From https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/critical-mass:

Thirty-five years of nonfiction films offer a unique lens on twentieth-century French social issues

The first sustained study to trace the origins of social documentary filmmaking in late 1920s France, Critical Mass provides close readings of individual films and addresses transnational practices as well as state- and industry-wide reforms between 1935 and 1960. It is an indispensable complement to studies of French nonfiction film, from Georges  Lacombe’s La Zone to Chris Marker’s Le Joli Mai.

Steven Ungar is professor and interim chair in the University of Iowa Department of Cinematic Arts, a unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.