The Autobiographical Documentary in America

by Jim Lane

Overview

Since the late 1960s, American film and video makers of all genres have been fascinated with themes of self and identity. Though the documentary form is most often used to capture the lives of others, Jim Lane turns his lens on those media makers who document their own lives and identities. He looks at the ways in which autobiographical documentaries—including Roger and Me, Sherman’s March, and Silverlake Life—raise weighty questions about American cultural life. What is the role of women in society? What does it mean to die from AIDS? How do race and class play out in our personal lives? What does it mean to be a member of a family? Examining the history, diversity, and theoretical underpinnings of this increasingly popular documentary form, Lane tracks a fundamental transformation of notions of both autobiography and documentary.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299176549
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	03/26/2002
Series:	Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography
Edition description:	1
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jim Lane is executive director of the Emerson College Los Angeles Center. A filmmaker since 1982, his documentaries include Long Time No See, Women of Prague, Background Action, I Am Not an Anthropologist, and East Meets West.

Editorial Reviews

"The autobiographical documentary is one of the most significant paths taken by American filmmakers in recent years, and Jim Lane is the ideal person to take on this important subject. A scrupulous film historian with a sophisticated grasp of the theoretical issues raised and addressed by autobiographical documentary films, he is also a gifted filmmaker personally committed to the movement he is studying. He writes with singular authority about films whose aspiration, and achievement, is to be at once subjective and objective."—William Rothman, University of Miami, author of The "I" of the Camera

"Analysis of some of the most interesting documentary work of the past three decades. A must-read for anyone studying or making documentary."—Julia Lesage, University of Oregon, co-editor of Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media

"Such fine and sustained work on the documentary film as autobiography is way overdue. Exploring the convergences of autobiography and film theory, Jim Lane makes a major contribution to the whole field of autobiographical studies, demonstrating in the process what significant work autobiography does in the history and culture of our time."—Susanna Egan, Mirror Talk: Genres of Crisis in Contemporary Autobiography

From the Publisher

Filmmaker Lane (Emerson College Los Angeles Center) explores the genre, which was established in the late 1960s, in terms of the influence filmmakers have had on subjectivity, reference, and the autodocumentary form when they turn the cameras and recorders on themselves. He identifies a tension between the documentary impulse to record a historical external world, and the autobiographical impulse to record an internal private world. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews