Direct Cinema: Observational Documentary and the Politics of the Sixties

Nonfictions

by Dave Saunders

Direct Cinema is the first comprehensive study of the "direct cinema" movement of 1960s America. Through the inquisitiveness of filmmakers such as Robert Drew, D.A. Pennebaker, and Frederick Wiseman—and predicated on innovations such as portable cameras and synchronized sound—direct cinema intimately documented presidential campaigns through the revelers of Woodstock and the dispossessed subjects of Wiseman's "reality fictions". This volume recovers these vastly influential yet politically underappreciated films, suggesting they represented a resurgence of America's home-grown philosophical tradition inextricably bound up in the artistic and political impulses of the 1960s.

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2007

Reviews

[Jianna Justice · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times a bit opaque, but overall an enticing overview of majors movements, ideologies, and personas in the cinema-vérité revolution of Sixties documentary filmmaking.

[Travis Wagner · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think my undergraduate thesis had more critical thought throughout than this historical regurgitation under the guise of film studies.