![]() ![]() Pursuing a comparative approach to our case studies helps students think through the ethical stakes surrounding editorial decisions. In turn, this wide-angle view emphasizes the financial and technical resources necessary for production, the multiple below-the-line and above-the-line players involved in shaping the look and structure of a documentary, and the ways it reaches viewers in the public sphere. We look at Spike Lee's collaborations with Sheila Nevins, former president at HBO Documentary Films and Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel's work within Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab. These texts drive home how many projects are created in cooperation with complex institutions. To better situate these documentaries in their social contexts, we draw on articles from scholarly publications ( Journal of Cinema and Media Studies), journalism from organizations specializing in public broadcasting ( Current), emerging media ( Immerse) and the industry trade press ( Variety), as well as white papers from the Center for Media & Social Impact and the MIT Open Documentary Lab. These texts introduce key concepts such as mise-en-scène, editing, cinematography and sound, which help students to articulate what they are seeing on-screen, and to decipher the ways in which these stylistic elements contribute to a given film’s perspective, relationship to its subject, and place within a longer history of nonfiction media. Excerpts from the books of scholars Patricia Aufderheide, Jane Gaines, Jonathan Kahana, Charles Musser, Bill Nichols, Chon Noriega, Michael Renov, Philip Rosen, Brian Winston and Patricia Zimmermann model different ways of thinking about the claims that documentaries make and the experience of spectatorship. ![]() Films include Laura Poitras' vérité-style Citizenfour (2014) and Risk (2016), about the American surveillance state Meridian Hill Pictures' City of Trees (2015), a community documentary about the struggle for green jobs in underserved neighborhoods in Washington, DC The New York Times' VR projects on daily routines and extraordinary performances of artists and amateur videographers' short films about the Black Lives Matter movement.īecause our course addresses such recent phenomena, and the study of documentary involves drawing on multiple academic disciplines, we don't use one central textbook. I strive to show my students films that they will find personally meaningful, while at the same time exposing them to material that might not otherwise appear in their Netflix queue. We concentrate on documentaries created in the United States but also look at international co-productions and films whose topics move across national borders. ![]() Do we organize the semester by genre? Major movements? Filmmaker? We forgo a chronological examination of epochs or modes of production and instead investigate case studies associated with particular themes. The class aims to equip students to not simply become more savvy and curious consumers of documentary, but to feel more empowered to analyze, talk back and contribute to the broader media environment.Ĭrafting our syllabus poses challenges. In my course, Contemporary Documentary Media, students from the production track, humanities and social sciences learn about the central place of nonfiction within our current screen culture, as well as the ways it can be used both as a means of personal and collective expression and as a tool for progressive change. Although these are quite different contexts, teaching the class at a liberal arts college in the South and at a large research university in the Northeast feels equally urgent. My pursuits eventually led me towards a book project that explores documentary film and television in Los Angeles during the 1960s and ’70s, as well as numerous iterations of a contemporary documentary seminar I teach as a professor at Hendrix College near Little Rock, Arkansas, and as a member of Summer Session faculty at Columbia University in New York City. However, my experience tells me that students' enthusiasm for documentary stems more from a desire to engage with the sociopolitical reality that surrounds them-one filled with great hope and anxiety.Ī graduate school seminar on Errol Morris first sparked my interest in documentary and its intersections with politics, cultural history and the public humanities. And streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and SnagFilms have made it easier than ever to watch a wide variety of nonfiction. Why? Certainly, "documenting" their lives via Instagram and Snapchat is a popular social ritual. Student interest in college courses focusing on documentary media has never been higher. ![]()
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