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2018 | Buch

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Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film

herausgegeben von: Catalin Brylla, Mette Kramer

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This groundbreaking edited collection is the first major study to explore the intersection between cognitive theory and documentary film studies, focusing on a variety of formats, such as first-person, wildlife, animated and slow TV documentary, as well as docudrama and web videos. Documentaries play an increasingly significant role in informing our cognitive and emotional understanding of today’s mass-mediated society, and this collection seeks to illuminate their production, exhibition, and reception. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the essays draw on the latest research in film studies, the neurosciences, cultural studies, cognitive psychology, social psychology, and the philosophy of mind. With a foreword by documentary studies pioneer Bill Nichols and contributions from both theorists and practitioners, this volume firmly demonstrates that cognitive theory represents a valuable tool not only for film scholars but also for filmmakers and practice-led researchers.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Introduction: Intersecting Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film

Abstract

This collection of essays explores the intersection between cognitive theory and documentary film. Western audiences live in a mass-mediated culture that filters reality through the prism of factual media; hence, their emotional and cognitive comprehension of the world is, to a significant extent, informed and consolidated by documentaries. This volume seeks to illuminate the production, exhibition and reception of documentaries, exploring intratextuality (in which filmmakers employ narrative and aesthetic strategies to achieve particular audience responses and effects) and extratextuality (whereby filmmaking practices and sociocultural traditions negotiate the indexical link between representations and their real-life counterparts). The interplay between these levels means that documentaries impact our attitudes towards and interaction with the world, helping construct our social, cultural and individual identities.

Catalin Brylla, Mette Kramer

The Mediation of Realities

Frontmatter

Chapter 2. A Documentary of the Mind: Self, Cognition and Imagination in Anders Østergaard’s Films

Abstract

Although the complexity of documentary genres is acknowledged in documentary theory, the fundamental role of narrative, emotion and imagination is often underestimated. This chapter deals with the role these elements play in our experience of reality and across the genres of fiction and nonfiction. Based on cognitive theories of emotion and the self, it argues for a stronger focus on the embodied mind in documentary studies. The Danish documentary filmmaker, Anders Østergaard, has called his work “a documentary of the mind.” His films illustrate the theory of the embodied mind through their creative and narrative strategies, which are also found in documentaries in general, and they point to the importance of narrative and emotion for an understanding of the making and reception of documentaries.

Ib Bondebjerg

Chapter 3. Little Voices and Big Spaces: Animated Documentary and Conceptual Blending Theory

Abstract

This chapter examines animated documentaries from the perspective of “conceptual blending theory” (CBT), a model derived from cognitive semantics, demonstrating its potential to explain how filmmakers conceive, and how spectators experience and interpret this idiosyncratic documentary form. The analysis focuses on the Colombian animated documentary Pequeñas Voces (Little Voices) (Jairo Eduardo Carrillo and Óscar Andrade 2011), addressing the interaction between the real characters’ voices from interviews (children displaced during armed conflicts) and the animated interpretations of these characters. Extending the relevance of the CBT model to narrative considerations, such as point-of-view, the concept of “narrative spaces” is also introduced to examine how the film establishes a blend between the focal strategies of fiction film with those of documentary film.

Juan Alberto Conde Aldana

Chapter 4. Documentary Spectatorship and the Navigation of “Difficulty”

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the ways in which the documentary spectator can experience forms of difficulty in “making sense” of what they see and hear. This is particularly the case with films that subvert conventional documentary approaches to knowledge in order to make the spectator question what is presented to them and to “work” at producing meaning and significance from what are often divergent indications. The cognitive profiles of two films, Surname Viet Given Name Nam (Trin T Min-Ha 1989) and Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (Johan Grimonprez 1997) are examined, drawing both on formal analysis and comments from the online postings of spectators. The question of “difficulty” and its navigation is set within the broader context of documentary as a discursive form.

John Corner

Chapter 5. Docudrama and the Cognitive Evaluation of Realism

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the cognitive tools that viewers use when evaluating the veracity of documentaries, using the docudrama, The Queen, to exemplify viewers’ evaluations of a documentary’s truthfulness. It argues that viewers use a series of cognitive heuristic tools, such as availability, representativeness and anchoring, based on their individual cognitive and affective dispositions, including the personal relevance of a given documentary. It further argues that documentaries, but also fiction, tend to be believed unless such cognitive and affective processes provide disconfirmation, and that documentaries may often be veiled propaganda, as in the case of The Queen, where a central purpose is to present a glowing portrait of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Torben Grodal

