Focus is on social change in historical moments that resonate in the present from a comparative international perspective. Events set up dialogue across cultures around political questions: how documentary making was historically aligned with movements for independence, agitation for change, citizen revolt, labor reform, and immigrant struggle. Conference participants rethink the discourse around documentary non-fiction in widest circulation starting from the premise that documentary moving image-making developed worldwide in “times of crisis”: 1920s Soviet agit-prop in revolutionary Russia, 1930s US Depression-era documentary, pre and post-World War…

Focus is on social change in historical moments that resonate in the present from a comparative international perspective. Events set up dialogue across cultures around political questions: how documentary making was historically aligned with movements for independence, agitation for change, citizen revolt, labor reform, and immigrant struggle. Conference participants rethink the discourse around documentary non-fiction in widest circulation starting from the premise that documentary moving image-making developed worldwide in “times of crisis”: 1920s Soviet agit-prop in revolutionary Russia, 1930s US Depression-era documentary, pre and post-World War…