Documentary cinema has always drawn from real life. However, an increasing number of contemporary filmmakers go further still, drawing onscreen images of reality through a range of animated filmmaking techniques and aesthetics. This book is the first of its kind, exploring the field of animated documentary film from a diverse range of scholarly and practice-based perspectives. The book’s chapters explore and propose answers to a range of questions that preoccupy twenty-first-century film artists and audiences alike: What are the historical roots of animated documentary? What kinds of reasons i ... More

Documentary cinema has always drawn from real life. However, an increasing number of contemporary filmmakers go further still, drawing onscreen images of reality through a range of animated filmmaking techniques and aesthetics. This book is the first of its kind, exploring the field of animated documentary film from a diverse range of scholarly and practice-based perspectives. The book’s chapters explore and propose answers to a range of questions that preoccupy twenty-first-century film artists and audiences alike: What are the historical roots of animated documentary? What kinds of reasons inspire practitioners to employ animation within documentary contexts? How do animated documentary images reflect and influence our understanding and experience of multiple forms of reality – public and private, psychological and political? From early cinema to present-day scientific research, military uses, digital art and gaming, this book casts new light on the capacity of the moving image to act as a record of the world around us, challenging many orthodox definitions of both animated and documentary cinema.