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Partial Disclosures: Documentary Media and the Freedom of Information Act

Abstract

This dissertation will examine the intersections of documentary films and videos and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosures through a media studies framework. It will interrogate how these forms of official documentation mediate public knowledge of covert national security practices amid the Global War on Terror (GWOT). It will also trace the bureaucratic and technical difficulties of accessing audiovisual materials through FOIA. The first two chapters will analyze moving image media that government agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) created for internal use. By thinking about these works at the levels of production and circulation, I will explore how their public disclosure opens some partial apertures on state surveillance and violence. The latter two chapters will investigate how independent filmmakers have extracted documents through FOIA and creatively remediated them into their work. These discussions will reflect on the potentialities and logistical challenges of using this method to critique governmental abuses. Furthermore, it will discuss how the extraction of such records can reveal the risks of targeting that critical independent documentarians and their documents face. Ultimately, by questioning and complicating theories of transparency, access, and publics, this dissertation will argue that the mediating processes of critical non-fiction moving images and FOIA records are vital but precarious mechanisms of intervention.

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