That’s Entertainment/The Conjuror’s Assistants (1978)

Overview

That’s Entertainment/The Conjuror’s Assistants is an attempt to reveal some problems inherent in vérité documentary such as voyeurism, the nature/extent of a vérité intervention and audience “passivity”. A frame by frame analysis of just 100ft of documentary footage taken at a children’s Christmas party, the film shows the young man “entertaining” the adults and children and his two young assistants, the a younger boy and an older girl, and the reaction of the audience – men and women supervising children of both sexes. The visible materiality of the film is used to distance the action and encourage a reading the film as a 'text.

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