russell. Cinema Strikes Back: Radical Filmmaking in the United States, 19301942. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982.

Carey, James W.