DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING: HISTORY AND THEORY

http://www.albany.edu/faculty/gz580/docfilmshistory

COURSE INTRODUCTION:

This course will introduce students to the history and theory of documentary cinema. We will review and analyze – through extensive readings and viewings – the evolution of the documentary film genre and the varieties of approaches adopted by non-fiction filmmakers engaged in producing films focusing on diverse political, economic, cultural, social, and historical subjects. We will systematically unravel the various elements and the techniques that contribute to the creation of informative, moving, and powerful documentary films. We'll look at the modes or styles that have evolved in the course of the genre's development: expository, observational, interactive, reflective, and assorted hybrid modes. We'll also explore a number of other important areas that are central in documentary filmmaking, including ethical and legal questions and the importance of deep and thorough research.

This course will provide students with a solid historical and theoretical foundation in documentary filmmaking and prepare them for a variety of production courses offered on campus.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY:

The following statement of policy is required by the University at Albany: It is assumed that your intellectual labor is your own. If there is any evidence of academic dishonesty, including plagiarism, the minimum penalty will be an automatic failing grade for that piece of work. Plagiarism is taking (which includes purchasing) the words and ideas of another and passing them off as one’s own work. If another person’s work is quoted directly in a formal paper, this must be indicated with quotation marks and a citation. Paraphrased or borrowed ideas are to be identified by proper citations.

GRADING:

Grades will be based on:

* class attendance, preparation, and participation (20%).
* on-line BLS (Blackboard Learning System) discussion list participation (40%). You will be expected to contribute well-thought out and reading-centered postings -- as well as responses to specific questions which I will periodically post -- on our class BLS site. You will also be expected to respond to other student's postings and help maintain discussion threads on various topics. Sometimes you will be leading discussion threads; at other times you will be responding to your fellow students' comments.The discussion "threads" are organized by the weekly topics outlined in the course schedule below. The idea here is for students to both initiate discussion threads and respond to other's postings on issues introduced in class and in the readings. Make sure to USE THE SUBJECT LINE to clearly summarize the contents of your comments as well as the contents of your response! As you can see, a large percentage of your final grade is determined by your participation in these discussions. I will grade these discussions, but I will not be a major participant in them -- though I many occasionally serve as a catalyst, suggesting some issues that you need to cover in response to the readings, and then I will step back. Three times during the semester, I will give each of you feedback on the quality and quantity of your contributions. You are responsible for maintaining the quality of the discussion threads you lead. Every posting to a discussion should add something substantive to that discussion. Also, to repeate myself, every posting must have a subject line that communicates the essential point of your posting. I will have more to say about this in class.
* Final project (40%): a documentary film treatment (15-20 pages) utilizing a particular mode of documentary production. The treatment should include: 1) a thorough and well documented (and footnoted!) discussion and justification of the mode you choose to use, including a survey of films and fiilmmakers whose approach has inspired your choice; 2) a comprehensive bibliography -- both primary and secondary sources -- which includes films, archival film/audio sources, articles, books, and archival document collections relevant to your project; 3) a detailed discussion of central scenes/segments of your intended documentary film. I will distitbute and talk about several examples of film treatments in class so you will have a sense of what is expected of you.

READINGS:

• Required Readings (these are our core texts; they will be extensively supplemented by readings and resources on electronic and library reserve). Some changes may be made in reading assignments in the course of the semester. These will be announced well in advance and will generally take the form of substitutions or reductions in readings, and occasional additions to the "Recommended readings/media" lists.
  • Jack C. Ellis and Betsy A. McLane, A New History of Documentary Film (Continuum, 2005).
  • Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Indiana University Press, 2001).
  • Liz Stubbs, Documentary Filmmakers Speak (Allworth Press, 2002).
  • Misc. journal articles, chapters, essays and media -- most will be made available on closed access in the class' Blackboard Learning System site: https://bls.its.albany.edu]. You will need to use your student user id and password to access the readings and media on that site. All readings on that site are identified with "[BLS]."

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Class 2 (Wednesday, Sept. 5): Definitions, Theory, and Early History

Required Readings:

• Jack C. Ellis and Betsy A. McLane, A New History of Documentary Film (Continuum, 2005), preface, pp. 1-11.
• John Corner, The Art of Record (Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1996), 9-30 ("Documentary Theory"). [BLS].
• Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Indiana University Press, 1991), xi-xviii, 1-138.

Recommended Reading/Viewing:

• Freeze Frame: Eadweard Muybridge's Photography of Motion: http://americanhistory.si.edu/muybridge/index.htm. [National Museum of American History]
• The short films of the Lumière brothers: http://www.institut-lumiere.org/francais/films/1seance/accueil.html;
• Thomas Edison's Annie Oakley [1894]. http://www.archive.org/details/AnnieOakley
• Ford Motor Company's Motion Picture Department (full collection now at the National Archives). Selections available at http://www.archive.org.
• On-line selections from early cinema: http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/magic/movies/movindex.html;
• Edison Motion Pictures (Library of Congress): http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvhm.html;
• McKinley and the Pan-American Exposition, 1901 (Library of Congress): http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/mckhome.html;
• G. W. (Billy) Bitzer and the Westinghouse films: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/west/westhome.html;
• Before and After the Great Earthquake and Fire: Early Films of San Francisco, 1897-1916 (Library of Congress): http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/papr/sfhome.html;
• Spanish-American War Films, 1898-1901: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sawhtml/sawhome.html;
• America at Work, America at Leisure, 1894-1915 (Library of Congress): http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awlhtml/workleistitlindex1.html [includes a wonderful 1901 film of the Albany, NY fire department on parade].
• "Documentary Chronology: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/docexhibit/docuchron.htm
• "Early Cinema Gateway:" http://website.lineone.net/~luke.mckernan/Linknonfiction.htm

Class 3 (Wednesday, Sept. 19): The Work of Edward S. Curtis and Robert Flaherty and the Ethnographic Foundations of American Documentary Filmmaking

Required Readings:

Recommended Reading/Viewings:

• Paul Rotha, Robert J. Flaherty: A Biography (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983). Web version: http://astro.temple.edu/~ruby/wava/Flaherty/title.html.
• Mick Gidley, Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian (Cambridge University Press, 1998).
• Barbara A. Davis, Edward S. Curtis: The Life and Times of a Shadow Catcher (San Francisco, 1985).
• Laurie Lawlor, Shadow Catcher: The Life and Work of Edward S. Curtis (New York, 1994).
• Nanook of the North. 1922. A film by Robert Flaherty.
• Moana. 1926. A film by Robert Flaherty. [Selections to be shown in class]
• The Shadow Catcher: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indians. 1993. A film by T.C. McLuhan. [Selections to be shown in class].
• In the land of the war canoes: Kwakiutl Indian life on the Northwest Coast. 1914. A film by Edward S. Curtis. [Selections to be shown in class].

Class 4 (Wednesday, Sept. 26): The Soviet and European Documentary Movements of the 1920s and early 1930s: Experiments in Montage, Compilation, Abstractionism, Surrealism, and Impressionism

Required Readings:

Ellis and McLane, A New History of Documentary Film, pp. 27-56.

Annette Michelson, ed., Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov (Univ. of California Press, 1984), Read the introduction, pp. 6-21 & pp. 40-50 (skip the rest). [BLS].

Selections from Lewis Jacobs, ed., The Documentary Tradition [pp. 29-42 and 53-63]. [BLS].

Seth Feldman, "'Peace between Man and Machine': Dziga Vertov's The Man with a Movie Camera," in Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski, eds., Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video (Detroit, 1998). [BLS].

Jonathan Dawson on Vertov (from Sense of Cinema, an online journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema): http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/03/vertov.html

Mark Daniel, "The man with the movie camera. Speed of vision, speed of truth?": http://www.25hrs.org/vertov.htm.

Graham Roberts, Forward Soviet!: History and Non-fiction Film in the USSR (St. Martin's Press, 1999), ch.3 ("Esfir Shub and the Great Way Forward"). [Available on class BLS site: http://bls.its.albany.edu]

Recommended Readings/Films:

• Land Without Bread. 1932. Luis Bunuel. [Selections to be viewed in class].
• The Bridge. 1928. Joris Ivens. [Selections viewed in class].
• Rain. 1929. Joris Ivens [Selections viewed in class].
• Rien que les heurs [Nothing But the Hours]. 1926. Alberto Cavalcanti. [Selections to be viewed in class].
• Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. 1927. Joris Ivens. [Selections to be viewed in class].
• The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty. 1927. Esfir Shub. [Selections to be viewed in class].
• The Man with the Movie Camera. 1929. Dziga Vertov. [Selections viewed in class].
• Web sites on Sergei Eisenstein: (1) Dan Shaw on Eisenstein (from Sense of Cinema, an online journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema): http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/04/eisenstein.html (2) Greg Severson on Eisenstein: http://www.carleton.edu/curricular/MEDA/classes/media110/Severson/eisenste.htm.

