Introduction: Experiments in Documentary
Millennium Film Journal, 2009, no. 51, p. 10
This work opens with discussion about how documentary is inherently contradictory, and explores the documentary/experimental film hybrid. The author looks at forms of video art that challenge the widely accepted norms of the documentary form. Through a discussion of the work of a number of contemporary and historical works in the genre, the author explores and catalogues the potentiality of the experimental documentary. Hilderbrand suggests that it functions as a medium that can offer historical revisions and open up space for representation. Hilderbrand states: "experimental documentaries allow for -- maybe even necessitate -- critical subjectiveness, humanist connections, recognition of historical wrong doings, and speculation towards more progressive ways of being and representing."
ITEM 2009.170 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
Man with a Movie Camera – John Grierson
Night and Fog – Jonathan Kahana
Sans Soleil – Maya Deren
Reassemblage – Stan Brakhage
Tongues Untied – Dziga Vertov
History and Memory – Alain Resnais
diaries (1989-93) – Chris Marker
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, Take One – Trinh T. Minh- ha
Far from Poland – Marlon Rigg
The Thin BlueLine – Rea Tajiri
L'hippocampe – Sadie Benning
Acera – William Greaves
The Witches' Dance – Jill Godmilow
RE: The_Operation – Errol Morris
Apple Grown in Wind Tunnel – Jean Painlevé
How to Fix the World – Jean Painlevé
Isle of Flowers – Jean Painlevé
Blue – Paul Chan
Lost Book Found – Steven Matheson
My Life in Five Minutes – Jacqueline Goss
The Third Memory – Jorge Furtado
Sad Disco Fantasia – Derek Jarman
Black and White Trypps Number Three – Jem Cohen
An Injury to One – Allyson Mitchell
The Casting – Pierre Huyghe
Daughter Rite – Steve Reinke
Inextinguishable Fire – Ben Russell
RocketKitKongoKit – Travis Wilkerson
Là-bas – Omer Fast
Walid Ra'ad
The Atlas Group
Michelle Citron
Harun Farocki
Peggy Ahwesh
Caroline Koebel
Chie Yamayoshi
Liza Johnson
Julia Meltzer
David Thorne
Craig Baldwin
Greg Youmans
Chantal Akerman
Walid Raad