Edinburgh University Press Images of Unrest: Documentary Film and Political Violence (Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality)

Formulates a new understanding of political violence by approaching documentary images as original experiences A theoretical contribution to current debates about the significance, power and ethical implications of documentary film images Detailed analyses of the work of several key contemporary documentary filmmakers (Hara, Panh, Rosi, Farocki, Schroeder, Loznitsa) as well as directors deserving wider attention (Weber, Perelmuter, Ingold, Andoni) The conceptualization of a ‘nonrepresentational approach’ to documentary film, which aims to recast debates about the documentary film spectator An original take on the relation between documentary film and political violence This book studies the relation between documentary film and political violence, treating images not as representations, but as original experiences that are a part of a reality that they both present and shape. Whereas documentary film scholarship has often been preoccupied with questions of the referentiality and representation, Images of Unrest: Documentary Film and Political Violence prioritises the question of what images do. The volume argues that this approach, far from being an abnegation of our responsibility towards the real, heightens the ethical stakes of documentary filmmaking and filmviewing, reminding us that we are always in and of the real.