Mockumentary

Monuments have lost their innocence in the eyes of the public. No one can go under a statue anymore without wondering if and when it will be torn down. Hundreds of monuments have been target of derision, anger and indignation during the popular revolts that have shaken the Americas, from north to south. Graffitis, escraches, hammer blows, hangings … rumbles of revolution in the iconosphere, which shake an institutional memory that offends the victims of yesterday and today.

Now, toppling a statue can be a powerful emancipatory gesture to open up unavoidable questions about colonization, slavery and exploitation. Nevertheless, as the act is repeated, its political strength is wearing down, its media impact as well. It is time to ask ourselves what we are going to do with these statues fallen from grace. And with the empty pedestals of our streets in turmoil.
Los monumentos han perdido su inocencia a los ojos de la ciudadanía. Ya nadie puede pasar bajo una estatua sin preguntarse si y cuando será derribada. Cientos de monumentos han sido motivo de escarnio, rabia e indignación de las revueltas populares que han sacudido a las Américas, de norte a sur. Pintadas, escraches, martillazos, ahorcamientos… retumbos de revolución en la iconosfera, que ponen a temblar una memoria institucional que ofende a las víctimas de ayer y de hoy.

Ahora bien, derrocar una estatua puede ser un gesto emancipatorio potente para abrir a preguntas ineludibles sobre la colonización, la esclavitud y la explotación. Sin embargo, a medida que el acto se repite su fuerza política se va agotando, su impacto mediatico también. Es tiempo de interrogarnos sobre qué vamos a hacer con estas estatuas caídas en desgracia. Y con los pedestales vacíos de nuestras plazas en tumulto.

Since when Peter Watkins with War Game (1965) has given birth to the first mockumentary of the history of cinema, the number of films and televisual works created exploiting this audiovisual form has grown exponentially. The monograph, through illustrating the history and modes of operation of this vast corpus of fascinating works,  show how the mockumentary is a narrative style capable of crossing genres, authorial poetics and media.

"Paquita Salas. Superviviente: Mis memorias escritas con la colaboración de Javier Ambrossi y Javier Calvo" (Ambrossi y Calvo, 2020), published last 23rd September, was written by "Los Javis", based on one of their most famous characters: Paquita Salas. The series was released on the streaming platform Flooxer, belonging to Atresmedia, in 2016, and its success and the purchase by Netflix in 2017 encouraged the development of the project. Nowadays, there is a distinctive and recognizable universe that, despite covering several platforms and even experiences, is still true to series worldness. The main aim of this research is identify, analyze and describe the Paquita Salas transmedia world. For that reason, complex methodological proposals have been applied, such as García & Herrero (2015).

F For Fake (1972), que no Brasil ganhou o título Verdades e men- tiras e em Portugal foi exibido como F de fraude, é o último filme lançado em vida por Orson Welles. Talvez possa ser considerado como o seu testamento. É um filme seminal para quem pensa hoje a questão do filme-ensaio (ou do ensaio fílmico). Apesar de ser considerado genericamente um documentário, é inqualificável. Tem parentesco com o chamado mockumentary (documentira), tipo de documentário cômico, construído sobre informações falsas ou faceciosas. É também um ensaio sobre a questão da cópia e do falso na arte, portanto, uma espécie de tratado audiovisual de estética. Mas pode ser também considerado, ainda, como uma homenagem à tradição da magia, ou, enfim, um filme autobiográ- fico (ou autoficcional, como se diz hoje). Talvez seja tudo isso ao mesmo tempo, pois a heterogeneidade é constitutiva desse filme.

This chapter in the collection, Vocal Projections: Voices in Documentary (Bloomsbury, 2018, eds. Maria Pramaggiore and Annabelle Honess Roe), explores the problematics of vocal materiality in recent and contemporary mockumentary film and television through close analyses of "gay voices" in Christopher Guest's Waiting for Guffman (1997) and the contemporary sitcom Modern Family (2009-present).

La era del "mockumentary". Falsos documentales, hibridaciones y límites difusos entre la ficción y la no ficción en el audiovisual argentino Alumno: Martín Eandi (DNI 28.750.678) Director: Gustavo Aprea [email protected] 2007 LA ERA DEL "MOCKUMENTARY". FALSOS DOCUMENTALES, HIBRIDACIONES Y LÍMITES DIFUSOS ENTRE LA FICCIÓN Y LA NO FICCIÓN EN EL AUDIOVISUAL ARGENTINO | Martín Eandi Indice Introducción………………………………………………………..3 Objetivos de investigación………………………………………...4 Marco teórico………………………………………………………5 Marco metodológico………………………………………………11 Metodología………………………………………………………..12 Estado del conocimiento…………………………………………..15 Sobre una definición del cine documental……………………………….15 Sobre falsos documentales. Una tierra de nadie………………………….32 Algunos ejemplos……………………………………………………..38 Casos y antecendentes en la televisión argentina………………………...54 Algunas posturas respecto del "falso documental"………………………57 Diferentes formas de nombrar un mismo fenómeno……………………..70 Aproximaciones al fenómeno. Un posible esquema clasificatorio………….74 La imagen. Una nueva ontología en la era de la sospecha…………………82 Las relaciones texto-destinatario. Un "nuevo" espectador………………..91 Delimitando una "zona de grises"……………………………………...98 Análisis del Corpus………………………………………………115 Algunas reflexiones finales………………………………………172 Bibliografía Anexo LA ERA DEL "MOCKUMENTARY". FALSOS DOCUMENTALES, HIBRIDACIONES Y LÍMITES DIFUSOS ENTRE LA FICCIÓN Y LA NO FICCIÓN EN EL AUDIOVISUAL ARGENTINO | Martín Eandi 2 Introducción:

