Explores documentary films as historical, cultural and philosopical texts. Analyses the ways in which documentary films represent, construct and rememer the past, and the ethical and political dimensions of the genre. Covers a broad spectrum of twentieth-century documentary traditions. Issues discussed may include: photography and historical memory, ideology and practice, propaganda and the state, representations of war, ethnographic film, enrvironmental and natural history, popular memory and gender, narrative forms, cinema verite, dramatised documentaries and television and contemporary history.