Offering historical, social, and artistic context for some of the most influential artists and filmmakers from the 1960s to the present day, this timely book looks at three filmic techniques--appropriation, documentary film, and montage--and how they confront the viewer with pieces of reality within a particular "frame." Including previously unpublished material, Truth features a selection of interviews with and essays about twenty-four artists and filmmakers, among them Bruce Conner, Chick Strand, Jean-Marie Straub and Dani le Huillet, Pratibha Parmar, and Dara Birnbaum, whose work incorporates one or more of these techniques. Rather than proposing similarities among these artists' practices, the book explores the varied ways that their work examines truth, meaning, and form as a way of coming to terms with reality.