Introduction

Abstract

Documentary films are made by being in the world. Documentary materials — images and sounds — chronicle histories and how histories are performed on the bodies, present or absent, of those who transact their motions. Based on such an understanding, this book examines how documentary films approach the nation. Nations, in modern times, have become crucial frameworks through which identities, histories and socio-cultural experiences are mediated. Yet, nations are not innate, immutable or absolute entities. A nation is an ‘imagined political community’, asserts Benedict Anderson (1994: 6). In the words of Ernest Gellner, nations and states are a ‘contingency, and not a universal necessity’ (Gellner 2008: 6).¹ Similarly, nationality, Tom Nairn suggests, lies not in the genes, ‘but it is in the structure of the modern world’ (1997: 206). Nations are constructed categories and documentary films, constructed works themselves, address them in multiple ways. Propagandist documentaries are known to celebrate the nation state and its efforts, say with regard to war or nation-building. Documentaries of a more critical persuasion investigate the efficacies of nations. They question national institutions and programmes; mobilize the voices of those who national apparatuses and discourses overlook or erase; and explore the nation as an idea based on specific ideologies, epistemologies and cultural values.²