| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Struggles for Representation: African American Documentary Film and Video. Ed. by Phyllis R. Klotman and Janet K. Cutler. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. xxxvi, 483 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-253-33595-7. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-253-21347-9.)

Black history is largely undocumented, hence the importance of Phyllis R. Klotman and Janet K. Cutler's collection, Struggles for Representation. This book not only chronicles a history of African American film- and videomaking but, in the process, provides a wide-ranging resource of images, stories, and evidence of black history. Two key themes are: (1) African American documentary is activist, advocacy-oriented film, representing as well as embodying political and social struggle; and (2) such films are not about the other, but about the self. 1

Documentary film and video offer possibilities for politicized work not usually available in commercial fiction film, and documentary is a wider term than commonly assumed. As Klotman and Cutler offer in their introduction: 2

Questions about the illusory boundaries between fiction and nonfiction are embodied in the works of African American film/videomakers who merge documentary and narrative modes, producing documentary-influenced narratives grounded in everyday life and nonfiction films of extraordinary poetic power.

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