Horror films often play with shadows, darkness and nightscapes. One need only to think of Nosferatu's silhouette creeping along the wall in F.W. Murnau's classic film from 1922 or just the title of the 2007 vampire film Thirty Days of Night (David Slade, 2007) to appreciate the central place of light and especially its absence in this genre. Night vision brings a whole new visual rhetoric to the horror film, however, where the play is no longer with shadows but with eerie surfaces, unnatural colours and uncanny reflections. One of the most immediately striking things about night vision is the eerie green glow that turns people into uncanny figures with opaque and shiny eyes. In a medium like film, where the gaze has often been regarded as a central site of human agency, subjectivity and desire, this transformation is all the more disturbing. In this chapter, I will argue that the night vision aesthetic – both in the recent spate of found footage and mockumentary films and in more conventional narrative fiction films – represents a new visual language for anxiety about the status of human agents in the current global economy and more specifically registers an unease with the treatment of civilians in the recent wars defending and expanding that system. It is no accident that night vision capability is a key feature of the post 9/11 British and U.S. military, and the signature aesthetic of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, with filmed sequences of night raids and house searches

The narrative perspective of a movie provides not only the focus of the narrative information given to the audience, but also size the mediated spatial impressions. The view through the lens
of the camera puts the viewers right into the action. The textual method of the continuous Point-of-View Shot and the numerous Reaction-Shots that are used in CLOVERFIELD (USA 2008, Matt Reeves) turn into the restricted point of view of the audience. So the closenes of the viewer to the characters is imposed by the movie. To see what the character sees can make a remarkable difference in experiencing the movie: the POV Shot supports the role-taking as a partly process of empathy, the movement of the camera becomes a somatic aspect of the emotional and intentional expressive behaviour of the characters. So the diegetic trauma becomes the visual trauma of the viewer. The camera acts of violence against the viewer and underlines the representation of violence within the movie picture.
The affective responses of the audience are central in CLOVERFIELD the dimension of the affect must be understood as dimension of response on which processes of somatic empathy
take effect. The main focus of this essay is therefore in the somatic response of the viewer and what we call somatic decoding. The somatic decoding of the cinematic code as mode of understanding the film is parallel to the decoding of cinematic violence issues. The method of POV Shots represents not only a look at the violence, but also allows the audience a high degree of participation because of the violent view of the camera: The violence in (and on) the cinematic image  becomes the violence on the viewer.

A detailed history and analysis of the film Hard Core Logo (1996) by Bruce McDonald, this book considers the film in relation to Canadian cinema and music, the road movie, and the study of masculinity. Part of the Canadian Cinema series from the University of Toronto Press.
http://www.amazon.com/Bruce-McDonalds-Hard-Canadian-Cinema/dp/1442612738

C’est arrivé près de chez vous est un mock-documentary, une œuvre de fiction qui s’approprie les codes et les conventions documentaires et en imite les différents modes. À l’instar d’autres exemples de cette forme hybride, il tend à brouiller les frontières qui séparent la réalité de la fiction et, dans la mesure où il s’intéresse à la représentation d’une violence parfois extrême, une telle confusion se révèle problématique : que se passe-t-il lorsque les éléments horrifiques se font soudain vraisemblables et quel impact ont-ils alors sur le spectateur ? C’est arrivé près de chez vous confronte les spectateurs à des images dotées d’une indéniable ambivalence, qui peuvent les distraire et les conduire à adopter la position critique inhérente à la forme du mock-documentary, mais aussi, simultanément, les troubler en leur donnant à voir des actes de violence feints mais vraisemblables. Pour le spectateur, l’impression de réalité pourrait alors bien devenir, pour quelques instants, la réalité de l’impression.

This article finds in the found-footage horror cycle an alternative way of understanding the relationship between horror films and reality, which is usually discussed in terms of allegory. I propose the investigation of framing, considered both figuratively (framing the film as documentary) and stylistically (the framing in handheld cameras and in static long takes), as a device that playfully destabilizes the separation between the film and the surrounding world. The article’s main case study is the Paranormal Activity franchise, but examples are drawn from a variety of films.

This thesis discusses the relationship between mockumentaries and the music industry. Because this subject has yet to be studied in depth, the original contribution to knowledge is to further examine this relationship. To do so, a literature review documenting what has thus far been written about mockumentaries is provided. This audiovisual strategy is also contextualized within contemporary practices.

La caratteristica dei cosidetti finti documentari (o più precisamente mockdocumentary, documentari beffardi, burloni con una non casuale sottolineatura sul carattere scherzoso e traditore del termine) è quella di utilizzare la “forma” del documentario per veicolare contenuti che “veri” non sono. In alte parole l’elemento di fiction viene trattato come se fosse un elemento reale, appartenente cioè a quella parte di realtà che è teoricamente possibile catturare con la macchina da presa o con la telecamera.
Ma qual è la forma del documentario?
O meglio quali sono le forme del documentario?
Quali sono le sue caratteristiche principali?
È una risposta complessa perché il cosidetto documentario non solo ha cambiato forma e aspirazioni nel corso degli anni, ma è ormai sempre più soggetto a un processo di contaminazione con la cosidetta fiction. Nella presente tesi non cercheremo di dare una risposta diretta alle domande che ci siamo appena posti, ma procederemo in senso inverso: attraverso l’analisi di un gruppo particolare di mock-documentary individueremo le caratteristiche del documentario che vengono disattese e decostruite in questi testi.
Per inquadrare correttamente il problema ci avvaleremo del supporto di un testo importantissimo Faking it. Mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality (1). Questo libro, oltre a tracciare un interessante percorso dal documentario al mock-documentary, avvalendosi del contributo dei più sagaci studiosi del genere, introduce e mette a disposizione dello studioso un altro importantissimo strumento: il mock grade, traducibile provvisoriamente in italiano come gradiente di finzione. La traduzione è approssimativa perché l’aggettivo “mock” in inglese indica sì qualcosa di finto ma anche qualcosa di ironico, più vicino allo scherzo e alla trappola che alla mistificazione.
E la caratteristica beffarda, oltre a quella decostruttiva è proprio quella fondante del mock-documentary che decostruisce il genere, attraverso una irresistibile ironia. Questa ironia non è una caratteristica accessoria ma fondamentale perché nasconde una sottintesa comunicazione con il pubblico.
Il mock-documentary, infatti, è forse l’unico genere di “spettacolo” che pretende una partecipazione “attiva” del suo pubblico. Potremmo quindi affinare la nostra traduzione in livello d’ironia o meglio in livello di beffardia. Jan Roscoe e Craig Hight individuano tre livelli di beffardia nell’analisi del mock-documentary: il primo livello (mock grade 1) è costituito dalla parodia e comprende la stragrande maggioranza dei testi, il secondo livello  (mock grade 2) è caratterizzato dalla critica quei testi che operano una critica feroce alla comunicazione e spettacolarizzazione operata dai media. Infine troviamo il livello più alto (il mock grade 3), dove secondo la studiosa australiana e lo studioso neozelandese si opera una vera e propria decostruzione del genere, capovolgendo completamente tutte i suoi elementi fondanti. I testi con queste ultime caratteristiche sono molto rari, i tre più importanti (2) sono Dave Holzman’s Diary (USA, 1967, 73’) di Jim Mc Bride, The falls (GB, 1980, 185’) di Peter Greenaway e Il cameramen e l’assassino (C’est arrivé près de chez vous, Belgio, 1992, 95’) di Remy Belvaux, André Bonzel e Benoît Poelvoorde..
Una volta analizzati questi tre testi fondamentali e aver estrapolato le loro caratteristiche di decostruzione tenteremo di portare la nostra analisi più avanti, aggiungendo qualcosa di nuovo a ciò che fin qui è stato detto. Cercheremo cioè di individuare le caratteristiche di un nuovo genere che che a differenza degli altri possiede solo il nome di ciò che intende rappresentare, la realtà.
La struttura di questo lavoro sarà organizzata come segue; nel capitolo 1 verrà esposta una panoramica dei finti documentari, nel capitolo 2 si esporranno le recenti trasformazioni del documentraio e si introdurrà il concetto di mock grade, che sarà analizzato in dettaglio nel capitolo 3
Nel capitolo 4, saranno analizzati in tre testi prescelti e ne sarà proposto un quarto, ovvero Tribulation 99. Alien Anomalies Under America (USA, 1992, 48’) di Craig Baldwin Infine nel saranno esposte le conclusioni del lavoro, ovvero l’ipotesi che il mock-documentary in ultima analisi disveli la nascita di un nuovo genere proprio più che del cinema, dei mezzi di comunicazione di massa, vale a dire la realtà.
Seguirà una filmografia di tutti i finti documentari prodotti fino alla stesura della tesi e un’ appendice con un’ampia documentazione sulla trasmissione alla televisione neozelandese del mock-documentary Forgotten Silver di Peter Jackson, una rassegna stampa su Il cameramen e l’assassino all’epoca della sua uscita in Italia e il resoconto della corrispondenza via e-mail con Craig Hight per l’inserimento del film Tribulation 99. Alien Anomalies Under America tra i testi di categoria mock grade 3.

(1) Jan Roscoe e Craig Hight, Faking it. Mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality, Manchester University Press, 2001
(2) (2) Nel nostro paese l’unico che avuto una certa fortuna è l’ultimo. Gli altri due non sono usciti nelle sale, se non rare apparizioni a festival o rassegne. Recentemente (novembre 2004) è uscito un cofanetto di DVD (Dolmen) che comprende anche The falls di Greenaway.

What part should scientist play in correcting bad science, fake science, and pseudoscience carried in popular media? Here, we present a intensive analysis based on fake documentaries and discuss effective media strategies for scientists who want to engage with the public on issues of bad science, pseudoscience, and fake science. We identify two tracks that scientists can use to maximize the broad dissemination of corrective and educational content: that of an audience builder or an expert resource. Finally, we suggests that scientists familiarize themselves with common sources of misinformation within their field, so that they can be better able to respond quickly when factually inaccurate content begins to spread.

Mockumentary as a subgenre of documentary was first recognized with This is Spinal Tap (1984). However, David Holzman’s Diary (1967) is defined as the first mockumentary today (Akoğlu 50). The hardship of defining the limitations of the genre and the misinterpretation of mockumentary as the reflexive mode of documentary have a huge role in seventeen-year delay. This is Spinal Tap (1984) is a pretty good example for understanding the subgenre in general thanks to its narrative, form and fictional structure. In the paper, narrative and form of mockumentary is discussed through This is Spinal Tap (1984). In order to differentiate the subgenre from the documentary-drama/docudrama and the reflexive mode of documentary, Jane Roscoe, Craig Hight, and Del Jacobs’ approaches and conceptualizations on form and narrative are examined by their reflections on This is Spinal Tap. The approaches evaluating the mockumentary as fictional film is proved within the context of This is Spinal Tap by analysis of the movie’s three-act-structure plot.

The following research has as main objective  to comprehend the relations between filmic and extra-filmic elements on the production of effects that cause ambiguity on the meaning, on films of the mockumentary genre. Therefore, the research made use of theoretical reference about documentary cinema, specially about the mockumentary genre in order to find analytic categories for this kind of cinema. Complementary to the theoretical research, a case study was performed from the short film Codinome Beija-Flor (2012), from Higor Rodrigues. The analysis about the film were performed based on models proposed by Bill Nichols (2001) and Roscoe and Hight (2001) about the movies in the documentary and mockumentary genre, respectively. Articulating with the theoretic analysis models, data obtained in an in-depth interview with the movie director about his intentions and perspectives that concerns the reception of the film were confronted.

Bu çalışma, içinde bulunduğumuz ve hakikat sonrası olarak tanımlanan bu dönemde, kurmaca ve belgesel tür özelliklerinin her ikisini de kapsayan sahte-belgesel film türünün, izleyicinin şüphe duymasını sağlayarak hakikati sorgulamaya teşvik etmesine değinmektedir. Bu çerçevede öncelikle hakikat sonrası olarak adlandırılan çağın tanımı ortaya konulmuştur. Ardından sinemada gerçeklik ve hakikatle bağlantı konularına açıklık getirilmeye çalışılmış ve kurgusal olayları belgesel formatında sunan bir sinema türü olarak sahte-belgeselin tanımı yapılmıştır. Çağın problemi olan hakikati sorgulamama ve şüpheden uzak kalma yaklaşımının tersine, sahte-belgeselin sinemada gerçeklik konusunda şüphe uyandırarak sorgulamaya teşvik etmesi ve gerçek olmayanın gerçekmiş gibi anlatılmasından dolayı izleyicide oluşturduğu algıya değinilmiştir. Özellikle görsel medyanın manipülatif kullanımıyla izleyici algısı kolaylıkla değiştirilebilirken medyanın gerçekleri anlatma gibi bir derdi olmalı mı tartışmaları, eleştirel bakış açısının gerekliliğine dikkat çekmektedir. Bu bağlamda sahte-belgeselin kurmacalığını saklayan yapısıyla düşündürme etkisi vurgulanmıştır. Gerçekliği sorgulanan bir tür olarak sahtebelgeselin, hakikat sonrası çağının izleyicisini gerçekliği sorgulamaya davet eden özelliği itibarıyla eleştirel bakış açısı kazanılmasında önemli bir rol oynayabileceğine ve izleyicinin hakikatle arasındaki bağda bir köprü rolü oynayabileceğine dikkat çekilmiştir.
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Extended Abstract

In this period, which is defined as post-truth, this study addresses the fact that the mockumentary film genre, which includes both fictional and documentary genre features, encourages the audience to question the truth by making them doubt. In this framework, firstly, the definition of the post-truth era has been introduced. In today’s post-truth times, it is very common to accept all the data we see on social media with the same reliability with detailed research. The novelty brought about by the trivialization of the truth is that the masses accept them as truth, even if they know that lies are lies, as long as they are compatible with their prejudices, opinions or convictions. In this period, where the use of logic is abandoned, everyone can choose their own truth as they wish, and even this choice seems to have lost the desire to find the truth without feeling the need. On the other hand, with the effect of technology that develops over time, virtual reality has entered our lives and accordingly, today’s understanding of reality has changed. The loss of importance of the truth is closely related to the fact that people in the simulation universe, where a false reality is experienced, are no longer after the truth. The perception problematization created by the simulation universe on today’s human beings causes the documentary seriousness and accuracy of everything seen to be accepted without question.
In this sense, mockumentary as a film genre can offer a solution for creating the doubt needed in order to find the truth. Even though a mockumentary is lying through its fictional language, it is not a lie. The fact that it brings falsehood to the forefront by its nature is that it points to the existence of truth as a thesis that it secretly defends and gives us a chance to see the truth of the post-truth period.
In this article which has been written with the literature review method, the definition of the mockumentary and the perception it creates in the audience because the unreal is told as if it is real were examined in details. Rather than questioning the truth while distancing away from doubt, which is the problem of this era, the perception created by the mockumentary in the cinema is explained as well as the mockumentary’s characteristic to encourage to question the reality. While the audience’s perception can be easily changed with the manipulative use of visual media, the debate of whether the media should have a problem telling the facts draws attention to the necessity of a critical perspective. Although mockumentary is far from the truth as a type of film that creates its reality based on fiction, it still maintains its closeness to the truth as it contains the sense of doubt, which is the starting point for discovering the truth. There is a bilateral variable and misleading interaction between what we see and what we think and believe while evaluating the truth. A mockumentary is based on an understanding of verisimilitude that hovers on the frontiers of fiction with its documentary approach. The spectator, who is alienated from the truth as a feature of the post-truth period, also alienates oneself from oneself and is not even aware of this alienation. On the other hand, the problem of alienation, which is one of the controversial concepts of the art of cinema, has naturally increased with globalization and the rapid advancement of technology. In this context, the fictional structure of the mockumentary based on real epitaph is also valuable in terms of reminding the existence of alienation. Mockumentary mediates a philosophy such as overcoming alienation by another alienation and thus also causes the existence of truth to be questioned. The real message of the mockumentary, which advises its audience not to believe whatever they see, is the fact that “what the audience is watching is not real”.
In this context, mockumentaries display the power to create a conscious audience profile who do not believe what they see, question the truth, and have a critical perspective. Contrary to the approach that is far from “questioning” and “doubting” the truth, which is the problem of the post-truth era, mockumentary reflects its suspicion about reality in cinema to its audience and encourages them to question it. A mockumentary, with its potential to mediate the task, just as media literacy assumes in cinema, can create the connection between the audience and the truth. In this article, it has been pointed out that the mockumentary as a genre of questioned reality, can play an important role in gaining a critical perspective in terms of its characteristic that invites the audience of the post-truth era to question reality and can play a bridge role in the link between the audience and the truth.

In this article I propose to rethink spectatorship as analytic category within cinema studies. Through an engagement with new materialist theory I shift the conversation from the locked positions of spectator and text towards an acknowledgement of the spectatorial event as a becoming increased or decreased in capacity to affect and be affected. By doing so I argue that what is effectuated in the event of spectating is in fact the production of a certain body, what I call a moving-image-body. This, I claim, develops in connection with different so- called spectatorial contracts, contracts that produce different agential conditions. An examination of some examples from the realm of the mockumentary, notably I’m Still Here (Affleck, 2010), leads me to discuss the core of the issue as one pertaining to the potential production of new realities, and my methodological proposal as a way towards mapping, not what the event of spectating means, but rather what it does.

This thesis discusses the relationship between mockumentaries and the music industry. Because this subject has yet to be studied in depth, the original contribution to knowledge is to further examine this relationship. To do so, a literature review documenting what has thus far been written about mockumentaries is provided. This audiovisual strategy is also contextualized within contemporary practices. In the next section, the music industry is discussed in broad terms. Firstly, the relationship between cinema and music is addressed. Then, music is depicted as a cultural phenomenon, with recent issues also being brought to light. In the last chapter, four music-related mockumentaries are analysed. Then, extensive conclusions are drawn.

probabilità di un buon risultato grazie alla "ripetizione del sempre uguale". Cosa ha spinto Deodato, sceneggiatore e produzione a gettare le basi per quello che oggi viene chiamato Mockumentary? 5 Genere che verrà ripreso quasi venti anni dopo dal famoso The Blair Witch Project -il mistero della strega di Blair (The Blair Witch Project, Daniel Myrick, Euardo Sanchez, 1999). Ma non solo, perché far passare per realtà la finzione cinematografica?

Final Accepted Version of book chapter to be published in 2017

This chapter analyses the 2013 film adaptation of Graham Chapman’s autobiography A Liar's Autobiography and questions its surface interpretation as an unreliable biopic that undermines the conventional goals of the genre. At first glance, the film’s freewheeling narrative and fragmented visual style that uses fourteen different styles of animation could be argued as representing the unknowability of its subject. However, this chapter argues that through rejecting the typical aims and approaches of the biopic, this film in fact works to reveal much about Chapman’s personal life and his creative work with Monty Python.

ALESSANDRO ALFIERI PER UN'ESTETICA DEL MOCKUMENTARY Tra dichiarata fi nzionalità e passione per il reale Nell'orizzonte della cultura contemporanea, un ruolo di indubbio significato lo assumono quei fenomeni, appartenenti alla società dello spettacolo, al cinema e al circuito massmediale, che giocando sul confi ne labile tra verità e fi ction propongono testi ibridi che sfruttano il potenziale di fascinazione a partire da uno statuto ontologico ambiguo e paradossale. Nello specifi co, qui ci rivolgiamo a un "genere" particolare di produzioni cinematografi che (e non solo) che sono ascrivibili sotto la defi nizione di mockumentary, o "falso documentario", e che rappresentano una tendenza particolarmente diffusa e infl azionata soprattutto nell'ambito del cinema commerciale; parlare di genere è di per sé già particolarmente complicato, e sarà necessario da subito da parte nostra affrontare il problema della defi nizione del fenomeno.

Watching films is a common activity, and often a stimulating one. Even if most films are fictional, in some respects they are a reliable source of knowledge. By watching a film, one can learn about the life of ancient leaders, about Chinese culture, or about the flora of the Amazonian forest. In some cases, however, instead of learning something (either about the fictional or the real world) the spectator is actually deceived. Philosophical debate about films often avoid the question of how films transmit knowledge, and rarely consider the question of how films can be deceiving. This paper aims to remedy this lack of discussion, outlining a theory of how spectators can be deceived, and of what they can be deceived about. In the first part, I will put forward a tentative taxonomy of what kinds of beliefs spectators form about films. This will typically include beliefs about the fictional world, beliefs about the real world, and beliefs about the real world that are only accessible through the film (performance of the actors, etc.). In the second part, I will discuss how films induce beliefs. I will argue that believing a film implies recognising a set of communicative intentions, and that spectators rely on shared conventions (like genre conventions) to identify these communicative intentions. The philosophical literature on the convention of fiction , Currie 1985 and the semiotic literature on the fictional pact (e.g. Eco 1979) will serve as theoretical background to understand the role of conventions in inviting spectators to believe something. In the last part of the paper, I will distinguish between two kinds of deception: intentional deception, and unintended deception (cfr. Mahon 2006). Two important kinds of intentional deception will be considered: deception about what is true the fictional world (as in and about what is true in the real world (as in Nanook of the North). I will focus on the second one, showing that the model outlined in the first two parts of my paper offers a fertile ground to study the role of deception in films: what kind of beliefs it induces, and how.

The most important element of Damien Hirst’s multimedia project “Treasures from the Wreck of Unbelivable” was the exhibition, presented from April 9 to December 3, 2017 in Venice, in the galleries of the Pinault Foundation in Punta della Dogana and Palazzo Grassi. It was completed by several book publications and a 90-minute film of the same title, made available globally on the Netflix online platform on January 1, 2018. The exhibition included over a hundred objects, mainly sculptures, made in various techniques and materials in a wide range of sizes. The film, stylized as a popular science documentary, presents the fictional story of their discovery and exploration at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, and their transport to Venice. It develops the main idea of the exhibition – a fictitious vision of the origin of these objects from an ancient wreck, filled with artistic collections, belonging to a fabulously rich ancient Roman freedman, with the significant name Cif Amotan II (anagram from “I am a fiction”). Realizing this fancy artistic vision, most of the works were made as if they had been  damaged  by  the  sea  waves  and  overgrown  with  corals  and  other  marine  organisms. Hirst created a comprehensive and all-encompassing narrative using the principle of “voluntary suspension of unbelief,” formulated by Samuel T. Coleridge. The artist sets himself and the viewer on a fantastic journey into the ancient past, taking up subjects central  to  his  ouevre  for  decades:  faith,  relations  of  art  and  science,  transience  and  death. He does this by means of numerous references to the artistic and mythological heritage of antiquity, not only Graeco-Roman, but also of other great cultures and civilizations.
Although  the  formal  and  technical  aspects  of  the  project  will  also  be  discussed, the main goal of the author is to analyze how Hirst used the knowledge of antiquity (classics) to create both the exhibition itself and the mockumentary. The artist made archeology an element binding his narrative together, showing in the film not only how artefacts were obtained from the bottom of the ocean. He also presented a number of tasks that scientists deal with at various stages of the project – from the first discovery, through interpretation and conservation, to the presenting at the museum-like exhibition.  Of  course,  his  purpose  was  not  to  create  a  study  in  the  methodology  of  underwater exploration, but to reflect on the cognitive power of science examining remains  of  ancient  times.  By  juxtaposing  two  possible  attitudes  towards  relics  of  the  past, i.e. the strict discipline of the scholar and the imagination of the treasure hunter, he concludes that narratives arising from them will both have the character of a mythical tale. The ontic status of the artefacts themselves, as the things of the past, left in a fragmentary state by the passage of time, sets all the stories related to them within the discourse of faith.

Documentation indicates the preparation and registration of documents are for acquiring information, raising awareness, and discovering facts of various historic assets of a society, a culture, or an ecosystem. Records show the evolution of events and humans' nature are compelling in showing belief in audiences. Into the film medium has tried to rallying and impress the audience with various approaches, including political, propaganda, social and cultural of this feature. Hence filmmakers both at fiction cinema or documentary film used indexes of documentary films to show the accurate indicator of their movies, and their fiction and distorted works have shown reality and make showing documentation rather than documentation. The main issue of this paper is to analyze reality and the perception of reality. The research method is descriptive and qualitative, and it aims to reveal the primary nature of showing documentation and its impact in experimental cinema.

Aleksei Fedorchenko’s films assume a special position in this newly inspired interest in the document. Since 2004, he has been producing a stream of films that deliberately blur the clear-cut distinction between the real and the imaginary, and between the documentary and the fictional.

Of course, this approach is hardly new: real fictions (and fictitious realities) have become a major organizing framework for various performative projects. What makes Fedorchenko’s engagement with the document interesting, though, is his profound investment in deploying conventions and features of documentary genres for creating worlds that never existed and situations that never occurred.

While being deeply illusionistic and mimetic, his “documentary fairy-tales” (as he defines his films)  point to no original that they allegedly reproduce. All of his films are deeply embedded in history and/or ethnography, yet Fedorchenko always manages to turn history and ethnography into something else.

From his very first film on early Soviet space programs (Pervye na lune, 2005) to his latest film on the Soviet avant-garde (Angely revolyutsii, 2014), Fedorchenko has mocked and undermined all the historical premises and ethnographic assumptions that made his films plausible in the first place.

Le film Ropaci est un documentaire fictif est un projet du réalisateur tchèque Jan Sverak, tourné en 1988. Par ce film, Jan Sverak a accomplit ses études au département de la Création documentaire à l'Institut des études cinématographiques à Prague (FAMU). En République Tchèque, Sverak est une figure de référence de la cinématographie nationale et il est presque le seul réalisateur dont les films ne touchent pas seulement le public tchèque, mais qui sont très bien accueillis aussi à l'étranger. Ce court métrage étudiant, qui a marqué le début de sa carrière, porte sur une recherche scientifique d'une espèce animale fictive, qui vit dans les mines du charbon situées au nord de la Bohême. Le film est présenté comme un reportage fait par une expédition composée de scientifiques et de journalistes qui essaie de trouver cet animal clandestin, qui « n'est pas encore décrit dans les manuels scolaires ». Il est intéressant (et pour la nation tchèque tout à fait essentiel) de noter, que malgré le renferment de la Tchécoslovaquie de l'époque dans le bloc soviétique, le film a réussi à dépasser ses frontières et a été apprécié à « l'Ouest » -il a même obtenu l'Oscar pour le meilleur film étudiant aux États-Unis. Cela dit, il paraît donc qu'il s'agit d'une oeuvre exceptionnelle qui, malgré son ancrage dans la culture et dans l'environnement tchèque, communique avec le monde entier. Demandons-nous donc, quelles sont les raisons d'une telle valorisation internationale du film, cela à travers son analyse formelle. Pourquoi une fiction, présentée comme un documentaire, a-t-elle pu résonner autant dans le monde? La fiction peut-elle contenir quelque chose de fondamentalement vrai ? Ces questions vont nous servir de fil conducteur guidant nos pensées.

Zło niejedno ma imię, a przedmiotem analizy niniejszego eseju staną się trzy jego przedstawienia w kinie: człowieka – kameleona, samodoskonalącego programu powielającego się w nieskończoność oraz obcego-amorficznej masy poznającej świat przez jego pożeranie. Co łączy te trzy postacie zła? Jaka jest ich istota? Płynność, zmiana ( nawet jeśli objawia się w nieskończonym powtórzeniu), amorficzność, ale także to, że w nieodłączny sposób związane są z kategorią obrazu – obrazu siebie, obrazu świata, siebie i świata jako obrazu. Obraz posiada obecnie status, który znajduje się gdzieś pomiędzy kuhnowskim «paradygmatem» a «anomalią», wyłaniając się jako centralny temat dyskusji w humanistyce. Zwrot piktorialny to nie tylko «intelektualna rewolucja» na gruncie akademickim, to również zjawisko w obrębie kultury masowej. Teoretyk, który namaszczony został celebrytą nowego prądu uważa obrazy za «morderców rzeczywistości». Jean Baudrillard to ojciec chrzestny zeitgeist'u przełomu XX i XXI wieku – złego ducha obrazu, wieszcz apokalipsy związanej ze zniknięciem zasady referencjalności a wraz z nią matrycy- rzeczywistości. Artykuł jest próbą przedstawienia jak kino autozwrotnie inkorporuje nowe ontologiczne lęki, jak „zły duch obrazu” zostaje w filmie „ucieleśniony”, jak oswajamy w kulturze popularnej to, czego się boimy i właściwie, czym jest to „coś”, czego naprawdę się boimy?

Horror films often play with shadows, darkness and nightscapes. One need only to think of Nosferatu's silhouette creeping along the wall in F.W. Murnau's classic film from 1922 or just the title of the 2007 vampire film Thirty Days of Night (David Slade, 2007) to appreciate the central place of light and especially its absence in this genre. Night vision brings a whole new visual rhetoric to the horror film, however, where the play is no longer with shadows but with eerie surfaces, unnatural colours and uncanny reflections. One of the most immediately striking things about night vision is the eerie green glow that turns people into uncanny figures with opaque and shiny eyes. In a medium like film, where the gaze has often been regarded as a central site of human agency, subjectivity and desire, this transformation is all the more disturbing. In this chapter, I will argue that the night vision aesthetic – both in the recent spate of found footage and mockumentary films and in more conventional narrative fiction films – represents a new visual language for anxiety about the status of human agents in the current global economy and more specifically registers an unease with the treatment of civilians in the recent wars defending and expanding that system. It is no accident that night vision capability is a key feature of the post 9/11 British and U.S. military, and the signature aesthetic of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, with filmed sequences of night raids and house searches

This practice-based PhD takes the form of a web-based archive of sounds and music from a parafictional seaside town in North East England called Seaton Snook, and an accompanying commentary. The archive features a wide range of individual sound pieces across a range of materialities, including artistic compositions, pedagogic compositions, recorded musical performances and field recordings. It also includes interviews and transcriptions, photographs of handwritten scores, and accompanying explanatory information. The project draws on Carrie Lambert-Beatty’s notion of parafiction (artistic practices that play in the overlap between fact and fiction) and Peter Cusack’s practice of sonic journalism, to investigate aspects of twentieth century and contemporary North Eastern English culture. More broadly, this project investigates how listener experience can be shaped by the stories we tell about musical works, the compositional process, and social and biographical aspects surrounding the work. The commentary first reviews a range of related artworks, to situate the work and to introduce the key concepts and frameworks. This section is completed with in-depth discussion of a number of noteworthy parafictional artworks – including case studies of works by artist Damien Hirst, composer Jennifer Walshe and filmmaker Peter Greenaway – and an assessment of the cultural and economic neglect of the North East of England. There follows an explanation of my methodology and an exegesis of my own compositions, drawing on language and frameworks established in earlier parts of the commentary. A creative approach to the exegesis is taken, in order to further demonstrate and explore the parafictional character of the main project. The commentary concludes with a discussion of possible further artistic and pedagogic outcomes of Seaton Snook.

The paper is focused on a map of a modern horror. It presents main tendencies of a horror movies consisting hybrid horrors, which are parodying genre conventions and nostalgic horrors – using literary and folklore references. It has a major impact on a popularization Ibero-American and Asian films, as well as gothic renaissance in Great Britain. Horror vérité issues are described in this article as innovative way, having roots in paradocumental aesthetics.

Praca ma na celu skonstruowanie pewnego rodzaju mapy współczesnego horroru. Są tu przedstawione główne tendencje filmu grozy ze szczególnym naciskiem położonym na horrory hybrydalne – silnie parodiujące schematy gatunkowe oraz horrory nostalgiczne, które wykorzystują odniesienia do tradycji literackiej czy folkloru określonych obszarów kulturowych. Wpłynęło to znacznie na upowszechnienie się horrorów kręgu iberoamerykańskiego, azjatyckiego, a także przyczyniło się do gotyckiego renesansu w Wielkiej Brytanii. W niniejszym tekście omówiono również kwestie związane z horror vérité, który wykorzystuje estetykę paradokumentalną i jest jedną z najbardziej innowacyjnych praktyk na gruncie horroru.