| UCSC/FILM + DIGITAL MEDIA DEPARTMENT | ||
| FILM 165 .........DOCUMENTARY HISTORY AND THEORY | ||
| FALL 2006 | ||
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Monday and Wednesday/ 7:00-9:40pm/ Communications Studio C |
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| ASSIGNMENT #1. DUE WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 1st, BEGINNING OF CLASS | ||
OPTION
1
OR assembled in an image sequencer with or without sound. Turned in on DVD
Be sure to clarify your terms and contextualize these phrases from Nichols within his larger argument about ethics and representation. |
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| You may collaborate on this project but groups may be no larger than 2. Even of you are collaborating, each of you must turn on your own written essay component. | ||
| You may not turn in the same work for 2 classes. So, if you are currently enrolled in Documentary production, you must make a separate project. Likewise, you may use footage that you shot in the past, but your project MUST include original material produced expresssly for this class | ||
| PERSONAL RELEASE FORM [word doc] | ||
ASSIGNMENT #2. DUE WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 29th, BEGINNING OF CLASS [3] 2 page papers |
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| • Must be typed,
double-spaced, 1” or less margins • Must be proofread for grammatical, typographic and spelling errors with a properly formatted Works Cited page |
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| Over the course of the quarter we’ve watched numerous documentaries and have been exposed to a variety of different non-fiction forms and approaches [romantic ethnography, expository, “the drama at your doorstep”, observational, performative, reflexive, essayistic…]. Perhaps the most obvious omission from our syllabus has been ‘reality tv’ and its related forms—‘extreme’ game shows [Fear Factor, The Amazing Race], ‘celebrity verite’ [Breaking Bonaduce, Simmons Family Jewels], reality comedy [Candid Camera, Punk’d, The Ali G show], and more recently a self consciously hybrid form that merges reality tv with more cinematic approaches [Jackass the movie, The Thin Blue Line, Borat]. Even though these non-fiction texts are distinct from the ones that we’ve been studying its also quite clear that they cite and utilize older forms even as they chart new territories. | ||
| For this assignment you
will be writing about Borat : Cultural Learnings of America for Make
Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan [UK/USA, 2006, Larry Charles,
82 min.]. The purpose of this assignment is twofold: 1. to apply the critical skills and theoretical concepts that you’ve learned to a film text that we don't watch in class [and a form that we haven't studied directly] 2. to explore an essayistic approach to non-fiction scholarship. In other words, your writing should ‘confound the perception of untroubled authority or comprehensive knowledge that a singular mode of address projects onto a topic’ [pg. 59, Paul Arthur]. You will answer three questions, producing your answers within three separate modes: research, personal experience, critical/theoretical analysis. Remember—an essay is an ‘unconventional’ piece of writing [in the sense of being multi or interdisciplinary] but is not mere opinion or conjecture. Rather, it attempts to get at the ‘truth’ of some phenomena or object through a flexible and inquisitive approach one that reflects back on its own processes of discovery. So, try to be mindful how each approach both differs and produces continuity |
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QUESTION #1 [2 pages]: Is Borat a non-fiction film? How do you know? If so, what other non-fiction forms does it resemble or cite? [RESEARCH: production history, critical reception, etc.]
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