Indiana University Press
Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos
Key Metrics
- Lilya Kaganovsky
- Indiana University Press
- Paperback
- 9780253040305
- 9.21 X 6.14 X 0.8 inches
- 1.19 pounds
- Performing Arts > Film - History & Criticism
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
Beginning with Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922), the majority of films that have been made in, about, and by filmmakers from the Arctic region have been documentary cinema. Focused on a hostile environment that few people visit, these documentaries have heavily shaped ideas about the contemporary global Far North. In Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos, contributors from a variety of scholarly and artistic backgrounds come together to provide a comprehensive study of Arctic documentary cinemas from a transnational perspective. This book offers a thorough analysis of the concept of the Arctic as it is represented in documentary filmmaking, while challenging the notion of The Arctic as a homogenous entity that obscures the environmental, historical, geographic, political, and cultural differences that characterize the region. By examining how the Arctic is imagined, understood, and appropriated in documentary work, the contributors argue that such films are key in contextualizing environmental, indigenous, political, cultural, sociological, and ethnographic understandings of the Arctic, from early cinema to the present. Understanding the role of these films becomes all the more urgent in the present day, as conversations around resource extraction, climate change, and sovereignty take center stage in the Arctic's representation.
Author Bio
Lilya Kaganovsky is the Richard and Margaret Romano Professor of Slavic, Comparative Literature, and Media & Cinema Studies, at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Kaganovsky received her B.A. in Literature from U.C. Santa Cruz in 1992, with a specialization in English, American, and Russian Literature.
She received her M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Columbia University in 1994; and her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with an Emphasis in Film Studies from U.C. Berkeley in 2000.
She has been at the University of Illinois since 2001, where she is affiliated with the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory, the College of Media, the Department of Gender and Women's Studies, and the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, and the Initiative in Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies.
Source: University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
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