BOOK DATA Jill Godmilow, Kill the Documentary: A Letter to Filmmakers, Students, and Scholars. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. $120.00 hardcover; $30.00 paper. 224 pages.

In 2002, filmmaker Jill Godmilow published an eleven-point manifesto in the Journal of Film and Video entitled “Kill the Documentary as We Know It,” which quickly became required reading for anyone interested in the ethical and epistemological problems posed by documentary film. Godmilow was at that time already a well-known and widely admired filmmaker. Her 1974 collaboration with musician Judy Collins, Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman, a powerful biography of the female conductor Antonia Brico, received an Academy Award nomination (and was later added to the National Film Registry). Her 1984 experimental documentary, Far from Poland, had become a key text in the deconstruction of documentary film’s claims of “taking you there” and offering access to “reality.” Her 1987 feature...

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