Monday and Wednesday/ 7:00-9:40pm/ Communications Studio C

Professor: Irene Gustafson
[831] 459 1498 / Comm 125
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Office Hours: Tuesday 2pm-3:30pm and by appointment

T.A.: Fabian Redrovan
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Office Hours: Wednesday 5-6pm, College 8 Cafe

[syllabus last updated: 27 NOVEMBER 2006]

This course examines the “documentary” through a series of questions: What defines this genre or mode? And who defines it? What “truths” can documentary claim? How and when can these claims be made? In addressing these questions this course considers the documentary film or video in relation to a wide variety of contexts--- historical, political, and aesthetic. During the first half of the quarter we will study the documentary ‘canon’—a set of historically important films and established discourses. Over the second half we will more closely examine a discrete form of non fiction production and reception--- the film/video essay.
Our class time together will typically include:
• Two weekly screenings, lectures, and on occasion, small group discussion.
• Each class period will begin with a lecture that contextualizes the week’s screenings and readings.

1.

MONDAY SEPTEMBER 25
Introduction and Admissions
Methodologies and Approaches
Screening: Nanook of the North [France, 1922, Robert Flaherty, 79 min.] DVD1666

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 27
Screening: excerpts from Nanook of the North
Song of Ceylon [UK, 1934, Basil Wright, 30 min.] VT2468 v. 3

Reading due:

• Fatimah Tobing Rony, ”Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography” in The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Spectacle [Durham: Duke University Press, 1996]

2.

MONDAY OCTOBER 2
Screening: Granton Trawler [UK, 1934, John Grierson, 11 min.] VT2468 v.2
Rain [Holland, Joris Ivens, 1929, 30 min.] VT9568

Reading due:

• Bill Nichols, “Introduction” [Textbook]
• John Grierson, “First Principles of Documentary” in Nonfiction Film: Theory and Criticism, ed. by Richard Meran Barsam [New York: Dutton,1976]
• Andre Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” in What is Cinema vol.1, translated by Hugh Gray [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967]

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 4
Screening: The River [USA, 1937, Pare Lorentz, 31 min.] VT7856
Land Without Bread [Spain, 1932, Buñuel, 43 min.] VT7253

Reading due:

• Bill Nichols, “Chapter 1, 2” [Textbook]
• Paul Arthur, “Jargons of Authenticity” in Theorizing Documentary, ed. by Michael Renov [New York: Routledge, 1993]

• READING SUMMARIES DUE [Grierson, Bazin, Arthur]

3.

MONDAY OCTOBER 9

Screening: Enthusiasm [USSR, 1922, Dziga Vertov, 67 min.] VT8529

Reading due:

• Bill Nichols, “Chapter 3” [Textbook]
• Dziga Vertov, “We: Variant on a Manifesto” and “The Council of Three” in Kino-eye: the writings of Dziga Vertov, ed by Annette Michelson ; translated by Kevin O'Brien [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984]

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 11
Screening: Triumph of the Will [Germany, 1934, Leni Riefenstahl, 120 min.] DVD328

Reading due:

• Bill Nichols, “Chapter 4 and 8” [Textbook]
• Frank P. Tomasulo, ”The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema: Leni Rienfenstahl’s Triumph of the Will” in Documenting the Documentary, ed. Grant and Sloniowski [Detroit: Wayne State University, 1998]

• READING SUMMARIES DUE [Vertov -- both readings, Tomasulo]

4.

MONDAY OCTOBER 16
Screening: EXCERPTS from Triumph of the Will and
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes [USA, 1971, Stan Brakhage, 32 min.] DVD1622

Reading due:

• Bill Nichols, “Chapter 5” [Textbook]
• Bart Testa, “Seeing With Experimental Eyes” in Documenting the Documentary, ed. Grant and Sloniowski [Detroit: Wayne State University, 1998]

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 18
Screening: Titicut Follies [USA, 1967, Frederick Wiseman, 45 min.] VT9496

Reading due:

• Bill Nichols, “Chapter 6” [Textbook]
• Dan Armstrong, “Wiseman’s Realm of Transgression: Titicut Follies, the Symbolic Father, and the Spectacle of Confinement” Cinema Journal vol.29, no.1 [Fall 1989]
• Barry Keith Grant, “Ethnography in the First Person” in Documenting the Documentary, ed. Grant and Sloniowski [Detroit: Wayne State University, 1998]

• READING SUMMARIES DUE [Testa, Armstrong, Grant]

5.