Class 5 (Wednesday, Oct. 3): Social Documentary and the Anglo-American Documentary Movements of the 1930s

Required Readings:

• Ellis and McLane, A New History of Documentary Film, pp. 57-104.
• David Davidson, "Depression America and the Rise of the Social Documentary Film." Chicago Review 34.1 (Summer 1983): 69-88. [BLS]
• Kevin Macdonal and Mark Cousins, Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), chapter 5 [pp. 93-125].
• Selections from Lewis Jacobs, ed., The Documentary Tradition, pp. 64-65; 101-115; 123-125. [BLS].
• John Corner, “Coalface and Housing Problems (1935)” in The Art of Record (Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1996), 56-71. [BLS]

Recommended Readings/Films:

• Charlie Keil, “‘American Documentary Finds Its Voice: Persuasion and Expression in The Plow that Broke the Plains and The City.” Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video, ed. Barry Keith Grant and Jeanette Sloniowski, (Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State, 1998), 119-135. [BLS]
• Brian Winston, “The Tradition of the Victim in the Griersonian Documentary” New Challenges for Documentary, ed. Alan Rosenthal (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 269-287. [BLS]
• Web site on John Grierson: Biography from the British Film Insititute' Screenonline Web site (www.screenonline.org): http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/454202/
• Web site on Basil Wright: Biography from the British Film Insititute' Screenonline Web site (www.screenonline.org): http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/454662/.
• Web site on Harry Watt: Biography from the British Film Insititute' Screenonline Web site (www.screenonline.org): http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/548238/.
• Peter C. Rollins, "Ideology and Film Rhetoric: Three Documentaries of the New Deal Era (1936-1941)," in Peter C. Rollins, ed., Hollywood as Historian: American Film in a Cultural Context ( Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1983), 32-48. [BLS]
• Robert E. Elson, "Timer Marches on the Screen," in Richard Meran Barsam, ed. Nonfiction Film Theory and Criticism (New York, 1976).
• Depression Era Documentaries: "A New Frontier for Documentaries": http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA01/Huffman/Frontier/frontier.html.
• Ian Aitken, The Documentary Film Movement (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1998), 1-68.
• Drifters (John Grierson, 1929)
• Housing Problems (Arthur Elton and Edgar Anstey, 1935)
• William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 18-45. [BLS]
• Robert L. Snyder, “The Plow that Broke the Plains” (21-49) and “The River” (50-78) in Pare Lorentz and the Documentary Film (Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1994. [BLS]
• Carl R. Plantinga, “Exemplars and Expression” Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 26-39.
• Sound track/script for Pare Lorentz's The River.
• Film sound track script for The Plow that Broke the Plains: http://newdeal.feri.org/nchs/doc01.htm
• Night Mail by W. H. Auden. This poem was written for the film Night Mail.
• National Film Preservation Foundation ~ film preservation basics: http://www.filmpreservation.org/] A great resource on film preservation.
• The Plow that Broke the Plains (1936)
• The River (1937)
• The City (1939)
• Screenoline Web site on Man of Aran: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/480287/

Class 6 (Wednesday, Oct. 10): European Documentary Filmmaking in the 1930s

Required Readings:

• Kevin Macdonal and Mark Cousins, Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), pp. 126-140. [BLS]
• Richard M. Barsam, "Leni Riefenstahl: Artifice and Truth in a World Apart," in Barsam, Nonfiction Film Theory and Criticism (New York, 1976), pp. 250-262. [BLS]
• William Rothman, Documentary Film Classics (New York, 1997), pp. 21-38 (Chapter 2, "Land Without Bread"). [BLS]
• Selections from Lewis Jacobs, ed., The Documentary Tradition. [pp. 136-147] [BLS].
• Frank P. Tomasulo, “The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema,” in Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video, ed. Barry Keith Grant and Jeanette Sloniowski, (Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State, 1998), 99-118. [BLS]

Recommended Readings:

• David B. Hinton, “The Nuremberg Trilogy,” The Films of Leni Riefenstahl (Lanham,Maryland: Scarecrow, 2000), 19-46. [BLS]
• Manohla Daris, “Leni Riefenstahl, Art, and Propaganda,” in Kevin Macdonald and Mark Cousins, eds., Imagining Reality (Boston and London: Faber and Faber, 1996), 129-135. [BLS]
• Richard M. Barsam, Non-Fiction Film: A Critical History (Indiana University Press, 1992), 112-133. [BLS]

Class 7 (Wednesday, Oct. 17): Documenting War: World War II

Required Readings:

Ellis and McLane, A New History of Documentary Film, pp. 105-147.

Selections from Lewis Jacobs, ed., The Documentary Tradition. [BLS].

Recommended Readings/Viewings:

Frank Capra, Why We Fight series.

Richard Dyer MacCann, "World War II: Armed Forces Documentary," in Richard M. Barsam, ed., Nonfiction Film Theory and Criticism (New York, 1976), 136-157.

