Documentary in the Age of COVID

«Documentary in the Age of COVID is a timely and astute volume that affirms and challenges our thinking about how the cultural and technological disruption brought by the pandemic response has upended documentary culture. It is a guiding light for documentary practitioners and scholars as they navigate the new terrain of a post-COVID world.»

(Professor Belinda Smaill, Monash University)

This collection responds to the unusual and disturbing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. The volume surveys the immediate effects of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in documentary film cultures as well as providing a space for unpacking the recent past and future of documentary in the context of the pandemic’s possible effects. It is published as part of Peter Lang’s Documentary Film Cultures series and reflects the value of documentary as an enduring and influential channel of media discourse and community of practice. Media producers have been forced to both interrogate their chosen professions and innovate with limited resources. Already, we are seeing new distribution and production methods emerge to highlight the importance of media-makers as essential workers, as they are uniquely equipped with the ability to represent the various dialogues undertaken to respond to the cultural, social, economic and political challenges the pandemic has foisted on global society.

Dafydd Sills-Jones is Associate Professor at Te Kura Whakapaho, Te Wananga Aronui o Tamamki Makau Rau (School of Communication Studies, Auckland University of Technology). Dafydd publishes in both traditional scholarly mode (on history in the media, minority language media, documentary culture) and screen practice as research mode, making installations and films that have been screened in several countries and at major international festivals. Previously, Dafydd worked in the media industry in the UK in a number of sectors and roles, including producing, directing and researching documentary, drama-documentary, and interactive non-fiction.

Pietari Kääpä is a Reader in Media and Communications at the University of Warwick. He works in the field of environmental media studies with a specific focus on media management and industry studies. His monograph Environmental Management of the Media: Industry, Policy, Practice (2018) explores the ecological footprint of media production and the policies and strategies developed in the media sector to curtail these impacts. In addition, he is the author of several books on ecocinema, including Transnational Ecocinemas: Film Culture in the Age of Environmental Depravation (with Tommy Gustafsson, 2013).