Chapter 6. The Duties of Documentary in a Post-Truth Society

Abstract

Documentary filmmakers have been telling stories since Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty 1922). What is relatively new is a particular self-consciousness about storytelling as a craft. Documentary filmmakers today read screenwriting manuals, study dramatic works and deliberately borrow strategies from fiction films. Even those with experimental leanings frequently describe their work in terms of stories. This tendency, for the most part, seems harmless enough: it is simply an appeal to audience interests. However, it has disturbing resonance with another form of self-conscious storytelling that has recently taken root in the culture: fake news. On the surface, fake news and documentary storytelling do different things and stem from different impulses. Still, beneath the surface, it is quite possible that both reflect a growing disregard for truth in the wider culture—a supposed phenomenon that pundits have labelled “post-truth.”

Dirk Eitzen

Character Engagement

Frontmatter

Chapter 7. Characterization and Character Engagement in the Documentary

Abstract

When documentaries represent people, they do not offer a transparent record of “who they really are,” but rather a constructed representation: in other words, a characterization. Such characterizations are not merely fictions, however. Documentary characterization implies specific ethical responsibilities to the people thus represented, precisely because documentaries are nonfiction. This chapter discusses the seeming paradox that the representation of people in documentaries is both constructed and nonfictional, and discusses the implications of considering documentaries as “asserted veridical representations.” It describes the most salient tools used by documentary filmmakers to construct characters, and the ethical obligations such characterization implies.

Carl Plantinga

Chapter 8. The Difficulty of Eliciting Empathy in Documentary

Abstract

Documentary can express a sense of common humanity, based on empathy with characters from different cultural and social contexts. Eliciting empathy with screen characters is therefore one of the foremost challenges that documentary filmmakers face. Although filmmakers often display a well-meaning intent to create empathy, they just as often fail to do so. This chapter highlights the gap between authorial intentions and potential audience impact by analyzing two case studies. The South African documentaries, Miners Shot Down (Rehad Desai 2014) and I, Afrikaner (Annalet Steenkamp 2013) both claim to pursue empathy for social and activist reasons. The chapter makes use of models of high-level empathy to explore how and why these films do not fully reach their potential, and what can be learned from their shortcomings within an academic and a film-practice context.

Jan Nåls

Chapter 9. Fake Pictures, Real Emotions: A Case Study of Art and Craft

Abstract

This chapter investigates the function of morally ambiguous characters in documentary film; it argues that such characters can persuade documentary viewers to renegotiate their moral values, transcend the differences between authentic artworks and replicas, and transgress established social boundaries. It takes, as a case study, the documentary Art and Craft (dirs. Sam Cullman & Jennifer Grausman, 2014), which chronicles the life of Mark A. Landis, an American art forger living in Laurel, Mississippi. This study reveals that the viewers’ sympathy and transgressive emotions often undergo a similar trajectory for both documentaries and fiction films. However, the difference is that documentaries provide an alternative access to engagement, due to the genre’s special relationship with reality, as evidenced in Art and Craft.

Aubrey Tang

Chapter 10. Engaging Animals in Wildlife Documentaries: From Anthropomorphism to Trans-species Empathy

Abstract

This chapter introduces a cognitive ecocritical approach that draws on research in affective neuroscience and cognitive ethology to explore the role of anthropomorphism and trans-species empathy in viewers’ engagement with nonhuman characters in wildlife documentaries. It argues that recent ethological research casts a new light on neurologist Vittorio Gallese’s concept of liberated “embodied simulation” in film viewing, and that a closer look at the embodied expression of animal emotions allows for a better understanding of our affective responses to the animals we see in nonfiction film. Drawing on the work of Dirk Eitzen, it further suggests that viewers’ belief in the authenticity and consequentiality of the events seen on screen is of central importance to their emotional responses to wildlife documentaries.

Alexa Weik von Mossner

Emotions and Embodied Experience

Frontmatter

Chapter 11. Collateral Emotions: Political Web Videos and Divergent Audience Responses

Abstract

On the Internet, various new documentary forms emerge, and even traditional forms function differently. Particularly interesting is the case of political web videos and the diverging emotions they elicit. Many online videos address the concerns of conflicting social groups and trigger clashes between their collective emotions. On platforms like Facebook or YouTube, such responses become highly visible and politically influential. Turning to the example of WikiLeaks’ video Collateral Murder, this chapter explores the question of how divergent affective responses to documentary web videos can be explained. By considering the characteristics of the web video as a medium and documentary as a genre, and the interplay between film’s affective structures and viewers’ social dispositions, it suggests a new explanation of divergent affects and emotions in today’s media environments.

