by Jon Wilkman (Author)
“A towering achievement, and a volume I know I’ll be consulting on a regular basis.”―Leonard Maltin
"Authoritative, accessible, and elegantly written, Screening Reality is the history of American documentary film we have been waiting for." --Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times film critic
From
Edison to IMAX, Ken Burns to virtual environments, the first
comprehensive history of American documentary film and the remarkable
men and women who changed the way we view the world.
Amidst
claims of a new “post-truth” era, documentary filmmaking has experienced
a golden age. Today, more documentaries are made and widely viewed than
ever before, illuminating our increasingly fraught relationship with
what’s true in politics and culture. For most of our history, Americans
have depended on motion pictures to bring the realities of the world
into view. And yet the richly complex, ever-evolving relationship
between nonfiction movies and American history is virtually unexplored.
Screening Reality is
a widescreen view of how American “truth” has been discovered, defined,
projected, televised, and streamed during more than one hundred years
of dramatic change, through World Wars I and II, the dawn of mass media,
the social and political turmoil of the sixties and seventies, and the
communications revolution that led to a twenty-first century of
empowered yet divided Americans.
In the telling, professional
filmmaker Jon Wilkman draws on his own experience, as well as the
stories of inventors, adventurers, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists,
and activists who framed and filtered the world to inform, persuade,
awe, and entertain. Interweaving American and motion picture history,
and an inquiry into the nature of truth on screen, Screening Reality is
essential and fascinating reading for anyone looking to expand an
understanding of the American experience and today’s truth-challenged
times.
