INSTRUCTOR:

Prof. Jennifer Petersen

Office Hours: T W Th 2:00-3:00 & by appointment

Office: Levering 203

Email: jenp@virginia.edu

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

 

How do we define documentary? Draw the lines between documentary, fiction, and entertainment? In this class, we will examine these questions, thinking about the special expectations we have for documentary film: to tell us the truth. We will trace the origins of these expectations (in photography and ethnography) and the development of various techniques and modes of film-making that have been defined as “documentary.” We will explore the social and historical contexts and origins of these different modes. You will learn to identify these different modes and analyze how each uses images, words, and narrative to construct arguments about the world. Throughout, we will be conscious of the way that documentaries deal with questions of what is truth/the real and the ethical issues involved in filming real people.

 

REQUIRED TEXTS:

 

· Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary, Second Edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press (2010). (ID)

 

· Winston, Brian. The Documentary Film Book. London, BFI (2013)

 

· Electronic course packet available on Collab under Resources

 

· Films listed on the syllabus, available on reserve at Clemons library

 

Readings from the Nichols book are denoted by (ID) and those from the Winston book by (DFB); all other readings are on Collab in the Resources folder.

 

You are required to do all of the readings before class and to come to class prepared to summarize and comment on the reading assigned for that day.

 

SCREENINGS

The viewings listed in the syllabus are REQUIRED. The films will be available online on Collab for streaming and are on reserve in the library (Clemons). You may watch them in either venue, but you must watch them before the date they are listed on the syllabus (we will be discussing the films on this date).

 

ASSESSMENT

Your final grade for this class will be determined according based on the following assessments, weighted according to the following percentages.

 

Participation                                  10%

Shot-by-shot assignment                        5%

Quizzes and in-class assignments       10%

Analysis1                                        20%

Analysis 2                                       20%

Final Project                                   35%

 

Participation: Participation will be assessed through attendance, participation in class discussion, and performance on group work and small in-class writing assignments. Your demonstration of engagement with course readings and screenings (i.e., being able to discuss and bring in examples from the screenings to class discussion) are part of your participation grade. If it becomes clear that not everyone is keeping up with the screenings, I may institute pop quizzes on the screenings and/or readings.

 

Quizzes and in-class Assignments: Quizzes will be administered online via Collab before class. They are designed to make sure that you have done the required reading and viewing. The in-class assignments are designed to assess your understanding of the readings, familiarity with the viewings, and your ability to apply course concepts to viewings and will be evaluated based on how well you demonstrate understanding of concepts from readings and your ability to discuss and evaluate the films. They will be graded on a 5 point scale, 5 being excellent.

 

Shot-by-shot Assignment: This exercise is geared at teaching you how to pay close attention to the visual and narrative construction of documentary film. You will document the contents of a series of shots that constitute a short scene, examining how the visuals and editing correspond with the verbal information. We will discuss how the scene is edited in comparison to fiction film; this assignment will be the basis for your first analysis paper.

 

Analysis Papers: The short papers are exercises aimed at practicing textual analysis of documentary. The first analysis will be of a straightforward expository documentary; the second analysis will be of a more formally complex, reflexive documentary. These are close readings of documentary films and are aimed to get beyond discussion of what the documentary is about to how the documentary conveys its message. They will be evaluated based on your ability to pick apart how each film makes claims about the world, on what authority these claims are based, including isolating textual detail (editing, camera angles, narration, story structure, etc.) and describing how these contribute to the documentary’s overall rhetoric and effectiveness. All papers should be copy edited, spell checked, and include full citations; you may use MLA, APA, or Chicago style.

 

Final Project: The final paper should be a well-researched and written work dealing with a particular documentary film, set of films, or issue related to documentary. I expect you to base your research in the course materials and discussions, but to extend your research and thinking beyond what we have discussed in class. You will also have the option of submitting a creative project (a documentary film or multimedia project) IF you already have the production skills to do so OR IF you are interested in acquiring them outside of class. I will not be teaching you any production skills in this class, though the Digital Media Lab can offer you some limited assistance. Just as I expect you to come to the final paper with writing and research skills you have learned elsewhere, the creative option relies on skills that you have acquired outside this class. The option is meant to give you more choices in the way you express what you have learned and your original thinking. Toward this end, those who submit creative projects will also submit a short paper discussing the aims and aesthetic choices in the project, rooted in the course readings and discussion. 

 

POLICIES:

Late Assignments: You are expected to hand in all assignments in class the day they are due. If there is any reason you will be unable to do so, it is your responsibility to make arrangements with me before the paper is due. Late assignments will be penalized by 10% for every day they are late.

 

Plagiarism: This course follows UVA’s Honor Code. I expect you to include the pledge on all assignments for this class, unless otherwise noted.  Purchasing papers, using someone else’s words without attribution, failing to cite sources, and turning in work that you have completed for another class are all forms of plagiarism. All infringements will be reported and pursued to the full extent of the Code.

 

Attendance: Your first three absences will be “no questions asked.” After that, each late day will result in a 5% deduction in your participation grade. If you expect to have absences due to University-sponsored events, it is your responsibility to alert me of these absences during the first week of class and to notify me of each University-sponsored absence before it takes place.

