Subject to Reality

"A uniquely accessible book for experts, in the fields of documentary history or feminist film theory, and newcomers alike." --Film Quarterly

"Shilyh Warren’s Subject to Reality quite simply transforms the terrain of both documentary film studies and feminist film history. Not merely a labor of excavation, Warren’s transhistorical study turns to neglected works by women filmmakers in order to reshape how we can understand the history of US documentary film production and how we can understand the form itself. Deeply attentive, intelligent, and generous to the subjects of her study, Warren’s book is a model of inclusive scholarship. Put simply, Subject to Reality is an ethical work, one which we need now more than ever."--Amelie Hastie, author of Cupboards of Curiosity: Women, Recollection, and Film History

"Warren approaches this body of work in new and illuminating ways. She consolidates and animates earlier debates within the field while complementing and expanding this with careful connections to relevant fields like ethnography and anthropology. She unearths and examines work by early women filmmakers that need to be part of this canon and reveals a gendered impulse at the heart of the ethnographic filmmaking enterprise. A delight."--Alexandra Juhasz, coeditor of Sisters in the Life: A History of Out African American Lesbian Media-Making

"In re-examining the history of women in documentary, Warren has clearly shown how women's early anthropologically inflected films resonate powerfully with the present." --Documentary Magazine