Claiming the Real Documentary: Grierson and Beyond

Claiming the Real II describes the origins, development and current state of documentary cinema, and the social, political, industrial and ethical factors that determine its production. This new edition addresses the ethical quagmires, digital technologies and proliferating forms that have transformed documentary cinema.

BRIAN WINSTON is Lincoln Chair of Communications at the University of Lincoln, UK, and has been involved with documentary since 1963. He has an Emmy for documentary script-writing; has taught documentary in both the US and the UK; and has long been involved with many international documentary film festivals and the Visible Evidence conference series. Winston first wrote about documentary in 1978. He is the author of a number of books, including Media, Technology and Society: A History, from the Telegraph to the Internet (Routledge 1998), a volume on Fires Were Started (1999) in the BFI Film Classics series, Lies, Damn Lies and Documentaries (BFI 2000) and Messages: Free Expression, Media and the West, from Gutenberg to Google (Routledge 2005).