 

Students with Special Needs: Students with special needs should meet with me during the first two weeks of the semester to speak with me so that I can arrange appropriate accommodations.

Contacting me: I am happy to answer any questions about the course, requirements, readings, or individual work after class, in my office hours, or by appointment. My office is 203 Levering. In general, email is the best way to get in touch with me; I usually am able to return emails within 48 hours. However, major concerns are often better addressed in office hours. I am available during my posted office hours and by appointment. Please do not hesitate to contact me.

 

I will post course announcements, assignments, and related materials on Collab.

 

 

Week 1  Introduction to the Course

8/26       Introduction / Defining Documentary

 

8/28       Defining Documentary

Read:     Nichols, “How Can we Define Documentary Film?” (ID)   

Read:     Musser, “Problems in Historiography: The Documentary Tradition Before Nanook of the North” (DFB)

 

Week 2  Origins of Documentary: Photography and Evidence

9/2         Photography and the real

View:     Actualities (shorts)

Read:     Tagg, “Evidence, Truth and Order.” In The Burden of Representation Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Press (1988): 60-65. (C)

Read:     Foucault, selections from Truth and Power

 

9/4         Photography and the real

Read:     Winston, “The Camera Never Lies.” In Image-Based Research (ed. Jon Prosser) New York: Routledge (1998): 60-68. (C)

Read:     Nichols, "Why are Ethical Issues Central to Documentary Filmmaking?" (ID)

Recommended: Downing, “CGI and the End of Photography as Evidence” (DFB)

 

Week 3 Origins of Documentary: Photography and Anthropology

9/9         Photographic Apparatus, Realism and Ethnology

Read:     Grimshaw, “The Modernist Moment” and “The Innocent Eye: Flaherty, Malinowski, and the Romantic Quest” In The Ethnographer’s Eye: Ways of Seeing in Anthropology Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press (2001): 15-31, 44-55. (C)

Read:     Oksiloff, “The Body as Artifact” in Picturing the Primitive: Visual Culture, Ethnography, and Early German Cinema, New York: Palgrave (2001) (C)

 

9/11       Early Documentary and Ethnology

View:     Nanook of the North (Flaherty, 1922)

Read:     Rothman, “The Filmmaker as Hunter: Robert Flaherty’s ‘Nanook of the North’" In Documenting the Documentary (ed Barry Keith Grant and Jeanette Sloniowski)  Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press (1998): 23-39. (C)

 

Week 4 Early Documentary

9/16       The Griersonian Tradition

View:     Housing Problems

Read:     Nichols, “What Gives Documentary Films a Voice of their Own?” (ID)

                  Read:     Aitken, “John Grierson and the Documentary Film Movement” (DFB)

 

9/18       A Developing Form

View:     The Plow That Broke the Plains (Lorentz, 1936)

Read:     Druck and Kahana, “New Deal Documentary and the North Atlantic Welfare State”(DFB)

Read:     Keil, “American Documentary Finds its Voice” In Documenting the Documentary

 

Week 5  Expository Documentary

9/23       Social Documentary, Authority and Truth Claims

View:     Harvest of Shame (Friendly/CBS, 1960)

Read:     Nichols, “What Kind of Documentaries Are There?,” pp. 99-109. (ID)

Optional: Hogenkamp, “The Radical Tradition in Documentary Filmmaking, 1920-1950” (DFB)

 

9/25       Analyzing Documentary Rhetoric          

Read:     Nichols, “The Question of Evidence, the Power of Rhetoric and Documentary Film” (DFB)

Read:     Plantinga, “I’ll Believe it When I Trust the Source” (DFB)

 

Week 6  Poetic Documentary

9/30       Beyond Argument: The Poetic Mode

View:     Rain (Ivens, 1929); Sans Soleil (Marker, 1983)

Read:     Nichols, “How can we differentiate among documentaries?" (chapter 6) (ID)

Read:     Renov, “Art, Documentaries as Art” (DFB)

Optional: Helke, “Sacred, Mundane and Absurd Revelations of the Everyday” (DFB)

Due:       Shot-by-shot assignment (5%)

 

10/2       Direct Cinema/Observational Cinema.

Read:     Saunders, “The Triumph of Observationalism” (DFB)

Read:     Nichols, "How can we describe..." (chapter 7), pp. 172-179

 

 

Week 7  Observational Cinema: Authenticity and Ethics

10/7       Observational Cinema and the Ideology of the Apparatus

View:     High School (Wiseman, 1968)

Read:     Hall, "Realism as a Style in Cinema Verite: A Critical Analysis of Primary" Cinema Journal 30(4): 24-50

Read:     Grant, “Ethnography in the First Person.” In Documenting the Documentary (ed Barry Keith Grant and Jeanette Sloniowski)  Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press (1998): 238-253. (C)

 

10/8       Ethical Issues in Observational Cinema

Read:     Anderson and Benson, "The Myth of Informed Consent: The Case of Titicut Follies," In Image Ethics: The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film, and Television (ed. Larry Gross, John Stuart Katz, and Jay Ruby) New York: Oxford UP  (1988): 58-90. (C)

