Animating Truth: Documentary and Visual Culture in the 21st Century

283 Pages·2021·4.805 MB·English

by  Nea Ehrlich

Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality
Series Editors: Martine Beugnet and Kriss Ravetto
Founding Editor: John Orr
N
A series of cutting-edge scholarly research monographs covering core aspects of film
studies. The series’ internationally respected authors contribute analytical and often IK
controversial volumes, offering a critical intervention into their subject. O
L
‘Nikolaj Lübecker clearly and insightfully analyses many of the most controversial films A
J
of recent years by cinematic heavyweights like Michael Haneke, Lars von Trier, Claire
L
Denis and Gus Van Sant. In doing so, he invites his readers to reconsider movies in Ü
general: maybe sometimes it’s not so bad for a movie to make us feel bad. As we root B
around for hope at a time when it seems thin on the ground, Lübecker paradoxically E
C
conjures hope where there seemed to be none. A unique and ground-breaking work.’
K
William Brown, Senior Lecturer in Film, University of Roehampton, London
E
R
In recent years some of the most innovative European and American directors have
made films that place the spectator in a position of intense discomfort. Systematically
manipulating the viewer, sometimes by withholding information, sometimes through
shock or seduction, these films have often been criticised as amoral, nihilistic,
politically irresponsible or anti-humanistic. But how are these unpleasurable viewing
experiences created? What do the directors believe they can achieve via this
‘feel-bad’ experience? How can we situate these films in intellectual history? And T
h
why should we watch, study and teach feel-bad films?
e

Answering these questions through the analysis of work by directors such as Lars F
e
von Trier, Gus Van Sant, Claire Denis, Michael Haneke, Lucille Hadzihalilovic, Brian e
l
de Palma, Bruno Dumont and Harmony Korine, The Feel-Bad Film invites readers -
B
to consider cinematic art as an experimental activity with ethical norms that are a
d
radically different from the ones we would hope to find outside the movie theatre.

