Docudrama on European Television

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction: A New Europe, the Post-Documentary Turn and Docudrama

   • Derek Paget

   Pages 1-26

3. German Docudrama: Aligning the Fragments and Accessing the Past

   • Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann

   Pages 27-51

4. Polish Docudrama: Finding a Balance Between Difficult and Easy Pleasures

   • Wiesław Godzic

   Pages 53-78

5. Italian Docudrama: From the Experimental Moment to Biography as Text of Identity

   • Milly Buonanno

   Pages 79-108

6. French Docudrama: ‘Patrimony Television’ and ‘Embedded Biopic’

   • Georges Fournier

   Pages 109-133

7. Spanish Docudrama: Of Heroes and Celebrities

   • Victoria Pastor-González

   Pages 135-165

8. Swedish Docudrama: In the Borderlands of Fact and Fiction

   • Åsa Bergström

   Pages 167-197

9. British Docudrama: New Directions in Reflexivity

   • David Rolinson

   Pages 199-227

10. Conclusion: ‘Unity in Diversity’?

    • Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann

    Pages 229-238

11. Back Matter

    Pages 239-285

    PDF

This book explores docudrama as a creative response to troubled times. With generic characteristics formed via traditions in theatre as well as film, and with claims to fact underscored by investigative journalism, television docudrama examines key events and personalities in unfolding national histories. Post-Fall of the Berlin Wall, docudrama has become a means for nations to work through traumatic experiences both within national borders and Europe-wide. In this regard, it is an important genre for television networks as they attempt to make sense of complex current events. These authors offer a template for further study and point towards ways in which European television cultures, beyond those discussed here, might be considered in the future.

• Docudrama
• documentary
• biopic
• Europe
• history
• memeory
• trauma

• Hebrew University of Jerusalem , Jerusalem, Israel

  Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann

• University of Reading , Reading, United Kingdom

  Derek Paget

Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann is Lecturer in Film and German Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Formerly a teaching assistant at Filmuniversity Babelsberg KONRAD WOLFF and post-doctoral research assistant at Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany, he is author of several books and articles on film, media and memory. 


Derek Paget is the author of True Stories?: Documentary drama on Radio, Screen and Stage (1990) and No Other Way To Tell It: Docudrama on Film and Television (2nd edition, 2011). He is a member of Studies of Theatre and Performance’s Editorial Board and an Associate Editor of Studies in Documentary Film.

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