The Looking Machine: Essays on Cinema, Anthropology and Documentary Filmmaking (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781526134097)

This new collection of essays presents the latest thoughts of one of the world's leading ethnographic filmmakers and writers on cinema. It will provide essential reading for students in cinema studies, filmmaking, and visual anthropology. The dozen wide-ranging essays give unique insights into the history of documentary, how films evoke space, time and physical sensations, and the intellectual and emotional links between filmmakers and their subjects. In an era of reality television, historical re-enactments, and designer packaging, MacDougall defends the principles that inspired the earliest practitioners of documentary cinema. He urges us to consider how the form can more accurately reflect the realities of our everyday lives. Building on his own practice in filmmaking, he argues that this means resisting the pressures for self-censorship and the inherent ethnocentrism of our own society and those we film.

Author: David Macdougall
ISBN-10: 1526134098
ISBN-13: 9781526134097
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/11/2019
Pages: 224
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.30w x 0.80d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 02/01/2020