Moving Through the Documentary. Bodily Movement and Montage in Interactive Documentary

About the book

Interactive documentaries combine moving images, text, graphics, and digital interactions to create dynamic, web-based narrative formats. As a post-cinematographic expansion of the classical documentary film, they provide viewers with opportunities to select options and make decisions that co-determine what is shown and in what order. This volume brings together perspectives from film, media, game, and interface studies and includes analyses of key works as well as interviews with actors involved in making interactive documentaries. Key topics explored include opportunities for participating in interactive formats, challenges for the long-term archiving and accessibility of browser-based documentaries, and the influence of software and interfaces on the concept of the documentary.

About the text

When analyzing interactive documentaries, it is therefore no longer possible to presuppose a stable form; the performative aspect of the reception process comes more into focus, as do factors influencing the selection process, such as the interface or the underlying programming. It is this aspect that Cornelia Lund highlights in her contribution. She shifts the focus from the question of the bodily involvement of the user in an interactive documentary to an underexamined aspect of how and where interactive documentary can happen, namely as part of installations where interaction involves movement 14 Interactive Documentary and Non-Fiction Media to connect and activate different parts of the documentary. Via close analysis of installations by Harun Farocki, Rimini Protokoll, and others, Lund explores the bodily parallels and differences among web-based films, video installations, and theatrical performances that all are situated in the field of the documentary.

More information and open access pdf: https://www.transcript-publishing.com/978-3-8376-7904-5/interactive-documentary-and-non-fiction-media/