The Documentary Politics, Emotion, Culture

The Documentary proposes that emotions such as pleasure, hope, pain, empathy or nostalgia play a powerful role in the circulation and reception of documentaries. Emotion shapes how political issues and individuals are represented and perceived in documentary and it is crucial to how we engage with the vicissitudes of the public sphere. In the past, documentary has been popularly perceived in ways that align it with education, science, history and the rational realm. This frame has never been adequate for understanding the broad array of styles and themes that can be seen in the documentary genre. Focusing on the question of subjectivity, Smaill analyses different kinds of individuals that can be found in documentaries, such as the female porn star, the politically disenfranchised, children, or the documentary auteur. She envisages an interdisciplinary approach to documentary drawing on scholarship from not only film studies, but also gender studies, queer theory, cultural theories of affect, critical race studies, political theory and psychoanalysis.

Belinda Smaill is Senior Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies at Monash University, Australia. She is the co-author of Transnational Australian Cinema: Ethics in the Asian Diasporas (2013) and has published widely in the areas of documentary studies, women and cinema, Australian film and television, and cinema and environmentalism.

Acknowledgements
PART I: DOCUMENTARY AND PLEASURE
1. Introduction: Representation and Documentary Emotions
2. Pleasure and Disgust: Desire and the Female Porn Star
PART II: PAIN AND THE OTHER
3. Injury, Identity and Recognition - Rize and Fix: The Story of an Addicted City
4. Women, Pain and the Documentaries of Kim Longinotto
PART III: THE LABOUR OF AUTHORSHIP: CARING AND MOURNING
5. Loss and Care: Asian Australian Documentary
6. Civic Love and Contemporary Dissent Documentary
PART IV: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE: HOPE AND NOSTALGIA
7. Children, Futurity and Hope: Born into Brothels
8. Nostalgia, Historical Time and Reality Television: The Idol Series
Epilogue
Notes
Index