Palgrave European Film and Media Studies Series Editors Andrew Higson University of York, UK Ib Bondebjerg University of Copenhagen, Denmark Caroline Pauwels Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium
Aim of the Series Palgrave European Film and Media Studies is dedicated to historical and contemporary studies of film and media in a European context and to the study of the role of film and media in European societies and cultures. The series invite research done in both humanities and social sciences and invite scholars working with the role of film and other media in relation to the development of a European society, culture and identity. Books in the series can deal with both media content and media genres, with national and transnational aspects of film and media policy, with the sociology of media as institutions and with audiences and reception, and the impact of film and media on everyday life, culture and society. The series encourage books working with European integration or themes cutting across nation states in Europe and books working with Europe in a more global perspective. The series especially invite publications with a comparative, European perspective based on research outside a traditional nation state perspective. In an era of increased European integration and globalization there is a need to move away from the single nation study focus and the single discipline study of Europe. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14704
Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann Derek Paget Editors Docudrama on European Television A Selective Survey
Editors Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jerusalem, Israel Derek Paget University of Reading Reading, UK Palgrave European Film and Media Studies ISBN 978-1-137-49978-3 ISBN 978-1-137-49979-0 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-49979-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016941774 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover illustration: Image Source / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
CONTENTS 1 Introduction: A New Europe, the Post- Documentary Turn and Docudrama 1 Derek Paget 2 German Docudrama: Aligning the Fragments and Accessing the Past 27 Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann 3 Polish Docudrama: Finding a Balance Between Difficult and Easy Pleasures 53 Wiesław Godzic 4 Italian Docudrama: From the Experimental Moment to Biography as Text of Identity 79 Milly Buonanno 5 French Docudrama: Patrimony Television and Embedded Biopic 109 Georges Fournier 6 Spanish Docudrama: Of Heroes and Celebrities 135 Victoria Pastor-González v
vi CONTENTS 7 Swedish Docudrama: In the Borderlands of Fact and Fiction 167 Åsa Bergström 8 British Docudrama: New Directions in Reflexivity 199 David Rolinson 9 Conclusion: Unity in Diversity? 229 Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann Select Filmography and Bibliography 239 Index 265
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Åsa Bergström is a PhD student in Film Studies at Lund University, Sweden. Her dissertation analyses how Sweden has addressed and represented the Holocaust in moving images. The project involves archival research, primary source material consisting of newsreels, documentaries, docudramas, and fiction films from the Second World War up until today. Her current research includes projects and publications on factual theatre, children s film, newsreels, media representations of humanitarian organisations, and Swedish docudrama on screen, stage and television. She has a professional background as an actress, and extensive experience in contemporary drama, musical theatre, children s theatre, and improvisational theatre. Milly Buonanno is former Professor of Television Studies at the University of Roma La Sapienza (Italy). Currently she is Director of the research programme on Gender and Media at the Department of Communication and Social Research at La Sapienza, and the Observatory of Italian TV Drama. She has researched and written extensively on television, television drama, journalism, gender and media, and is the author and editor of more than 50 books. She has co-edited the Sage Handbook of Television Studies (2014) and is the editor of Women Behaving Badly, a collection on female leads in contemporary crime and prison drama (forthcoming 2016). Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann is Lecturer in Film and German Studies in the Department of Communication and Journalism and the DAAD Center for German Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. He was formerly Senior Researcher at the Filmuniversity Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the programme Media of History History of Media at the Bauhaus University Weimar. He has presented his research at the Film and History, NECS and Visible Evidence international conferences and is the author of vii
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS several articles and books on cinematic memory, the appropriation of archive footage, docudrama, and historical event-television. Georges Fournier is Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the Institut d Etudes Transtextuelles et Transculturelles (Lyon 3 University, France), as well as an Associated Researcher at the Axe Civilisation Britannique (Rennes 2 University, France). His research interests are in British media and the cinema of the Englishspeaking world. He is a member of InMédia for which he has published articles and edited issues. He has also written articles for the LISA e-review and for foreign publishers. A member of the European Network for Cinema and Media Studies, he has given several presentations at conferences around Europe and is part of a project on European TV screens. Wiesław Godzic is Full Professor in Film and Media at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw, Poland and Head of the Audiovisual Department. His many publications include Television as Culture (1999), Understanding Television (2001), Television and Its Genres: After Big Brother (2004), Known for his Well-knownness : Celebrities in Tabloid Culture (2007), and Kuba and Others: Faces and Masks of Pop- culture (2013). He also edited the first analysis of reality television in Poland, Watching Big Brother (2001), and a noted Polish media studies text book Audiovisual Media (2011). He is a member of the Polish Academy of Science. Derek Paget is Visiting Fellow in the Department of Film, Theatre and Television at the University of Reading in England. He is the author of the monographs True Stories: documentary drama on radio, television and film (1990) and No Other Way to Tell It: Docudrama on Film and Television (1998, 2011), as well as many chapters and articles on docudrama and documentary theatre. A member of Studies in Theatre and Performance s Editorial Board, he was a founding Associate Editor of Studies in Documentary Film. He was Principal Investigator for the Arts and Humanities Research Council of England s research project Acting with Facts (2007 2010). Victoria Pastor-González is Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Languages and Culture at Regent s University London. Her research interests include docudrama in Spanish television, and the work of the directors Krzysztof Kieślowski and Benito Zambrano. She has collaborated on a special edition of the journal Studies in Documentary Film (2010) with an article on religious iconography in Spanish docudramas, and with the Directory of World Cinema: Spain (2011) with an entry on Zambrano s film Solas. Her work on Krzysztof Kieślowski appeared in the book series New Studies in European Cinema (2005). David Rolinson is Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Stirling. He is the author of Alan Clarke (2005) and co-editor of a collection of Dennis Potter pieces, The Art of Invective: Selected Non-Fiction 1953 1994
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix (2015). His work has appeared in journals including Critical Studies in Television and the Journal of British Cinema and Television and books including British Social Realism in the Arts since 1940 (2011) and Shane Meadows: Critical Essays (2013) and DVD releases including Red Shift (2014). He edits the website www.britishtelevisiondrama.org.uk.