Revising Documentary Modes: a Critical Study of American Iraq and Afghanistan War Documentaries, 2003 – present
Date
2014-10-27
Authors
Edwards, Samuel
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Abstract
This thesis identifies and examines a corpus of American documentary films,
released between 2003 and 2014, that concern themselves with the US’ recent concurrent
land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Employing Bill Nichols six-mode model of
documentary classification as a theoretical baseline, the thesis argues that such traditional
means of documentary classification are insufficiently capable of accounting for the
dynamism and diversity of the aforementioned body of films. This thesis then proceeds,
based on case-studies of existing Iraq and Afghanistan war documentaries, and on
Nichols’ conception of “Social Issue and Personal Portraiture” film, to a propose a new
three-mode model of documentary classification, better suited to accommodating and
elucidating this corpus of films as it currently exists.
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Keywords
Documentary, Film, Iraq War, War in Afghanistan