Documentary Now!

About this book

Selected as "What's Making Us Happy This Week" by the NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour. McSweeney's and Broadway Video present the official nearly-600-page comprehensive companion book to IFC's Documentary Now!, including new writing by Seth Meyers, a foreword by Pulitzer Prize-finalist Matt Zoller Seitz, the complete sheet music for Co-Op: The Musical, and much more. Hitchcock/Truffaut, Cahiers du Cinéma, Documentary Now! The best film texts touch our lives and leave an indelible imprint on our shared cultural experience, deepening and enriching our relationships with this most universal of modern artistic mediums. In this new fully revised and expanded edition of Documentary Now!'s seminal 1975 text, the curators behind the beloved long-running Documentary Now! program invite us to celebrate the craft, legacy, and minutiae of some of the most brilliant works of nonfiction ever put to celluloid. This remarkable book presents unique access to stills, posters, scores, archival materials from some of the most celebrated documentaries in film history; alongside essays from some of the greatest cultural luminaries of the last fifty years, including a new foreword by critic Matt Zoller Seitz, and the classic introduction by original host Burt Lancaster. From the medium's beginnings in Kunuk the Hunter to its all time masterpieces Sandy Passage and Original Cast Album: Co-op, this book seeks to shine a spotlight onto documentary's past, revel in its present, and look for signposts guiding toward its future.