In the title story a cutting-edge video artist is hired to document a shamanistic New Age wedding ceremony deep in the Central American jungle -- and gets far more than he bargained for. In "Public Burning" a sociological experiment in the study and surveillance of an "average" American spirals down into a literally incendiary conclusion. "Wild Blue" is a tour de force narrative of one man's collision with the scarily dysfunctional American armed forces of the 1970s Other stories inJungle Wedding hold out possibilities for communion, reconciliation, and absolution. In "Revenge"...

By exploring the use of film in mid-twentieth-century institutions, including libraries, museums, classrooms, and professional organizations, the essays in Useful Cinema show how moving images became an ordinary feature of American life. In venues such as factories and community halls, people encountered industrial, educational, training, advertising, and other types of "useful cinema." Screening these films transformed unlikely spaces, conveyed ideas, and produced subjects in the service of public and private aims. Such functional motion pictures helped to shape common sense about...

By exploring the use of film in mid-twentieth-century institutions, including libraries, museums, classrooms, and professional organizations, the essays in Useful Cinema show how moving images became an ordinary feature of American life. In venues such as factories and community halls, people encountered industrial, educational, training, advertising, and other types of "useful cinema." Screening these films transformed unlikely spaces, conveyed ideas, and produced subjects in the service of public and private aims. Such functional motion pictures helped to shape common sense about...