Hot Off the Presses!: "Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised): A Docalogue"

fig. a: don’t judge this book by its cover

Very happy to be a part of this fine collection about this truly amazing film.

As the title page for my essay suggests,

fig. b: secret histories

my thoughts on the film were prompted in large part by Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples’ absolutely breathtaking duet of “Precious Lord” during the extended tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.

fig. c: Mavis & Mahalia

I’ve seen Questlove’s film so many times now, and I still get goosebumps during that scene every single time. Anyway, that led to a consideration of the Staple Singers and their outsized role in the early history of the popular music documentary—Festival (1967), Soul to Soul (1971), Wattstax (1973), The Last Waltz (1978)—and how Summer of Soul, which documents the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, fits in with this body of work.

fig. d: Festival (1967)

fig. e: Soul to Soul (1971)

fig. f: Wattstax (1973)

fig. g: The Last Waltz ((1978)

fig. h: Summer of Soul (2021)

If you’d like to know more about this collection, you can find its webpage here.

If you’re a true devotee of Summer of Soul, you can order the book from the obvious multinational technology sources, but wouldn’t it be better to order it from a local, independent bookstore instead? Or just ask for it from your local library. If you happen to be in the vicinity of a university library, it should be pretty easy to track down.

aj

"Reclaiming Popular Documentary"--Hot off the presses!

The UPS guy showed up with such urgency at 9:00 pm last night, the truck’s stereo blaring at top volume as he pulled up.  I wasn't expecting anything and I couldn't figure out what could possibly be so important. Turns out he had reason to be excited. He had my brand-new, hot-off-the-presses copy of Reclaiming Popular Documentary (Indiana University Press), edited by Christie Milliken and Steve F. Anderson. Lots of great material in here : public television and its relationship to the doc ecology; aerial cinematography and the fly-over documentary genre; food docs; popular music docs; eco-docs; melodrama in popular documentary; true crime docs; viral media; etc. The collection also happens to include my essay "Errol Morris, the New York Times, Docmedia, and Op-Docs as Pop Docs” (not sure if the UPS guy realized that, but...)..

What’s the gist of it? Well, you’ll have to read it, but it’s got some scope to it (MK-Ultra, Seymour Hersh, journalism, photography, Abu Ghraib, “docmedia,” online newspapers, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, smallpox, biological warfare, Steve Bannon, etc.), largely because the work of Errol Morris—in motion picture and print form—has so much scope to it, even if one focuses almost entirely on Morris’s involvement with the New York Times alone. Which of Morris’s films are discussed? Well, primarily a trio of his contributions to the New York Times’ Op-Docs series—The Umbrella Man (2011), November 22, 1963 (2013), and Demon in the Freezer (2016)—as well as The Thin Blue Line (1988) and Wormwood. (2017).

Once again, I find myself in excellent company--contributors include Zoé Druick, Mike Baker, Patricia Aufderheide, S. Topiary Landberg, Rick Prelinger,, Ezra Winton, the late Jonathan Kahana, and many others.

If you’re interested in learning more about the book, its contents, and its authors, you can find that information here.

It's been a long, strange, but fruitful trip, Christie and Steve--congratulations, and thank you for all the hard work!

aj

"Mapping the Rockumentary: Images of Sound and Fury" (2021)--Now in Print!

fig. a: Metallica’s Deliverance by Rockumentary

My copy of Mapping the Rockumentary: Images of Sound and Fury (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) showed up on our front door last Sunday.

fig. b: Uli M. Schüppel’s The Road to God Knows Where (1990) as it appears in the opening montage of Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s 20,000 Days on Earth (2014), roughly 12,152 days into the life of Nick Cave

This book includes my essay "Minimum and Maximum Rock 'n' Roll: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and Rockumentary Form," which deals primarily with two films and two radically different approaches to the popular music documentary: The Road to God Knows Where (1990) and 20,000 Days on Earth (2014). Whereas The Road to God Knows Where can be seen as a ultra-minimalist “anti-rockumentary,” 20,000 Days on Earth is a maximalist meta-documentary, and one of the greatest works of “nonfiction” (the film goes to great lengths to blur the lines between fiction and nonfiction) in the last 20+ years, in my opinion.

There’s lots of great material in this collection, spanning folk, jazz, pop, psych, punk, post-punk, metal, country, indie, K-pop, prog, and, yes, rock, and encompassing a wide variety of perspectives and approaches. It’s a book that aims to vastly expand our understanding of the rockumentary genre, its history, and its potential. All told there are 25 chapters broken up into five categories—histories, gender, aesthetics & politics, counter-cultures, and futures—plus an introduction.

I’d like to thank the editors of this fine book, Gunnar Iversen and Scott MacKenzie, for their vision and diligence. It truly was a pleasure working on this project.

aj