Mapping the Rockumentary: Images of Sound and Fury

by Gunnar Iversen (Editor), Scott MacKenzie (Editor)

Overview

Mapping the Rockumentary: Images of Sound and Fury is the first anthology to explore the rockumentary as a central component of both the documentary and world cinema. The book includes case studies of bands and performers such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, The Clash, Madonna and Metallica and performers from Asia, Europe and the Americas, making the case for rockumentaries as part of an established and ever—evolving cinematic tradition. With an international and transdisciplinary approach, and addressing rocumentaries in film, television and on the internet, the book explores the form’s rich history from the 1950s to the present day – and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474478038
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	05/25/2023
Series:	Traditions in World Cinema
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Professor Gunnar Iversen is Professor of Film Studies in the School of Art and Culture at Carleton University.

Scott MacKenzie is Professor of Film and Media, Queen’s University. His books include: Cinema and Nation (2000); Purity and Provocation: Dogma 95 (2003); Screening Québec (2004); The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson (2013); Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures (2014); Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic (2015); Arctic Environmental Modernities (2017); Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos (2019); and Process Cinema: Handmade Film in the Digital Age (2019).

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Images of Sound and Fury — Gunnar Iversen and Scott MacKenzie

Part One: Histories

1. Music Makers of the Blue Ridge — Greil Marcus

2. ‘I Don’t Make Culture, I Sell It!’: The Early History of Music Documentation, 1920s—1970s — Laura Niebling

3. Monterey Pop and the Maturation of the Concert Film — Laurel Westrup

4. The Sound of Rockumentary: A Consideration of the Documentary Soundtrack — Michael Baker

5. False Endings — Scott MacKenzie

Part Two: Gender

6. ‘Start Me Up’: The Place and Displacement of Women in the Cinema of Rolling Stones — Catherine Strong and Stephen Gaunson

7. Madonna on Film: Geopolitics, Globalization, and Gender Politics — Anna Westerstahl Stenport

8. The Freedom to Speak: The Dixie Chicks, Observational Documentary, and Shut Up & Sing — Heather McIntosh

9. Rock ‘n’ Roll Family Romances: Rockumentary as Male Melodrama — Gunnar Iversen

10. Performing Dylan: The Many Lives of Bob Dylan in I’m Not There — Magdalena Fürnkranz

Part Three: Aesthetics and Politics

11. U2’s Rattle and Hum: God, Sex, Rock and Roll and God Again — Karine Bertrand

12. Punk City Symphony: The Clash and Rude Boy — Celine Bell

13. Listening from the Empty Booth: Performing the Grateful Dead Community in Long Strange Trip — Randolph Jordan

14. Minimum and Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, and Rockumentary Form — Anthony Kinik

15. ‘Everything Was Stories’: The Aesthetic Imaginaries of Searching for the Wrong—Eyed Jesus — Asbjørn Grønstad and Øyvind Vågnes

Part Four: Counter—Cultures

16. Chile: The Rock of Political Culture and the Hard Place of Cultural Policy — Jorge Saavedra Utman and Toby Miller

17. Psychedelia and Rebelliousness in Times of Dictatorship: Argentinian Rockumentaries (1973—1983) — Javier Campo and Tomás Crowder—Taraborrelli

18. Harmonium in California: Musically Imagined Communities and the Rockumentary Form — Eric Fillion

19. Stations of the Crass: Counter—Culture and the Anarcho—Punk Movement — Asbjørn Tiller

20. Cars and Guitars, or, Detroit and the MC5: On Representations of Music and Place in MC5: A True Testimonial — Lindsey Eckenroth

Part Five: Futures

21. Unknowable Dogs — Gary Kibbins

22. ‘This is a F**king Business’: The Concert Tour in the 1970s Fiction Film — Julie Lobalzo Wright

23. Live from the Cineplex: The Concert Film as Event Cinema since the 2000s — Ian Robinson

24. Documenting Deities: Touch and K—pop Fandom on YouTube — Eric Chalfant and Ali Na

25. Ritual in Transfigured Time — Greil Marcus

Editorial Reviews

This book is a milestone in the study of rockumentary as a genre and the way it reflects history, gender and politics. It takes us through the almost uncharted land of this important genre: from early forms of mediated music, to the breakthrough in the 1960s and into the digital era. It is a rich and illuminating analysis of rockumentary and its cultural context.

Ib Bondebjerg