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Documentary Film in Theory

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Documentary Film in Theory Documentary Film in Theory Introduction to the Area of Study The aims of the course are to foster an understanding of documentary as a diverse form, with a range of styles and genres, to root this diversity in its various historical and social contexts, and to introduce you to some analytical tools appropriate for study of your own and other filmmakers’ work. The course has a second module for the second term, which is the practical aspect. It is not pre-requisite to take both of the sections but it is pre-requisite to take the first term’s course for the practise-based term. Learning Outcomes – knowledge and critical understanding By the end of the course students will be able to • Distinguish clearly between different styles and approaches to documentary and visual ethnography • Be able write about how documentary texts communicate meaning • Demonstrate a basic understanding of documentary production in its social and historical contexts and across different distribution platforms • Be conversant with some current debates about documentary ethics and aesthetics Learning Methods There will be weekly lectures & discussions on the readings; assigned research on filmmakers’ works. You are required to attend lectures and participate in all seminars, which necessitates that you read the session literature and think about it before coming to the session. Assessment Details This course is assessed by - 2 * 2000 word essays The marking criteria for essays are in general: - the extent to which the specified course learning outcomes have been achieved. - the originality, ambition, scope and relevance of the essay in terms of the topic being addressed. - the structure and form of the essay. - the presentation of the essay in terms of attention to clarity of expression, spelling, punctuation, and presentation. - An Edit analysis presentation (the requirements of this analysis will be distributed as a handout) - Weekly presentations on individual filmmakers. COURSE PROGRAMME Session 1: The Shifting Value of Reality Introduction to the course and contentious issues around the documentary form. Screening: Voyage to the Moon (Georges Méliès, 1902) Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory (Lumière Bros, 1895) Required Reading: Morin, E. (2005) The Cinema or the Imaginary Man. University of Minnesota Press. (Chapter Three) Mulvey, L. (2009) Death 24x per Second. Reaktion Russell, C. (1999) Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video. Duke University Press. (Chapter Four) Suggested Viewing: Magic Bricks (Segundo de Chomon, 1908) Session 2: Nineteenth Century Legacy and films of record The documentary impulse and the reaction against ‘constructed’ images: the first moving images: early newsreels: looking at other cultures. Nanook of the North becomes the first recognised documentary, but is it? Screening Nanook of the North US 1922 Required Reading: Barthes R. & Howard, R. (1968) ‘The Reality Effect’ in The Rustle of Language, University of California Press Barnouw, E () Documentary : a history of the non-fiction film Suggested Viewing: The Battle of the Somme GB 1916 Night mail: west Highland [DVD videorecording]/ Panamint Cinema. Land of promise [DVD Videorecording]: the British documentary movement Session 3: Vertov, Grierson & the avant-garde Many influential film-makers of the early twentieth century sought to define and portray the nature of reality. The Soviet film-makers drew on Marxist dialectics and cognitive science in order to create a revolutionary cinema which through montage would reveal the reality beneath bourgeois appearance. We analyse particularly Eisenstein’s use of the ‘social mask’ – drawn from avant-garde theatre – through which he challenged the bourgeois’ notion of ‘the subject’. Italian neo-realism reacted against what they saw as the artificiality of Soviet cinema, in favour of naturalism and long takes. But in so doing, as the writings of Bazin show, it created a metaphysic of realism. This lecture discusses realism and montage as two complementary and mutually related ‘technologies of enchantment’, which emerge in times of epochal transformations and social revolutions. Screening: October: Ten Days that Shook the World (Sergei Eisenstein, 1928, 103 min.) Seminar Questions: • What is the relationship between propaganda and avant-garde in the films discussed? • In what way can films be revolutionary? • Discuss modernism in film. Required Reading Grimshaw, A. (2001) The Ethnographer’s Eye. Ways of Seeing in Anthropology Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Chapter Four) Michelson, A. (ed) (1984) Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov. Pluto Press. (Introduction) Suggested Viewing: Rain (Joris Ivens, 1929) The Drifters (John Grierson, 