F
Animating Truth
Nikolaj Lübecker is Associate Professor of French at the University of Oxford, il
m
Fellow of St John’s College. He teaches Film Studies and Modern French Literature.
Documentary and Visual Culture in the 21st Century
Cover image: Still from Dogville, 2003 © Zentropa Entertainment
Cover design: Marie d’Origny Lübecker. Series design: Barrie Tullet NEA EHRLICH
ISBN 978-0-7486-9797-7
9 780748 697977
EDINBURGH STUDIES IN FILM AND INTERMEDIALITY
22447700 eeuupp EEhhrrlliicchh__PPPPCC..iinndddd 11 1144//0099//22002200 1199::5555
Animating Truth
Edinburgh Studies in Film and Intermediality
Series editors: Martine Beugnet and Kriss Ravetto
Founding editor: John Orr
A series of scholarly research intended to challenge and expand on the various approaches to film
studies, bringing together film theory and film aesthetics with the emerging intermedial aspects of the
field. The volumes combine critical theoretical interventions with a consideration of specific contexts,
aesthetic qualities, and a strong sense of the medium’s ability to appropriate current technological
developments in its practice and form as well as in its distribution.
Advisory board
Duncan Petrie (University of Auckland)
John Caughie (University of Glasgow)
Dina Iordanova (University of St Andrews)
Elizabeth Ezra (University of Stirling)
Gina Marchetti (University of Hong Kong)
Jolyon Mitchell (University of Edinburgh)
Judith Mayne (The Ohio State University)
Dominique Bluher (Harvard University)
Titles in the series include:
Romantics and Modernists in British Cinema
John Orr
Framing Pictures: Film and the Visual Arts
Steven Jacobs
The Sense of Film Narration
Ian Garwood
The Feel-Bad Film
Nikolaj Lübecker
American Independent Cinema: Rites of Passage and the Crisis Image
Anna Backman Rogers
The Incurable-Image: Curating Post-Mexican Film and Media Arts
Tarek Elhaik
Screen Presence: Cinema Culture and the Art of Warhol, Rauschenberg, Hatoum and Gordon
Stephen Monteiro
Indefinite Visions: Cinema and the Attractions of Uncertainty
Martine Beugnet, Allan Cameron and Arild Fetveit (eds)
Screening Statues: Sculpture and Cinema
Steven Jacobs, Susan Felleman, Vito Adriaensens and Lisa Colpaert (eds)
Drawn From Life: Issues and Themes in Animated Documentary Cinema
Jonathan Murray and Nea Ehrlich (eds)
Intermedial Dialogues: The French New Wave and the Other Arts
Marion Schmid
The Museum as a Cinematic Space: The Display of Moving Images in Exhibitions
Elisa Mandelli
Theatre Through the Camera Eye: The Poetics of an Intermedial Encounter
Laura Sava
Caught In-Between: Intermediality in Contemporary Eastern Europe and Russian Cinema
Ágnes Pethő
No Power Without an Image: Icons Between Photography and Film
Libby Saxton
Cinematic Intermediality: Theory and Practice
Kim Knowles and Marion Schmid (eds)
Animating Truth: Documentary and Visual Culture in the 21st Century
Nea Ehrlich
Visit the Edinburgh Studies in Film website at www.edinburghuniversitypress.com/series/ESIF
Animating Truth
Documentary and Visual Culture
in the 21st Century
Nea Ehrlich
For Sebastian, for making me laugh when I least expect it
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in
the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject
areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-
edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce
academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our
website: edinburghuniversitypress.com
© Nea Ehrlich, 2021
Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for
permission to reproduce material previously published elsewhere. Every
effort has been made to trace the copyright holders, but if any have
been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make the
necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road
12(2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
Typeset in Garamond MT Pro by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire,
and printed and bound in Great Britain
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 6336 2 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 6338 6 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 6339 3 (epub)
The right of Nea Ehrlich to be identified as the author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI
No. 2498).
Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
Part I Starting Points: The Evidentiary Status of Animation as
Documentary Imagery
1. Why Now? 27
2. Defining Animation and Animated Documents in Contemporary
Mixed Realities 54
Part II Animation and Technoculture: The Virtualisation of
Culture and Virtual Documentaries
3. Screens, Virtuality and Materiality 87
4. Documenting Game Realities 111
5. In-game Documentaries of Non-game Realities 135
6. Interactive Animated Documentaries: Documentary Games and
VR 150
Part III The Power of Animation: Disputing the Aesthetics of
‘the Real’
7. Encounters, Ethics and Empathy 177
8. Conflicting Realisms: Animated Documentaries and Post-truth 199
Epilogue 223
Filmography 244
Bibliography 247
Index 264
Illustrations
Figures
I.1 Screenshot from Kill Bill, directed by Quentin Tarantino, 2003 1
I.2 Waltz with Bashir, animated by David Polonsky and directed by
Ari Folman, 2008 4
I.3 Tower, directed by Keith Maitland, 2016 5
1.1 Screenshot of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping sunbathing,
TomoNews, 2017 28
