Annabelle Documentary

[Billi Mayhue]

Theresulting documentary, Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, launches October 27 on Netflix. Both Dunnes spoke with V.F. contributing editor Sloane Crosley about the making of the film.

Speaking of guests, this documentary is star-studded. From talented actors who have played iconic roles such as Tony Todd (Candyman trilogy) and Loretta Devine (Urban Legend trilogy), to talented directors who have directed iconic horror like Jordan Peele (Get Out) and William Craine (Blacula series). They all give commentary on the evolution of representation, either explaining their role in horror or how horror affected them personally.

I joined the Film Studies programme at Surrey in 2009 after gaining my PhD in Critical Studies from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. My doctoral thesis was on animated documentary. I also have an MA in Critical Studies from USC and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. In between my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees I worked in the film industry in Los Angeles and London in various roles in script development, including at Lakeshore Entertainment, MGM and Granada Film. I also worked with the non-profit London-based DocHouse, an organisation devoted to the promotion and exhibition of independent documentary film.

Broadly, my areas of research interest are animation, documentary and the media industries. I have also published in other areas, including genre film and British cinema. My published work includes a monograph, Animated Documentary (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), which won the Society for Animation Studies McLaren/Lambart Award for Best Book. This expanded my doctoral research and is still an area I publish on and I have given several invited talks and keynotes on this topic.

I am currently researching the relationship between gender and labour in the British animation industry in the mid-twentieth century and exploring how digital humanities tools can address the archival absences and gaps from this period. I also am co-editing, with Eric Herhuth (Tulane, USA), a multi-volume reference publication on animation studies for Bloomsbury and co-editing, with Christopher Holliday (KCL), an anthology on animation and performance.

This article considers the several animated interviews made by Bob Sabiston between 1997 and 2007, and the implications of considering these films as documentaries. The author argues that the films are liminal, discursive texts that negotiate tensions between reality and make-believe, observation and interpretation, and presence and absence. Textual analysis of the short films in question demonstrates an aesthetic presentation that confirms their documentary status at the same time as exploiting the expressionistic potential of Rotoshop. The nature of Rotoshop also emphasizes the absence of the physical body of the interviewee, replacing it with an excessively present style of animation. Other conventional markers of documentary authenticity and evidence, such as the visual index, are also absent in these films. These absences, coupled with the presence of an aesthetically liminal style of animation infer a pleasurably complex and challenging epistemological and phenomenological viewing experience.

Vocal Projections: Voices in Documentary examines a previously neglected topic in the field of documentary studies: the political, aesthetic, and affective functions that voices assume. On topics ranging from the celebrity voice over to ventriloquism, from rockumentary screams to feminist vocal politics, these essays demonstrate myriad ways in which voices make documentary meaning beyond their expository, evidentiary and authenticating functions. The international range of contributors offers an innovative approach to the issues relating to voices in documentary. While taking account of the existing paradigm in documentary studies pioneered by Bill Nichols, in which voice is equated with political rhetoric and subjective representation, the contributors move into new territory, addressing current and emerging research in voice, sound, music and posthumanist studies.

This chapter explores the 'special relationship' between Britain and the US via Working Title's romantic comedies that couple British and American characters. At first glance it would seem that these films are an attempt to reassert British dominance over America. However, close examination reveals a much more complicated attitude towards Americans and the US with the American as the object of the Briton's desire and narrative closure resulting from the union of man and woman, Britain and America. Films discussed include Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Wimbledon.

The Animation Studies Reader brings together both key writings within animation studies and new material in emerging areas of the field. The collection provides readers with seminal texts that ground animation studies within the contexts of theory and aesthetics, form and genre, and issues of representation. The first section collates key readings on animation theory, on how we might conceptualise animation, and on some of the fundamental qualities of animation. New material is also introduced in this section specifically addressing questions raised by the nature, style and materiality of animation. The second section outlines some of the main forms that animation takes, which includes discussions of genre. Although this section cannot be exhaustive, the material chosen is particularly useful as it provides samples of analysis that can illuminate some of the issues the first section of the book raises. The third section focuses on issues of representation and how the medium of animation might have an impact on how bodies, gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity are represented. These representations can only be read through an understanding of the questions that the first two sections of the book raise; we can only decode these representations if we take into account form and genre, and theoretical conceptualisations such as visual pleasure, spectacle, the uncanny, realism etc.

Examining the development of animated documentary through the lens of media ecology, Honess Roe reveals complex interrelations between the animated documentary text, and its contexts of production and consumption. From the emergence of digital animation and film editing tools in the 1990s to the impact of the Internet as an alternative distribution platform, the chapter considers the economic, social and technological factors shaping the evolution of animated documentary. Honess Roe argues that while the digital media ecology has provided new opportunities for animated documentary production it has also challenged established business models and practitioner identities.

Re-appraisal of the Amber Collective film "Byker", a documentary about nostalgia and loss of place. Argues that the film is more a construction rather than a representation of the community of Byker, with reference to Henri Lefebvre's concept of space as a social construct.

This chapter explores the short-lived phenomenon of the live broadcast of museum exhibitions into cinemas between 2011 and 2014, including Leonardo Live (2011) from London's National Gallery, Pompeii Live (2013) and Vikings Live (2014) from the British Museum, and Matisse Live (2014) from the Tate Modern. These incongruous broadcasts, part arts documentary, part promotional material for their respective museums and exhibitions, appeared at the peak of the rapid growth of event cinema that took place at this time. However, unlike theater and other live performance, museum exhibitions and cinema exhibition are two distinct very distinct " media, " visually, temporally, and spatially. This chapter argues that this intermedial incompatibility is evidenced in the broadcasts' use of cinematography and liveness and they are also a response to questions surrounding curatorial intent in museum exhibitions.

The book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in animated documentary, offering an excellent overview of the both the history of the form and scholarship in the area, as well as suggesting a new way to categorise animated documentary, by the way in which animation is used in the documentary film. Honess Roe argues that animation can be used either as: mimetic substitution, standing in for missing footage in an imitative fashion; non-mimetic substitution, standing in for missing footage but creating new meaning through the substituted image; or evocation, in which animation expresses something which cannot be captured on film such as a feeling or psychological state. It's a fresh and useful way to look at animated documentary and these and other ideas in the book will have value for both scholars and practitioners who want to explore the form of the animated doc.

I cannot watch a documentary about Joan Didion impartially any more than her nephew, Griffin Dunne, could make an impartial film about his legendary aunt. To say that Didion, now 82, has had an impact on me as a young, female, native Californian who writes creative nonfiction is to gloss over the depth of sensibility that shapes our early identities.

Netflix released Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, directed by Dunne, on Friday. It is a celebration of her life and work, and opens with Didion talking about snakes, saying they always appear in her work because they were always on her mind. They were something to avoid when growing up in California. She asks Griffin, behind the camera, if he has snakes up in the country.

Ian Bonhte: I moved to the UK in September 1997 and by October he had taken over Givenchy, so he appeared everywhere in the news. So I became aware of him as my own creative career got started in my late teens, early 20s.

Lee was always in the tabloids and we all have a media-made idea of who he was. What was the biggest challenge for you as filmmakers when trying to show a different side of him in your documentary?

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