1929) Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929) Enthusiasm. Symphony of the Dombass (Dziga Vertov, 1930) Three Songs for Lenin (Dziga Vertov, 1934) Session 4: Cinéma Véritè in France and Direct Cinema in the USA The late 1950s and early 1960s were a watershed moment for documentary cinema. Technologies originally developed for military use were appropriated and adapted to enable filmmakers to get out of the studio and operate on the streets, and for synchronous sound to be recorded. The results were two famous documentary modes that emerged more or less at the same time: Direct Cinema in the United States, and Cinéma Véritè in France. Screening: Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman, 1967, 84 mins). Seminar Questions: • What are the main differences and similarities between Cinéma Véritè and Direct Cinema? • What are some of the ethical issues that might come out of Cinéma Véritè or Direct Cinema techniques? Required Reading: Nichols, B. (1978) “Frederick Wiseman’s Documentaries: Theory and Structure,” Film Quarterly, 31, no.3 (1978), 15-28. Further Reading: Benson T. W. and Anderson, C. (2002) The Films of Frederick Wiseman, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press Hall, J. (1991) ‘Realism as a Style in Cinéma Véritè: A Critical Analysis of Primary,’ Cinema Journal, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Summer, 1991), pp. 24-50 Mamber, S. (1974) Cinéma Vérité in America: Studies in Uncontrolled Documentary Cambridge: MIT Press O’Connell, P.J. (2010) Robert Drew and the Development of Cinéma Véritè in America, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press Rothberg, M. (2004) ‘The Work of Testimony in the Age of Decolonization: Chronicle of a Summer, Cinema Verité, and the Emergence of the Holocaust Survivor,’ PMLA, Vol. 119, No. 5 (Oct., 2004), pp. 1231-1246 Session 5: The body and its Home Drawing on a wide range of visual examples - from anthropology, film and visual art - the lecture considers the feminist critique to anthropology as a ‘male’ voyeuristic and pornographic enterprise. Discussing Trinh Minh-Ha’s and Riefenstahl’s uses of bodies as ‘fields of power’, the lecture proposes alternative approaches to the notions of personhood and the sensuous. Screening: Reassemblage, dir. Trinh T. Min-Ha US Seminar Questions: • Is there a specific feminist aesthetic in msking films? • What is the relationship between cinema and pleasure? • Is it true that anthropology is a form of pornography? Required Reading: Gell, A. (1998) “The distributed person” in Art and Agency. Clarendon Press, London (pp. 96-154) Minh-Ha, Trinh T. (1989) Woman, Native, Other. Writing, Postcolonialism and Feminism. John Wiley & Sons. (Chapter Two) Suggested Viewing: The Act of Seeing with one’s own Eyes (Stanley Brackhage, 1971) Living is Round (Trin-min-Ha, 1985) Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, 1989) Session 6: Autobiographical films How does the injection of the personal/confessional mode affect documentary’s ‘truth claims’? Is the collapsing of the subject/author divide a way through some of documentary’s ethical and aesthetic dilemmas? Screening: Nobody’s Business, dir. Alan Berliner Seminar Questions: • Is the collapsing of the subject/author divide a way through some of documentary’s ethical and aesthetic dilemmas? • Is it really ‘nobody’s business’? Required Reading: Renov, Michael First person Lebow, Alisa First Person Jewish Suggested Viewing: Agnes Varda films Ross McElwee films Term Break – NO CLASSES Session 8: Archives and Archival footage. This session deals with practical and theoretical challenges presented by the archive. The seductions of the archive are not new, however the film archive in particular is now a burgeoning area of creative and scholarly endeavour. On a general level, we will have yet another go at the problem of history and its representation, taking advantage of the layers of time made manifest when watching archival film. I will show samples of archival material from Indonesia, Hawaii, and Latin America around which we might build a theory and a practice that suits the use of archival material. You are required to read the 5 pages of Derrida's Archive Fever and pages 23-26, 44-72 of Patrik Sjoberg's The World in Pieces. An optional piece, The Model Image, which is about the decay of film. For those intent on film archival work, acquaint yourself with Usai’s authoritative Burning Passions (recently republished and updated). The films and videos listed below are important examples of the re- use of archival footage. Screening: Mother Dao the Turtlelike (Vincent Monnikendam, 1995, 90 mins.) Seminar Questions: • Why go to an archive? • What do we want from history? • Is there anything special about moving images with regards to history? • What does the archaic mean? Required Reading: Rascaroli, L. Personal Camera ‘The metacritical voice(over) of the essay film: Harun Farocki,
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