Tracing the history of the documentary from the first Lumiere films to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, Chanan addresses topics such as the documentary before documentary, how documentary film language works, the veracity of the image, the problems of the soundtrack, the migration of documentary to television, political documentary, censorship, first-person film-making, and the relations of the archives to history and memory. Focusing on the vital contribution of documentary to the public sphere--the space in which ideas are debated, public opinion is formed and those in authority are held to account--Chanan argues that, without documentary, the public sphere is unable to function.