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University of California Press

Los Angeles Documentary and the Production of Public History, 1958-1977

by Joshua Glick (Author)
Hardcover Paperback eBook
Price: $95.00 / £80.00
Publication Date: Jan 2018
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 254
ISBN: 9780520293700
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Illustrations: 28 b/w
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About the Book

Los Angeles Documentary and the Production of Public History, 1958–1977 explores how documentarians working between the election of John F. Kennedy and the Bicentennial created conflicting visions of the recent and more distant American past. Drawing on a wide range of primary documents, Joshua Glick analyzes the films of Hollywood documentarians such as David Wolper and Mel Stuart, along with lesser-known independents and activists such as Kent Mackenzie, Lynne Littman, and Jesús Salvador Treviño. While the former group reinvigorated a Cold War cultural liberalism, the latter group advocated for social justice in a city plagued by severe class stratification and racial segregation. Glick examines how mainstream and alternative filmmakers turned to the archives, civic institutions, and production facilities of Los Angeles in order to both change popular understandings of the city and shape the social consciousness of the nation.

About the Author

Joshua Glick is an Assistant Professor of English, Film, and Media Studies at Hendrix College and a Fellow at the Open Documentary Lab, MIT. He teaches courses on global Hollywood, race and representation, documentary history and theory, and emerging media formations.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Beyond Fiction: Institutions of the Real Los Angeles

Part One. New Frontier Visions in the Light and Shadow of Hollywood, 1958–1964
1. Studio Documentary in the Kennedy Era: Wolper Productions Begins
2. Downtown Development and the Endeavors of Filmmaker Kent Mackenzie

Part Two. After theWatts Uprising: Community Media from the Top Down and the Bottom Up, 1965–1973
3. The Rise of Minority Storytelling: Network News, Public Television, and Independent Collectives
4. Hard Lessons in Hollywood Civics: Managing the Crisis of the Liberal Consensus
5. Wattstax and the Transmedia Soul Economy

Part Three. Bicentennial Screens, 1974–1977
6. Roots/Routes of American Identity
7. Numbering Our Days in Los Angeles, USA
Conclusion: The 1984 Olympics and the Neoliberalization of Culture

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Reviews

"Documentary makers who value the opportunity to understand how films of that era got made, and how the production and distribution practices established then continue to influence the market today, will profit greatly from reading this book." 
— Documentary
"The book is an encouragement to engage, now, with documentaries being made at the grassroots level by activist filmmakers and collectives, rather than waiting for the glossy, neutered account of the struggle."
— Los Angeles Review of Books
"[This book] sheds a renovated and original light on the history of the twentieth century media culture(s) of L.A., and in the same way it reveals the potentialities of meticulous discursive excavations into the non-fiction realm, reversing film canons and stressing social and cultural functions that make this book be a relevant one in the field of film history, certainly, but in the field of contemporary history at large too: it is a passionate interrogation of moving image as a source of historiography and a productive factor of history. . . . Los Angeles Documentary deserves great attention not only as a deeply researched cinema-history book, but as a nuanced and sharp cultural and political study as well."
— Synoptique
"An essential contribution to an emerging field of documentary research that seeks to synthesize connections among otherwise coterminous yet parallel strands of documentary histories. . . . Above all, the book makes a point about the value of avoiding the binary cliché of an independent documentarian as an atomized private individual in opposition to government, while shedding light on Cold War documentary culture in general."
— Film Quarterly
"Joshua Glick’s book is an exemplary investigation into and deconstruction of the varying visions set forth through documentary practice."
— Film Matters
"Los Angeles Documentary and the Production of Public History, 1958–1977 proves there is still much to be investigated in the timeline of America’s film production past. The acute specificity of Glick’s historical narrative makes his book a unique and necessary resource for understanding the evolution of Los Angeles documentary production, the works that were produced, and their impact on the formation of American identity."
— Journal of Film and Video
"Joshua Glick's book is an excellent and original account of two decades of documentary film and television in Los Angeles during a period of radical social transformation."—David E. James, author of The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geographies of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles

"Cultural studies meets history and brings Los Angeles back into documentary history in Glick’s important new book on American documentary. This unpretentious, authoritative book will be as important to working filmmakers and aspiring documentarians as it will be to historians and communications studies students and scholars."—Patricia Aufderheide, author of Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction

 “A masterful and original book, built upon painstaking archival research, astute cultural analysis, and poignant oral histories from LA’s independent and ‘studio’ documentary movements of the 1960s and 1970s. Pushing beyond tired frameworks of maker, genre, ethics, and theory, this insightful book provides a model for synthesizing disparate perspectives from technology and media industry studies, human subjects research, archival historiography, and cultural geography. Glick makes connecting the dots an art form, forcing us to reconsider the ‘straw-men’ we habitually make of documentary’s ‘others’: Hollywood and television. A must-read.”—John T. Caldwell, author of Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television

"This extraordinary book offers a rich history of independent and studio documentary practice, television programming, public broadcasting, and alternative media production. A brilliant and meticulously researched book, it is groundbreaking work organized around the multiple circuits of media production in Los Angeles. Glick’s work is a substantial reassessment of film and media history that vitally considers how filmmakers, producers, communities, and cultures in Los Angeles grappled with the politics and craft of public history making, consequential changes in the film and media industry, and the promises and possibilities of media as tool for social engagement."—Michael Boyce Gillespie, author of Film Blackness: American Cinema and the Idea of Black Film

"Joshua’s rigorous research and stunning insights reveal crucial and underexplored aspects of America’s media past. His work becomes a clarion call to the new generation of documentarians to stand tall on the shoulders of nonfiction innovators, take a leap of faith, and soar. And for those of us who were part of this era, Los Angeles Documentary is a rich and deeply satisfying historical account."’—Thandeka (formerly known as Sue Booker), filmmaker and KCET pioneer

 

Awards

  • Richard Wall Memorial Award 2018 Finalist 2019, Theatre Library Association