1.2 Screenshot from One Iranian Lawyer’s Fight to Save Juveniles from
Execution, The Guardian and Sherbet, 2012 33
2.1 Slaves, directed by David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn,
2008 55
2.2 Flight Patterns, a time-lapse animation artwork by Aaron Koblin,
2011 70
2.3 Powering the Cell – Mitochondria, BioVisions Program and XVIVO
Scientific Animation, 2012 71
3.1 Do It Yourself, directed by Eric Ledune, 2007 98
3.2 Second Bodies, directed by Sandra Danilovic, 2009 104
3.3 Serious Games: Immersion, artwork by Harun Farocki, 2009
Copyright Harun Farocki GbR, Berlin. 105
3.4 Reenactment of Valie Export and Peter Weibel’s Tapp und Tastkino, Eva
and Franco Mattes, 2007. Online performance, Galleria Civica di
Trento. 106
4.1 Molotov Alva and His Search for the Creator, directed by Douglas
Gayeton, 2007 118
5.1 Avatar in three modes of animation, from Stranger Comes to Town,
directed by Jacqueline Goss, 2007 142
5.2 World of Warcraft avatars incorporated into the US Visit
rotoscoped video, from Stranger Comes to Town, directed by
Jacqueline Goss, 2007 142
6.1 Continuum of vividness 152
6.2 Mob gathering outside the photography studio, from September
Illustrations vii
1955, an installation by Cagri Hakan Zaman, Deniz Tortum, Nil
Tuzcu, 2016 160
6.3 Screenshot from documentary game 9/11 Survivor, by John
Brennan, Mike Caloud and Jeff Cole, 2003 162
7.1 Screenshot from Darfur is Dying, Take Action Games, 2006 187
7.2 Music & Clowns, by Alex Widdowson, 2018 191
7.3 Slaves, directed by David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn,
2008 192
8.1 Snack and Drink, directed by Bob Sabiston, 1999 208
8.2 The Simpson Verdict, video installation by Kota Ezawa, 2002 217
E.1 Another Planet, an animated documentary by Amir Yatziv, 2017 226
E.2 Screenshot from Black Mirror, ‘Fifteen Million Merits’ episode,
created by Charlie Brooker, 2011 236
E.3 Trump Dreams, animated by Ruth Lingford, 2017 240
Table
E.1 Comparison of animation in the past with animation today 229
Acknowledgements
It would not have been possible to write this book without the generous help
and support of many individuals. I would like to emphasise my deep gratitude
to Kriss Ravetto and Angela Dimitrakaki for their unparalleled guidance and
lasting influence on my thinking. My warm thanks also to Richard Williams,
Suzanne Buchan, Paul Wells, Paul Ward, Gabriel Motzkin and Shai Lavi for
their academic and intellectual support along the way.
I’d like to thank the team at Edinburgh University Press, and especially
Gillian Leslie and Richard Strachan. The University of Edinburgh was instru-
mental in providing the resources and support necessary to complete this
project and the Animated Realities conference I co-organised, thereby bringing
together practitioners and researchers of animated documentary and allowing
me to learn from the people in this emerging field. Important in my academic
path was also the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, for providing me the oppor-
tunity to develop the ideas in this book. I’m also grateful to my colleagues and
students at the Department of the Arts at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
and would like to specifically thank Ruth Yurovski for her help on this project.
I’d also like to acknowledge the members of the Society for Animation
Studies for proving to me I was in the right field and that I had found ‘my
people’, and for being a source of friendship, discussions, good advice and
collaboration. Thank you also to all the animators who shared their practical
knowledge, work and perspectives on the field; the animation community’s
endless creativity and enthusiasm for their research have been contagious
and motivational. The many scholars whose work is quoted and referenced in
these pages have inspired my thinking.
Many thanks to all the artists and individuals who generously gave me
permission to use their work in my book: Amir Yatziv, Ari Folman and
Yael Nahlieli, Keith Maitland, Jonathan Bairstow and Ben Sayer, Michael
Astrachan, David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn, Alain Viel, Aaron
Koblin, Eric Ledune, Eva and Franco Mattes, Sandra Danilovic, Douglas
Gayeton, Jacqueline Goss, Cagri Hakan Zaman, Deniz Tortum, Nil Tuzcu,
Susana Ruiz, Alex Widdowson, Bob Sabiston, Kota Ezawa, Ruth Lingford
and Antje Ehmann of the Harun Farocki GbR.
Acknowledgements ix
I owe a debt of gratitude to my friends, for their endless support. Thank
you, Lauren Pyott, for being the first to listen. Thank you Ayelet Carmi, Claire
Benn and Benjamin Dahlbeck, for everything. Thank you, Sivan Balslev,
Zohar Gotesman, Oded Erell, Yaara Ilan, Ruthi Aladjem, Carmel Vaisman,
Alexandra Antoniadou, Lara Aranson and Nicholas Miller for your intellec-
tual feedback, incisive critique and stimulating conversations. Thank you also
Cristina Formenti and Jonathan Murray for wonderful collaborations. Thank
you, Lesley Marks, for meticulous editing but also for ongoing good advice.
Finally, I would like to thank my parents and partner, unwavering sources
of support. Elana and Avishai, your different approaches, endless thoughtful-
ness and wisdom made this possible. And beyond everything else, Sebastian,
for encouraging me in the first place and enduring everything it entailed, and
for making me realise that some things are beyond words.