Animal, Vegetable, Mineral is a series of four audio podcast episodes focusing on some of the current themes and debates in the documentary studies field. We offer this series as a tool for research at all levels—a living breathing scholarship that enlivens current debates and brings different voices together to discuss topics, themes, new critical writing and vital nonfiction filmmaking.
The title of our podcast: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral (AVM), refers to the children’s game “20 questions” where players have 20 chances to guess a word or a concept, the first question being “is it animal, vegetable or mineral?” Our title alludes to the challenges in defining the documentary form itself, while simultaneously pointing to the wide and diverse range of nonfiction subjects and the many formal and conceptual ways that documentary is presented. Our title intentionally takes up the question of documentary ecologies—aiming to remind listeners that we are interested in challenging ourselves to think beyond the human animal, despite documentary’s overwhelmingly human-centric nature.
While there are many podcasts focusing on film, and even some that centre on documentary specifically, AVM is devoted specifically to thinking deeply and critically about documentary as a form and a field. As a documentary studies podcast, hosted and edited by documentary studies maker-scholars, we are not interested in jargon and arcane theory. Rather, we intend for this series to make ideas and approaches in documentary studies accessible and of interest to a wide audience. In our dedication to developing a research friendly archive, we have included transcripts, filmographies, and links to books and other related information on the show notes of each episode.