Jens Eder

Chapter 12. Slow TV: The Experiential and Multisensory Documentary

Abstract

This chapter examines the aesthetic and perceptual implications of the vestibular sense in Bergensbanen: Minutt for Minutt (The Bergen Train: Minute by Minute) (NRK 2009) and thermoception in Nasjonal Vedkveld (National Wood [Fire] Night) (NRK 2013). These documentaries explore a conception of film ecology in which landscape and nature are not simply represented audiovisually, but also elicit perceptual experiences as the primary cinematic appeal. By looking at issues of experientiality in the documentary film, the chapter seeks to promote an awareness within the field of cognitive film theory that the senses are as important to our understanding of film experience as emotions and empathy.

Luis Rocha Antunes

Chapter 13. Toward a Cognitive Definition of First-Person Documentary

Abstract

We are witnessing a dominant trend in contemporary documentary practice, whereby films abandon the longstanding ideal of objectivity in favor of more diverse and subjective perspectives on reality. Blurring the boundaries between subject and filmmaker, “first-person documentaries” invite us to critically reflect on the processes by which viewers distinguish nonfiction from fiction. This chapter posits that such assessments depend on the cognitive principle of framing, with viewers drawing on a wide array of textual, contextual and real-world cues to construe a film as documentary or otherwise. First-person films could be understood as a sub-frame of documentary, with its own set of expectations and unique emotional affects. This is demonstrated through a case study of Kirsten Johnson’s 2016 film, Cameraperson.

Veerle Ros, Jennifer M. J. O’Connell, Miklós Kiss, Annelies van Noortwijk

Chapter 14. The Communication of Relational Knowledge in the First-Person Documentary

Abstract

This chapter discusses and analyses how the schematic structures of the “intimate” first-person documentary tap into our “implicit and explicit relational knowledge” (Lyons-Ruth et al., “Implicit relational knowing: Its role in development and psychoanalytic treatment,” Infant Mental Health Journal, 19, 282–289, 1998) and “attachment emotions” (Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, Vol. 2: Separation, 1969) by drawing upon the embodied reality that is enacted in this type of film. The chapter analyzes two films: the main case study is Pappa Och Jag (Father and I) (Linda Västrik 1999), but it also looks at the documentary, Family (Phie Ambo and Sami Saif 2001), in order to explore how relational schemas play a role in the directors’ regulation of attachment emotion and to analyze the impact the directors’ relational knowledge has on the films’ emotional communication.

Mette Kramer

Documentary Practice

Frontmatter

Chapter 15. A Social Cognition Approach to Stereotyping in Documentary Practice

Abstract

Our perceptions of the social world are guided by categorical (i.e. stereotypical) thinking based on preexisting schematic knowledge, which frames filmmaking as well as viewing practices. This chapter outlines how folk-psychological mechanisms, as manifested in films and filmmaking textbooks, potentially result in the construction and perpetuation of social stereotypes that are detrimental to certain communities such as disabled people. This knowledge is then deployed in my own film practice to reduce or reconfigure disability stereotypes, particularly using the strategy of narrative fragmentation, which prevents the formation of schematic characters and plots.

Catalin Brylla

Chapter 16. A Cognitive Approach to Producing the Documentary Interview

Abstract

As constructed narratives, documentaries often rely on interviews as their fundamental building blocks. These interviews must be gathered, and conventional production practices have evolved for this purpose. This chapter examines three types of conventional interview setups: EFP, ENG and direct address (Interrotron). Cognitive theories like Torben Grodal’s (Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film, 2009) PECMA flow model, embodied simulation and the perception of facial expressions can help explain why these conventions work. The chapter also observes the way new media environments are reshaping these conventions and how cognitive theories can inform documentarians on how to effectively adapt their production practices.

Michael Grabowski

Chapter 17. Documentary Editing and Distributed Cognition

Abstract

This chapter proposes that editing documentary film involves expert cognitive actions of watching, sorting, remembering, selecting and composing structure and rhythm from a mass of unscripted material. It argues that, in this process, editors, directors and the raw, uncut filmed material are all contributors to the generation of ideas. Shaping raw material into a coherent documentary film is not accomplished solely in the brain; rather, it is the work of an “extended mind” (Clark and Chalmers, The Philosopher’s Annual, XXI, pp. 59–74, 1998; Clark, Supersizing the Mind, 2008) and requires the complementary activation of brain, body and the “film objects” (Vertov, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, 1984) themselves.

Karen Pearlman

Backmatter

Titel: Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film
herausgegeben von: Catalin Brylla
Mette Kramer
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-90332-3
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-90331-6
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90332-3