Since Robert Flaherty's landmark film Nanook of the North (1922) arguments have raged over whether or not film records of people and traditions can ever be "authentic." And yet never before has a single volume combined documentary, ethnographic, and folkloristic filmmaking to explore this controversy.What happens when we turn the camera on ourselves? This question has long plagued documentary filmmakers concerned with issues of reflexivity, subject participation, and self-consciousness. Documenting Ourselves includes interviews with filmmakers Les Blank, Pat Ferrero, Jorge Preloran, Bill Ferris, and others, who discuss the ways their own productions and subjects have influenced them. Sharon Sherman examines the history of documentary films and discusses current theiroeis and techniques of folklore and fieldwork.But Sharon Sherman does not limit herself to the problems faced by filmmakers today. She examines the history of documentary films, tracing them from their origins as a means of capturing human motion through the emergence of various film styles. She also discusses current theories and techniques of folklore and fieldwork, concluding that advances in video technology have made the camcorder an essential tool that has the potential to redefine the nature of the documentary itself.

Motion picture images have influenced the American mind since the earliest days of film, and many thoughtful people are becoming ever more concerned about that influence, as about the pervasive influence of television. In eras of economic instability and international conflict, the film industry has not hesitated to use motion pictures for definite propaganda purposes. During less troubled times, the American citizen's ability to deal with political and social issues has been enhanced or thwarted by images absorbed in the nation's theatres. Hollywood As Historian tracks the interaction of Americans with important motion picture productions. Considered are such topics as racial and sexual stereotyping, censorship of films, comedy as a tool for social criticism, the influence of great men and their screen images, and the use of film to interpret history. Opportunities for future study are suggested for those who wish to conduct their own examinations of American film in a cultural context.Hollywood As Historian benefits from a variety of approaches. Literary and historical influences are carefully related to The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Apocalypse Now (1979), two highly tendentious epics of war and cultural change. How political beliefs of filmmakers affected cinematic styles is illuminated in a short survey of documentary films made during the Great Depression. Historical distance has helped analysts to decode messages unintended by filmmakers in the study of The Snake Pit (1948) and Dr. Strangelove (1964). While pluralism of approach has been encouraged, balance has also been a goal: a concern for institutional and thematic considerations never obscures matters of film aesthetics. In twelve chapters dealing with more than sixteen films, Hollywood As Historian offers a versatile text for classes in popular culture, American studies, film history, or film as history. The visual awareness promoted by this text has immediate application, in that students can begin to consider the impact of motion pictures (and television) on their own lives.The films considered: The Birth of a Nation (1915), The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936), The River (1937), March of Time (1935-1953), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Native Land (1942), Wilson (1944), The Negro Soldier (1944), The Snake Pit (1948), On the Waterfront (1954), Dr. Strangelove (1964), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), and Apocalypse Now (1979).

Hundreds of Hollywood-on-Hollywood movies can be found throughout the history of American cinema, from the days of silents to the present. They include films from genres as far ranging as musical, film noir, melodrama, comedy, and action-adventure. Such movies seduce us with the promise of revealing the reality behind the camera. But, as part of the very industry they supposedly critique, they cannot take us behind the scenes in any true sense.Through close analysis of fifteen critically acclaimed films, Christopher Ames reveals how the idea of Hollywood is constructed and constructs itself. Films discussed: What Price Hollywood? (1952), A Star Is Born (1937), Stand-In (1937), Boy Meets Girl (1938), Sullivan's Travels (1941), In a Lonely Place (1950), Sunset Boulevard (1950), The Star (1950), Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Pennies from Heaven (1981), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), The Player (1992), Last Action Hero (1993).

In essays by eleven of America's foremost writers, critics, and filmmakers, Beyond Document explores the full spectrum of nonfiction film and its creative possibilities. In addition to Charles Warren's broad introductory history of the genre, the book takes a close look at ethnographic films, cinema-verité, memoir and autobiography, docudramas, essay films, and newsreels, from classics like Night and Fog and Nanook of the North to more recent important work like Film about a Woman Who. .

