The Intellect Handbook of Documentary

The growth of documentaries and their role in culture, activism, and social impact.

The Intellect Handbook of Documentary is an important go-to resource for practitioners, scholars, and students in this burgeoning field. It tackles key topics and debates including the role of documentary in post-truth culture, the rise of streaming giants, and the implications for national documentary cultures. Additionally, it addresses the shifting, increasingly hybrid practices of documentary activism and the professionalisation of impact. Featuring work by key figures in international documentary scholarship and talented emerging scholars, the Handbook is a landmark publication for documentary studies in the twenty-first century.

The Handbook is broad in its scope, incorporating historical, theoretical, empirical, and practical scholarship. It is organised around ten key themes and debates: What and where is documentary (studies); documentary in an age of epistemic uncertainty; documentary histories; documentary and the archive; audio and visualities; documentary relationalities; beyond the Anthropocene; digital and documentary practices; documentary and (new) politics; and a golden age of documentary distribution and funding. Importantly, the Handbook incorporates the voices and practices of practitioners from the Global South, challenging the dominance of Western voices in documentary scholarship.