F Is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing

Fake documentaries mimic documentary genre expectations, unraveling the documentary’s authority and dismantling understandings of identity, history, and nation. The interdisciplinary essays in F Is for Phony discuss a broad scope of works and explore issues raised by “fake docs” such as the fiction/documentary divide, the ethics of reality-based manipulation, and whether documentariness derives from form or reception.

Defining the borderline between fact and fiction, the contributors reveal what fake documentaries imply and usually make that many documentaries lie to tell the truth, and that the truth is relative.

Steve Anderson, Catherine L. Benamou, Mitchell W. Block, Luis Buñuel, Marlon Fuentes, Craig Hight, Charlie Keil, Alisa Lebow, Eve Oishi, Robert F. Reid-Pharr, Gregorio C. Rocha, Jane Roscoe, Catherine Russell, Elisabeth Subrin.

Alexandra Juhasz is professor of media studies at Pitzer College. She is author of Women of Histories in Feminist Film and Video (Minnesota, 2001).

Jesse Lerner is associate professor of media studies at Pitzer College.