Unreconciled representation
Operai, Contadini and documentary history
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2928095 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sam Di Iorio (Hunter College, City University of New York, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 197-215 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary French Civilization (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0147-9156 • E-ISSN: 2044-396X |
| Publisher | Liverpool University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3828/cfc.2025.12 |
| OpenAlex | W4413426992 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 10 |
There are moments in French film history when the distinction between documentary and fiction becomes less important - the mid-1940s to the early 1970s, for example - and others, like the present, when the border is sharper, more perceptible, and more vexed. In the hopes of bringing this shifting boundary into clearer focus, my paper returns to a film from the very beginning of the new millennium, Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's Elio Vittorini adaptation Operai, Contadini (2001). Drawing on writing by Jean-Louis Comolli and Jacques Rancière, I consider how the conceptual origins of Huillet and Straub's project connect to this long postwar period, to an understanding of cinema that leads from midcentury realism to a totalizing vision of cinéma direct. I explore how their film stages political and aesthetic oppositions and how its approach to representation is tied to a particular conception of dialectical reasoning. The final section considers the present-day relevance of this postwar French tendency to view documentary not as genre, but as practice
Art · Art history · Documentary film · Political science · Representation (politics) · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |