American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary: The Cambridge Turn Paperback - 2013

From the rear cover

"How does Scott MacDonald do it? Every couple of years he produces a work so significant that it would have taken any other scholar at least a decade to produce. This, his newest opus, extends the spatial approach to cinema he pioneered in The Garden in the Machine, but does so by focusing on documentary rather the avant-garde. His exploration of the interlaced traditions of ethnographic and personal documentary filmmaking in the Boston area in the light of American Pragmatism's commitment to the examination of lived experience is a remarkable addition to his already remarkable oeuvre." - David E. James, author of The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles

"[American Ethnographic Film and Personal Documentary] is a superbly original and informative work that takes as its project the creation of a cognitive map of a significant and geographically specific area within the larger field of independent documentary filmmaking. It is fascinating to follow the book's careful articulation of the network of teachers and students, and the institutions where they and their films flourished. This book establishes a new path for documentary studies within a cultural landscape that widens to spatial media studies and beyond."- Janet Walker, author of Trauma Cinema: Documenting Incest and the Holocaust

Media reviews

Citations

• Choice, 11/01/2013, Page 0