MONDAY OCTOBER 23
Screening: Portrait of Jason [USA, 1967, Shirley Clarke, 99 min.] DVD3774

Reading due:

• Bill Nichols, “Chapter 7” [Textbook]
• Bill Nichols, “Performing Documentary” in Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary Culture [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994]
• Melissa Anderson, “The Vagaries of Verite: on Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason” Film Comment 35.6 (Nov 1999)

WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 25
Screening: The Thin Blue Line [USA, 1967, Errol Morris, 102 min.]

Reading due:

• Linda Williams, “Truth, History, and ‘The Thin Blue Line” in Documenting the Documentary, ed. Grant and Sloniowski [Detroit: Wayne State University, 1998]

• READING SUMMARIES DUE [Nichols, Williams]

6.

MONDAY OCTOBER 31
Screening: The Gleaners and I [France, 2000, Agnes Varda, 107 min] DVD1755
Reading due:

• Paul Arthur, “Essay Questions” Film Comment 39:1 [Jan/Feb 2003]

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 1
Screening: Tongues Untied [USA, 1989, Marlon Riggs, 55min.] VT 2339

Reading due:

• Phillip Lopate, ”In Search of the Centaur: The Essay-Film” in Beyond Document ed. Charles Warren [Hanover: University Press of New England, 1996]
• Sheila Petty, “ Silence and Its Opposite: Expressions of Race in Tongues Untied” in Documenting the Documentary, ed. Grant and Sloniowski [Detroit: Wayne State University, 1998]

• ASSIGNMENT #1 DUE AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS
• READING SUMMARIES DUE [Arthur]

8.

MONDAY NOVEMBER 13
Screening: Fahrenheit 9/11 [USA, 2004, Michael Moore, 122 min.] DVD3926

Reading due: no reading for today

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 15
Screening: A Spy in the House That Ruth Built [USA, 1989, Vanalyne Green, 30 min.] DVD3953

Reading due:

• Michael Renov, “Video Confessions” in Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, ed. Renov and Suderburg [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996]

• READING SUMMARIES DUE [TBA, Renov]

9.

MONDAY NOVEMBER 20
Screening: Coffee Colored Children [UK, 1988, Ngozi Onwurah, 15 min.] VT3599

Reading due:

• Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, “ Ngozi Onwurah, a different concept and agenda” in Women filmmakers of the African and Asian Diaspora: Decolonizing the Gaze, Locating Subjectivity [Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997]
• Trinh T. Minh-ha, “The Totalizing Quest of Meaning” in Theorizing Documentary, ed. by Michael Renov [New York: Routledge, 1993]


WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 22
Screening: Reassemblage [USA, 1982, Trinh T. Hinh-ha, 40 min.] VT9479

Reading due:

• Nancy N. Chen + Trinh T. Minh-ha, “Speaking Nearby” in Visualizing Theory ed. Lucien Taylor [New York: Routledge, 1994]
• Bill Nichols, “The Ethnographer’s Tale” in Visualizing Theory ed. Lucien Taylor [New York: Routledge, 1994]

[THANKSGIVING WEEKEND]

10.

MONDAY NOVEMBER 27
Screening: Spin [USA, 1993, Brian Singer, 57 min.] VT3697

Reading due:

• Patricia Zimmerman, “Pirates of the New World Image Orders” in States of Emergency: Documentaries, Wars, Democracies [Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000]

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 29
Screening: Lost Book Found [USA, 1996, Jem Cohen, 37 min.] DVD3954

•ASSIGNMENT #2 DUE AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS

A note on academic integrity, plagiarism, and intellectual work:
At the university we are continually engaged with other people’s ideas: we read them in books, hear them in lecture, discuss them with our friends, engage with them on a personal level, and incorporate them into our own writing. As a result, it is very easy to blur the lines between our own intellectual work and the work of others. But, it is important that we give credit where it is due. Plagiarism is using others’ ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information.
To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use
• another person’s idea, opinion, or theory;
• any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings—any pieces of information—that are not common knowledge;
• quotations of another person’s actual written words and/or spoken words; or
• paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words.
The UCSC “Official University Policy on Academic Integrity for Undergraduate Students” can be found at:
http://www.ucsc.edu/academics/academic_integrity/undergraduate_students/