Documentary film as critical space: performing cultural globalization in Mondovino
Résumé
Drawing on Mondovino, a movie about the globalisation of wine directed by Jonathan Nossiter (2003), we suggest that documentary film is an artistic form capable of fuelling critical debate about organizations and markets. The documentary aesthetic has the potential to present a twofold critique: a narrative that shapes reality in an original way and proposes a cinematographic interpretation of the world that can challenge dominant narratives; and a cinematographic device which demonstrates “in deed” an alternative way of doing things. Critical documentary films are “performative” (they produce a “new reality”) and also themselves “perform” (their aesthetic formalises their subject). The force of film as an object of critical knowledge resides in the tension between these two registers of critical performativity.