This book offers close readings of a number of major documentaries. The author analyzes the philosophical and historical issues and themes implicit in these works. Designed to guide film students through the 'texts' of films that span the history of the documentary film movement, his readings also focus on the achievements of these works as films per se.

1. Nanook of the North; 2. Land Without Bread; 3. Night and Fog; 4. Chronicle of a Summer: Jean Rouch, Cinema-verite and 'shared anthropology'; 5. Cinema-verite in America (I): A Happy Mother's Day; 6. Cinema-verite in America (II): rebel with a cause: Don't Look Back.