André Bazin on Documentary: Cinema's Urge to Explore

By André Bazin

Documentary is at the core of Andr Bazin's immensely influential views of cinema. This collection, curated by renowned film scholar Dudley Andrew, brings to English-language readers sixty-two articles in which Bazin interrogated films about geography, history, animals, painting, and, especially, distant lands and peoples. Both an advocate and critic of popular science and exotic travelogues, Bazin applauded the creativity of impure forms like docu-fiction and the genre he baptized as the "essay film." Engaging minor short subjects, as well as classic works by Robert Flaherty, Jean Rouch, Alain Resnais, and Chris Marker, Bazin's incisive prose is at once intricately beautiful and playfully entertaining--and his brilliant reflections on both the morality and the aesthetics of documentary remain compelling and urgent today, when spectacles sold as reality flood our screens.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520399420
• ISBN13: 9780520399426
• Release Date: April 2026
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 445 Pages