Vocal Projections: Voices in Documentary

(Hardback)

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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.

Reviews

A book that performs a double and much needed breakthrough. It manages to transfer much of the cutting research in fiction cinema to the field of documentary film. But it also succeeds in making room for a type of reading that gives priority to the materiality of the voice ... [there is] great diversity of the topics under scrutiny ... systematic articulation of specific analyses and broader theoretical schemes and patterns ... [and] careful close-reading of the chosen movies, which are not only judiciously described (quite an achievement in the case of a work in print that is not accompanied by oral documents) but also patiently examined so that the limits of traditional ways of analyzing voice and sound become clear. * Leonardo Reviews *
A timely introduction to brave new waves of thinking about the documentary tongues and tones that tune our listening. * Jonathan Kahana, author of Intelligence Work: The Politics of American Documentary (2008) and editor of The Documentary Film Reader: History, Theory, Criticism (2016) *
The plurality of voices contributing to this extraordinary and much needed volume is nothing short of inspiring. Extending and in many cases upending Bill Nichols association between voice and rhetoric, the essays in this book propose entirely new paradigms through which to think about the qualities and implications of the voicelinguistic and non-linguistic, human and otherwisein documentary. The range of issues raised and perspectives developed here on the subject of the voice in documentary will echo for years to come. * Alisa Lebow, Reader in Film Studies, University of Sussex, UK *
At a moment when documentary forms abound, not only in cinema, but television, contemporary art, and social media, Vocal Projections offers an important and much needed reflection on the voice in documentary. Against the authoritative, voice-of-God narration and logocentrism of conventional documentarywhere the voice is merely the vehicle for meaning and informationthe wide-ranging essays in this collection consider its sonic, textural, and often prelinguistic manifestations across media and national contexts. The many voices examined here are anything but straightforward: they slip and sound, often destabilizing the images to which they are attached. Throughout, the contributors maintain a keen ear for vocal resonances in places where they have not been typically heard. * Genevieve Yue, Assistant Professor of Culture and Media, The New School, USA *

Author Bio

Maria Pramaggiore is Head of Media Studies at the National University of Ireland at Maynooth. She has published four books, two on Irish cinema, and one a co-authored textbook, Film: A Critical Introduction (2011; with Tom Wallis), now in its third edition. Bella Honess Roe is a lecturer at the University of Surrey, UK, where she is the programme director for Film Studies. Her scholarship and teaching focuses on animation, documentary and popular culture more broadly. She is the author of Animated Documentary (2013). Her work on animation, documentary, genre and British cinema appears in publications such as The Journal of British Cinema and Television and Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal.