F is for phony

de Alexandra Juhasz, Jesse Lerner, Alexandra Juhasz Juhasz

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 explicit: that many documentaries lie to tell the truth, and that the truth is relative.