Documentary Testimonies

This volume examines documentary films that compel us to bear witness, move us to anger or tears, and possibly mobilize us to action. Documentary testimonies take various forms from unedited video recordings to documentary films, from one-on-one reminiscence to site-specific public presentations and perambulations. The ten new essays gathered here analyze questions regarding the usefulness and legitimacy of documentary testimony: What is the value of the historical archive the televised public hearings or activist online videos constitute? Is it made part of the official record, or dismissed as renegade or ephemeral? To what extent can documentary bring about social change? How do the documentary testimonies compensate for or account for the frailty of memory?

Each chapter provides an in-depth study of an archive of social suffering tied to a particular locale: Rwanda, Louisiana, Korea, South Africa, Chiapas, India, Cambodia, Poland, Norway, and Washington, D.C. The contributors focus on the production and use of documentary testimony by public administrators and institutions, human rights activists and organizations, documentary and ethnographic filmmakers, and/or other individuals and groups with interest in environmental justice, human rights, social advocacy, and/or the commemoration and prevention of genocide.