Read:     Pryluck, “Ultimately, We Are All Outsiders” from New Challenges for Documentary (ed. Alan Rosenthal) Manchester: Manchester University Press (2005)

Analysis #1 Due

 

Week 8:   Ethical Challenges

10/14     Reading day (No Class)

 

10/16        Ethical Issues in Documentary Film

View:     Pick One: Capturing the Friedmans, The Act of Killing, Born into Brothels

Read:     Winston, “The Tradition of the Victim in Griersonian Documentary” In Image Ethics: The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film, and Television (ed. Larry Gross, John Stuart Katz, and Jay Ruby) New York: Oxford UP  (1988): 34-57.

Read:     Ruby “Speaking for, Speaking about, Speaking with, or Speaking alongside” In Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology Chicago: University of Chicago Press (2000): 195-220.

Read:    Nichols, "How can we describe...? (chapter 7), pp 179-194

 

Week 9 Epistemological Challenges: Reflexivity

10/21     The Question of Authority

View:     Surname Viet, Given Name Nam (Minh-ha, 1989)

Read:     Minh-ha, “The Quest for Totalizing Meaning” In When the Moon Waxes Red New York: Routledge (1991): 29-52. (C)

 

10/23      The Debates over Reflexivity

Read:     Nichols, “How can we describe...?,” (chapter 7) pp. 194-199(ID)

Read:     Ruby, “The Image Mirrored: Reflexivity in Documentary Film” In New Challenges for Documentary, first edition (ed. Alan Rosenthal) Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (1988): 34-47. (C)

Read:     Juhasz, “The Politics of Realist Feminist Documentary” (C)

 

Week 10 Reflexivity and Political Film

10/28     Philosophical Challenges to Objectivity

Read:     Nichols, “The Fact of Fiction and the Fiction of Objectivity” In Representing Reality Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press (1991): 165-200. (C)

 

10/30     Experiments in Objectivity: Re-Enactments    

View:     The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)

Read:     Williams, “Mirrors Without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary” Film Quarterly 46 (3): 9-21

 

Week 11 Different Takes on Authority

11/4        Subjectivity, Authority and Truth Claims

Read:     Arthur, “Jargons of Authenticity” In Theorizing Documentary (ed. Michael Renov) New York: Routledge (1993): 108-134. (C)

View:     Roger & Me (Moore, 1989)

 

11/6       Subjectivity and Documentary

View:     Sherman’s March (Ross McElwee, 1986)

Read:     Fischer, “Documentary Film and the Discourse of Hysterical/Historical Narrative.” In Documenting the Documentary (ed Barry Keith Grant and Jeanette Sloniowski)  Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press (1998): 333-343. (C)

 

Week 12 Subjectivity and Performativity

11/11     Documentary performance

Read:     Renov, “New Subjectivities: Documentary and Representation in the Post-Verite Age” In The Subject of Documentary Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press (2004): 171-181. (C)

Read:     Bruzzi, “The Performing Film Maker and the Acting Subject” (DFB)

 

11/13     No Class Meeting

Due:       Analysis 2

 

Week 13 Documentary Experiments

11/18     Experimental Film, Performance, and Documentary

View:     Tongues Untied (Marlon Riggs, 1990)

               Girlpower (Sadie Benning, 1991)

Read:     Nichols, “How can we describe...,”(chapter 7) pp 199-211 and “How Have Documentaries Addressed Social and Political Issues?” (ID)

Recommended: “Interview with Marlon Riggs” In New Challenges for Documentary, first edition (ed. Alan Rosenthal) Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (1988): 121-127. (C)

 

11/20     Mockumentary

Read:     Plantinga, “Gender, Power, and a Cucumber: Satirizing Masculinity in This is Spinal Tap” In Documenting the Documentary (ed Barry Keith Grant and Jeanette Sloniowski)  Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press (1998): 318-332. (C)

View:     This is Spinal Tap

 

Week 14   Contemporary Approaches to Documentary Evidence

11/25        Documentary, Testimony, and Memory

View:          Stories We Tell (Polley, 2012)

Read:         Nichols, “The Voice of Documentary” Film Quarterly 36(3): 17-30

                

11/27     Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Week 15  The Future of Documentary

12/2       Reality TV and New Formats

View:     TBA

Read:     Murray, "I Think We Need a New Name for It": The Meeting of Documentary and Reality TV In Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (ed. Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette) New York: New York University Press (2004) (C)

Read:     Eitzen, “When is a Documentary? Documentary as a Mode of Reception” Cinema Journal 35(1): 81-102.

Optional:       Hill, “Ambivalent Audiences” (DFB)

 

12/4       Wrap up

Read:     Corner, “Performing the Real: Documentary Diversions” Television and New Media 3(3)

Read:     Michiel and Zimermann, “Documentary's Open Spaces” (DFB)

 

 

Final Project Due by 4pm Dec. 12                                                  NO LATE PROJECTS WILL BE ACCEPTED