H. Forsyth Hardy, "British Documentaries in the War," in Richard M. Barsam, ed., Nonfiction Film Theory and Criticism (New York, 1976), 167-172.

Lindsey Anderson, "Only Connect: Some Aspects of the Work of Humphrey Jennings," in Richard M. Barsam, ed., Nonfiction Film Theory and Criticism (New York, 1976), 263-270.

Kevin Macdonal and Mark Cousins, Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), pp. 141-150.

Misc. U.S. and British government films produced during WWII -- see http://www.archives.org

Ken Burns, The War (2007)

Class 8 (Wednesday, Oct. 24): The Post-WWII Era and the Emergence of Television Documentaries

Required Readings:

• Ellis and McLane, A New History of Documentary Film, pp.148-207.
• Selections from Lewis Jacobs, ed., The Documentary Tradition. [BLS].
• Keith Beattie, “The Evening Report: Television Documentary Journalism,” Documentary Screens: Non-Fiction Film and Television (New York: Palgrave, 2004): 161-181. [BLS]
• Thomas Rosteck, “McCarthyism, the Red Scare, and the Television Industry” (11-24) and “Argument and the News Documentary: ‘A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’” (112-141), See It Now Confronts McCarthyism: Television Documentary and the Politics of Representation (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1994). [BLS]
• Richard J. Schaefer, “Reconsidering Harvest of Shame: The Limitations of a Broadcast Journalism Landmark,” Journalism History 19.4 (1994). [BLS]

Recommended Readings/Viewings:

Class 9 (Wednesday, Oct. 31): Direct Cinema and Cinema Verite

Required Readings:

• Ellis and McLane, A New History of Documentary Film, pp. 208-226.
• Liz Stubbs, Documentary Filmmakers Speak (New York, 2002), pp. 3-67.
• M. Ali Issari and Doris A. Paul, What is Cinema Verite (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1979): pp. 3-31 & 67-104.[BLS]
• Carolyn Anderson and Thomas Benson, “Direct Cinema and the Myth of Informed Consent: The Case of Titicut Follies,” in Larry Gross, John Stuart Katz, and Jay Ruby, eds., Image Ethics: The Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film, and Television (New York: Oxford UP, 1988), 58-90. [BLS]

Recommended Readings/Films:

• Jean Rouch, Cine-Ethnography, Ed. and trans. Steven Feld (Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 2003), selections; 29-46; 229-265; 275-329.
• Barry Keith Grant, “Ethnography in the First Person: Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies,” in Barry Keith Grant and Jeanette Sloniowski, eds., Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video, ed. (Detroit, 1998), 238-253.
• Erik Barnouw, “Guerilla” (262-293), Documentary: A History of Nonfiction Film (New York: Oxford UP, 1993).
• Jeanne Lynn Hall, “Realism as a Style in Cinema Verite: A Critical Analysis of Primary,” Cinema Journal 30(4): 24-50.
• Stella Bruzzi, “The President and the Image: Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton” New Documentary: A Critical Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2000), 127-152.
• Stephen Mamber, “Direct Cinema and the Crisis Structure,” Cinema Verite in America: Studies in Uncontrolled Documentary (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT, 1974): 115-140.
• Carolyn Anderson and Thomas Benson, Documentary Dilemmas: Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991).
• D. A. Pennebaker, Don't Look Back (1966); The War Room (1993).
• Albert and David Maysles, Saleman (1969).
• Robert Drew, et al., Primary (1960).
• Frederick Wiseman, Titicut Follies (1967)
• Jean Rouch, Chronicle of a Summer (1961) [See, as well, some of Rouch's West African and French ethnographic films, such as Jaguar, The Lion Hunters, and Cocorico, Monsieur Poulet]
• Shawn J. Parry-Giles and Trevor Parry Giles, “Meta-Imaging, The War Room, and the Hypperreality of U.S. Politics,” Journal of Communication 49:1 (1999): 28-45.

Class 10 (Wednesday, Nov. 7): Documenting Protest / Protesting with Documentary

Required Readings:

• Ellis and McLane, A New History of Documentary Film, pp. 227-292.
• Bill Nichols, “How Have Documentaries Addressed Social and Political Issues?” Introduction to Documentary (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 2001), 139-167.
• Liiz Stubbs, Documentary Filmmakers Speak, 109-125; 209-220.

Recommended Readings/Viewings:

Class 11 (Wednesday, Nov. 14): Documenting Self, Community, and Society

Required Readings:

(Wednesday, Nov. 21): NO CLASS

Class 12 (Wednesday, Nov. 28): History and Documentary

Required Readings:

Class 13 (Wednesday, Dec. 5): Presentations and Discussions of Film Treatment Drafts

December 12: FINAL PROJECT DUE.
I'll be in my office all day to receive your final projects.