Imagining Reality

Description

Oscar-winning documentary-maker Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September, Touching the Void) and leading broadcaster/historian Mark Cousins (The Story of Film) offer an expanded, revised edition of their 'definitive, inspirational' (The Independent) compendium on the roots and history of the documentary film. Imagining Reality celebrates documentary as a vibrant, polemical, experimental and entertaining form, by gathering a wide-ranging collection of writings by and about such groundbreaking documentary-makers as Vertov, Flaherty, Marcel Ophuls, Chris Marker, Kieslowski, Claude Lanzmann, and Nick Broomfield. The story is carried up to date by attention to the success documentaries have had among mainstream movie audiences in recent years, including Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine and Fahrenheit9/11, The Buena Vista Social Club, Spellbound, Capturing The Friedmans, Etre Et Avoir and The Fog Of War.

Kevin Macdonald, born in Glasgow in 1967, is a Scottish documentary film director, best known for Touching the Void (2003). He is the grandson of the Hungarian-born English filmmaker, Emeric Pressburger. After making a series of biographical documentaries, Macdonald directed One Day in September (2000), about the killing of Israeli atheletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary. His next film was Touching the Void, which told the story of two climbers' disastrous attempt to scale the Siula Grande in the Andes in 1985. The film won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the 2004 BAFTA Awards.