First Person Jewish

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

First Person Jewish

Alisa S. Lebow

Table of Contents

$22.50 paper
ISBN: 978-0-8166-4355-4
ISBN-10: 0-8166-4355-5

$67.50 cloth
ISBN: 978-0-8166-4354-7
ISBN-10: 0-8166-4354-7

An innovative examination of the interrelation between first person filmmaking and collective identity.

Documentaries have increasingly used the first person, with a number of prominent filmmakers finding critical and commercial success with this intimate approach. Jewish filmmakers have particularly thrived in this genre, using it to explore disparate definitions of the self in relation to the larger groups of family and community.

In First Person Jewish, Alisa S. Lebow examines more than a dozen films from Jewish artists to reveal how the postmodern impulse to turn the lens inward intersects provocatively (and at times unwittingly) with historical tropes and stereotypes of the Jew. Focusing her efforts on Jewish filmmakers working on the margins, Lebow analyzes the work of Jonathan Caouette, Chantal Akerman, and Alan Berliner, among others, also including a discussion of her own first person film Treyf (1998), made with Cynthia Madansky. The filmmakers in this study, Lebow argues, are confronting a desire to both define and reimagine contemporary Jewishness.

Using a multidisciplinary approach to first person films, Lebow shows how this form of self-expression is challenging both autobiography and documentary and, in the process, changing the art of cinema and recording the cultural shifts of our time.

Alisa S. Lebow is lecturer in film and TV studies in the School of Arts at Brunel University. She is also a filmmaker, whose films include For the Record: The World Tribunal on Iraq (2007), Treyf (1998), and Outlaw (1994).

224 pages | 17 b&w photos | 7 x 10 | 2008
Visible Evidence Series, volume 22

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Reading First Person Documentary

1. Memory Once Removed: Indirect Memory and Transitive Autobiography in Chantal Akerman’s D’Est

2. Reframing the Jewish Family

3. A Treyf Autocritique of Autobiography

4. Ambivalence and Ambiguity in Queer Jewish Subjectivity

Conclusion: A Limit Case for Jewish Autoethnography

Notes
Bibliography
Selected Filmography of Jewish Diasporic First Person Documentaries
Index

[an error occurred while processing this directive]



First Person Jewish Alisa S. Lebow Table of Contents		$22.50 paper ISBN: 978-0-8166-4355-4 ISBN-10: 0-8166-4355-5 $67.50 cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-4354-7 ISBN-10: 0-8166-4354-7
An innovative examination of the interrelation between first person filmmaking and collective identity. Documentaries have increasingly used the first person, with a number of prominent filmmakers finding critical and commercial success with this intimate approach. Jewish filmmakers have particularly thrived in this genre, using it to explore disparate definitions of the self in relation to the larger groups of family and community. In First Person Jewish, Alisa S. Lebow examines more than a dozen films from Jewish artists to reveal how the postmodern impulse to turn the lens inward intersects provocatively (and at times unwittingly) with historical tropes and stereotypes of the Jew. Focusing her efforts on Jewish filmmakers working on the margins, Lebow analyzes the work of Jonathan Caouette, Chantal Akerman, and Alan Berliner, among others, also including a discussion of her own first person film Treyf (1998), made with Cynthia Madansky. The filmmakers in this study, Lebow argues, are confronting a desire to both define and reimagine contemporary Jewishness. Using a multidisciplinary approach to first person films, Lebow shows how this form of self-expression is challenging both autobiography and documentary and, in the process, changing the art of cinema and recording the cultural shifts of our time. Alisa S. Lebow is lecturer in film and TV studies in the School of Arts at Brunel University. She is also a filmmaker, whose films include For the Record: The World Tribunal on Iraq (2007), Treyf (1998), and Outlaw (1994). 224 pages \| 17 b&w photos \| 7 x 10 \| 2008 Visible Evidence Series, volume 22 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction: Reading First Person Documentary 1. Memory Once Removed: Indirect Memory and Transitive Autobiography in Chantal Akerman’s D’Est 2. Reframing the Jewish Family 3. A Treyf Autocritique of Autobiography 4. Ambivalence and Ambiguity in Queer Jewish Subjectivity Conclusion: A Limit Case for Jewish Autoethnography Notes Bibliography Selected Filmography of Jewish Diasporic First Person Documentaries Index