All American politicians face the glare of media coverage, both in running for office and in representing their constituents if elected. But for women seeking or holding high public office, as Maria Braden demonstrates, the scrutiny by newspapers and television can be both withering and damaging -- a fact that has changed little over the decades despite the emergence of more women in politics and more women in the news media.Particularly disturbing is the fact that the increase in the number of women reporters appears to have had little effect on the way women candidates are portrayed in the media. Some women reporters, in fact, seem intent on proving that they can be just as tough on women candidates as their male counterparts, thus perpetuating the misrepresentations of the past.Braden examines the political fortunes of Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to the U.S. House; those of the congressional "glamour girls" of the 1940s, Clare Boothe Luce and Helen Gahagan Douglas; the long Senate career of Margaret Chase Smith; the political struggles of diverse women of more recent decades, including Bella Abzug, Elizabeth Holtzman, Nancy Kassebaum, Barbara Jordan, Dianne Feinstein, and Ann Richards; and the disastrous vice presidential bid of Geraldine Ferraro.Braden traces a persistent double standard in media coverage of women's political campaigns through the past eighty years. Journalists dwell on the candidates' novelty in public office and describe them in ways that stereotype and trivialize them. Especially demeaning are comments on women's appearance, personality, and family connections -- comments of a sort that would rarely be made about men candidates. Are they too pretty or too plain? What do their clothes say about them? Are they "feminine" enough or "too masculine"? Are they still just ordinary housewives or are they neglecting their families by heading for Washington or the state house?Braden's study is based on both media accounts and the revealing personal interviews she conducted with a broad range of recent women politicians, including Margaret Chase Smith, Bella Abzug, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Nancy Kassebaum, and Ann Richards. All describe agonizing struggles to get across to the public the message that they are serious and competent candidates capable of holding high office and shaping our nation's course.

The calculated use of media by those in power is a phenomenon dating back at least to the seventeenth century, as Harold Weber demonstrates in this illuminating study of the relation of print culture to kingship under England's Charles II. Seventeenth-century London witnessed an enormous expansion of the print trade, and with this expansion came a revolutionary change in the relation between political authority -- especially the monarchy -- and the printed word.Weber argues that Charles' reign was characterized by a particularly fluid relationship between print and power. The press helped bring about both the deconsecration of divine monarchy and the formation of a new public sphere, but these processes did not result in the progressive decay of royal authority. Charles fashioned his own semiotics of power out of the political transformations that had turned his world upside down.By linking diverse and unusual topics -- the escape of Charles from Worcester, the royal ability to heal scrofula, the sexual escapades of the "merry monarch," and the trial and execution of Stephen College -- Weber reveals the means by which Charles took advantage of a print industry instrumental to the creation of a new dispensation of power, one in which the state dominates the individual through the supplementary relationship between signs and violence.Weber's study brings into sharp relief the conflicts involving public authority and printed discourse, social hierarchy and print culture, and authorial identity and responsibility -- conflicts that helped shape the modern state.

The Kentucky Irish American began life in 1898 as one of many ethnic newspapers in America, but by its final years it attracted an avid national audience of many ethnicities. From 1925, the KIA was owned and edited by the Barry family of Louisville: by John J. Barry to 1950, and by his son Michael to its demise in 1968. This anthology focuses on the Mike Barry years -- a time of Cold War and Vietnam, of Kennedy, Nixon, McCarthy, Goldwater, and Happy Chandler. Under Mike's brilliant editorship, the KIA offered its readers a richly textured, pungent voice that combined humor with a constant push for social improvement in Kentucky and in the nation.Always the KIA was strong in its support of all things Irish, Catholic, and American. It was also an acerbic commentator on the absurdities of Kentucky politics. But the KIA was notable -- and noticed -- for its strong positions on national and international issues.Red Smith once described the KIA as "all the excuse any man needs for learning to read." Today's readers can now discover the pleasures of a livelier era in journalism.

As television screens across America showed Chinese students blocking government tanks in Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and missiles searching their targets in Baghdad, the connection between media and revolution seemed more significant than ever. In this book, thirteen prominent scholars examine the role of the communication media in revolutionary crises -- from the Puritan Revolution of the 1640s to the upheaval in the former Czechoslovakia.Their central question: Do the media in fact have a real influence on the unfolding of revolutionary crises? On this question, the contributors diverge, some arguing that the press does not bring about revolution but is part of the revolutionary process, others downplaying the role of the media.Essays focus on areas as diverse as pamphlet literature, newspapers, political cartoons, and the modern electronic media. The authors' wide-ranging views form a balanced and perceptive examination of the impact of the media on the making of history.

From 1826 to 1829, John Bradford, founder of Kentucky's first newspaper, the Kentucky Gazette, reprinted in its pages sixty-six excerpts that he considered important documents on the settlement of the West. Now for the first time all of Bradford's Notes on Kentucky -- the primary historical source for Kentucky's early years -- are made available in a single volume, edited by the state's most distinguished historian.The Kentucky Gazette was established in 1787 to support Kentucky's separation from Virginia and the formation of a new state. Bradford's Notes deal at length with that protracted debate and the other major issues confronting Bradford and his pioneering neighbors. The early white settlers were obsessed with Indian raids, which continued for more than a decade and caused profound anxiety. A second vexing concern was overlapping land claims, as swarms of settlers flowed into the region. And as quickly as the land was settled, newly opened fields began to yield mountains of produce in need of outside markets. Spanish control of the lower Mississippi and rumors of Spain's plan to close the river for twenty-five years were far more threatening to the new economy than the continuing Indian raids.Equally disturbing was the British occupation of the northwest posts from which it was believed the northern Indianraids emanated. Not until Anthony Wayne's sweeping campaign against the Miami villages and the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1794 was tension from that quarter relieved. Finally, the Jay Treaty with Britain and the Pinckney Treaty with Spain diplomatically cleared the Kentucky frontier for free expansion of the white populace.John Bradford's Notes on Kentucky, now published together for the first time, deal with all of these pertinent issues. No other source portrays so intimately or so graphically the travail of western settlement.

In 1713, soon after publication of the Spectator had come to an end, its place on breakfast tables of Queen Anne's London was taken by the Guardian. Richard Steele, continuing in the new paper the blend of learning, wit, and moral instruction that had proved so attractive in the Tatler and Spectator, was the editor and principal writer; in the 175 numbers of the Guardian he included 53 essays by Joseph Addison, as well as contributions by Alexander Pope, George Berkeley, and several others, some of whom doubtless transmitted their papers through the famous lion's head letterbox that Addison had erected in Button's coffeehouse. "These papers," as John C. Stephens writes in the introduction to his edition of the Guardian, "helped to form and to shape the morals and manners of countless generations in Britain and abroad."This first modern edition of the Guardian was prepared from the original printing of the papers, is fully annotated and indexed, and includes a comprehensive introduction discussing especially the authorship of the individual essays.

Blowup, says Armando Prats, is one of the necessary movies. It is a "living expression of the transition into the new narrative domains" in terms of man's "new vision of himself as a narrative creature in a world whose very essense is cinematic narration." Prats' work on the new humanism inherent in postwar filmmaking is a rewarding work with implications for the fields of esthetics and axiology as well as film criticism. In his analyses of four films by three directors -- Fellini's Director's Notebook and The Clowns, Wertmiller's Seven Beauties, Antonioni's Blowup -- Prats shows the contrasts between the conventional, word-bound narrative methods of the past and the new narrative in which images are free to display their energies fully, to lead the eye beyond rational concepts of reality and illusion, truth and falsity, good an evil, beauty and ugliness. The autonomous visual event, Prats finds, offers one of the most direct ways of entering into adventures of ideas, particularly in the realm of human values. Movies have revolutionized art as well as thought about art, and inasmuch as art and life converge, they have revolutionized life itself.