Author: Thomas Waugh File Type: pdf The Right to Play Oneself collects for the first time Thomas Waughs essays on the politics, history, and aesthetics of documentary film, written between 1974 and 2008. The title, inspired by Walter Benjamins and Joris Ivenss manifestos of committed documentary from the 19 0s, reflects the books theme of the political potential of documentary for representing the democratic performance of citizens and artists.Waugh analyzes an eclectic international selection of films and issues from the 1920s to the present day. The essays provide a transcultural focus, moving from documentaries of the industrialized societies of North America and Europe to those of 1980s India and addressing such canonical directors as Dziga Vertov, Emile de Antonio, Barbara Hammer, Rosa von Praunheim, and Anand Patwardhan. Woven through the volume is the relationship of the documentary with the history of the Left, including discussions of LGBT documentary pioneers and the firebrand collectives that changed the history of documentary, such as Challenge for Change and ACT UPs Womens Collective. Together with the introduction by the author, Waughs essays advance a defiantly and persuasively personal point of view on the history and significance of documentary film.**

Author: Allen Mawer File Type: epub This is a concise but comprehensive history of the age of the Vikings. Over the centuries, the West has become fascinated by the Vikings, one of the most mysterious and interesting European civilizations. In addition to being perceived as a remarkably unique culture among its European counterparts, whats known and not known about the Vikings accomplishments has added an intriguing aura to the historical narrative. Were they fierce and fearsome warriors? Were they the first Europeans to visit North America? It seems some of the legends are true, and some are just that, legend. From the intro THE term Viking is derived from the Old Norse vik, a bay, and means one who haunts a bay, creek or fjord. In the 9th and 10th centuries it came to be used more especially of those warriors who left their homes in Scandinavia and made raids on the chief European countries. This is the narrow, and technically the only correct use of the term Viking, but in such expressions as Viking civilisation, the Viking age, the Viking movement, Viking influence, the word has come to have a wider significance and is used as a concise and convenient term for describing the whole of the civilisation, activity and influence of the Scandinavian peoples, at a particular period in their history, and to apply the term Viking in its narrower sense to these movements would be as misleading as to write an account of the age of Elizabeth and label it The Buccaneers. It is in the broader sense, that the term is employed in the present manual. Plundering and harrying form but one aspect of Viking activity and it is mainly a matter of accident that this aspect is the one that looms largest in our minds. Our knowledge of the Viking movement was, until the last half-century, drawn almost entirely from the works of medieval Latin chroniclers, writing in monasteries and other kindred schools of learning which had only too often felt the devastating hand of Viking raiders. They naturally regarded them as little better than pirates and they never tired of expatiating upon their cruelty and their violence. It is only during the last fifty years or so that we have been able to revise our ideas of Viking civilisation and to form a juster conception of the part which it played in the history of Europe. **