Cannibal Cinema and the Ethics of the Fake Documentary

Wed, 28 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

The Italian cannibal cycle of the late 1970s and early 1980s is the hardest case in exploitation cinema, and pretending otherwise does it no favours. A handful of these films are formally clever, one is genuinely important to the history of the medium, and the whole cycle is compromised by real acts committed to sell an illusion. The interesting question is not whether the films are nasty. It is how their central trick — dressing fiction as document — created an ethical trap the filmmakers walked straight into, and what that trap can still teach about the fake documentary as a form.

Cannibal Film - vo.rs

Cannibal Cinema and the Ethics of the Fake Documentary