A Certain Explicitness: Objectivity, History, and the Documentary Self

Abstract

This essay is a comparative analysis of Esfir Shub's late 1920s compilation documentaries and Santiago Álvarez's early 1970s chronicle films. Despite their apparent formal differences, Shub's and Álvarez's works can be seen as responding to a comparable set of sociopolitical and cultural conditions that manifest themselves in similar methodological and aesthetic choices. Recent work by historians of science provides a framework for understanding Shub's and Álvarez's shift toward a more "restrained" cinema as one that continues to embrace visions of social and political transformation.

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