TUESDAY and THURSDAY/ 5:00-7:30pm/ Communications Studio A

Professor: Irene Gustafson
[831] 459 1498 / Comm 125
click here to email (the best way to reach me)
Office Hours: Wednesday 9:30-10:30am and by appointment

[syllabus last updated: 11.5.09]

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. Course materials will cover the documentary ‘canon’—a set of historically important films and established discourses, and examine documentary’s recent resurgence as a popular mode of entertainment and as a mechanism of discourse.

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.

Our class time will typically include:
• Two weekly screenings and lectures
• Each class period will begin with a lecture that contextualizes the week’s screenings and readings.

• We’ll take 10 minutes after each screening to reflect and write notes individually about the film. As this course does not include a separately scheduled discussion section, this is an opportunity for you to: voice your thoughts, ask questions, and demonstrate your engagement with course materials. This does not preclude note-taking during screenings. In fact, you are strongly encouraged to take notes during films.

• On occassion (3-4 times), you will be asked to turn in a reading summary. The summaries should be 3-6 paragraphs in length [per article]. In this writing you should do the following:
• What is the author arguing and why?
• summarize the ‘building blocks’ of the argument. What enables the author to assert her claims?
• you may critique the article but you must also sufficiently summarize it
• your summaries will be given back to you for use and reference during the final exam

1.

Thursday September 24
Introduction and Admissions
Methodologies and Approaches
Screening: March of the Penguins [France, 2005, Luc Jacquet, 80 min.] DVD3131

2.

Tuesday September 29
Introduction and Admissions
Methodologies and Approaches
Screening: March of the Penguins [France, 2005, Luc Jacquet, 80 min.] DVD3131
Reading due:

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

Thursday October 1
Screening: Nanook of the North [France, 1922, Robert Flaherty, 79 min.] DVD1666
Reading due:

• Bill Nichols, “Chapter 1: Why Are Ethical Issues Central to Documentary Filmmaking?”
• Rebecca Wexler, ”Onward, Christian penguins: wildlife film and the image of scientific authority” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 39 (2008) 273–279

3.

Tuesday October 6
Screening: À propos de Nice [France, 1929, Jean Vigo, 22 min.] DVD6296
Lost Book Found [USA, 1996, Jem Cohen, 37 min.] DVD3954
Reading due:

• 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]

Thursday October 8
Screening: The River [USA, 1937, Pare Lorentz, 31 min.] DVD4803
Land Without Bread [Spain, 1932, Buñuel, 43 min.] VT7253
Reading due:

• Bill Nichols, “Chapter 2: How do Documentaries Differ From Other Types of Films?” and “Chapter 3: What Gives Documentary Films a Voice of Their Own?”
• Paul Arthur, “Jargons of Authenticity” in Theorizing Documentary, ed. by Michael Renov [New York: Routledge, 1993]

4.

Tuesday October 13
Screening: Triumph of the Will [Germany, 1934, Leni Riefenstahl, 120 min.] DVD328
Reading due:

• Bill Nichols, “Chapter 4: What are Documentaries About?,” “Chapter 5: How Did Documentary Filmmaking Get Started?,” and “Chapter 8: How Can We Write Effectively About Documentary?”

Thursday October 15
ASSIGNMENT #1 DUE AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS
Screening: EXCERPTS from Triumph of the Will and The River
Reading due: no reading due

5.

Tuesday October 20
Screening: Titicutt Follies [USA, 1967, Frederick Wiseman, 84 min.] DVD6633

Reading due:

• Bill Nichols, “Chapter 6: What Types of Documentaries Are There?”
• Vivian Sobchack, “The Charge of the Real: Embodied Knowledge and Cinematic Consciousness” in Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture [University of California Press, 2004]

Thursday October 22
Screening: Harlan County, U.S.A [USA, 1977, Barbara Kopple, 104 min.] DVD 3658
Reading due:

• Bill Nichols, “Chapter 7: How Have Documentaries Addressed Social and Political Issues?”

6.

Tuesday October 27

RESPONSE PAPER to Sobchack essay is due
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]
• Trinh T. Minh-ha, “The Totalizing Quest of Meaning” in Theorizing Documentary, ed. by Michael Renov [New York: Routledge, 1993]

Thursday October 29

Screening: Borat - Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan [USA, 2006, Larry Charles, 84 min.] DVD6603
Reading due:

• Leshu Torchin, “Cultural Learnings of Borat Make for Bene€t Glorious Study of Documentary” Film & History, Volume 38:1 [2007]
• Alisa Lebow, “Faking What? Making a Mockery of Documentary” in F is for Phony: Fake Documentary and Truth’s Undoing, ed. Alexandra Juhasz and Jesse Lerner [Minnealopis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006

8.

Tuesday November 10

Screening: The Maelstrom: A Family Chronicle (Peter Forgacs, 1998, 58 min.)

Reading due:

• Portuges,”Home Movies, Found Images, and ‘Amateur Film’ as Witness to History”

Thursday November 12

ASSIGNMENT #2 DUE AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS

Lecture and Discussion: Capturing the Friedman's and The Maelstrom
Reading due: no reading due

9.

Tuesday November 17
Screening: The Gleaners and I [France, 2000, Agnes Varda, 107 min] DVD1755
Reading due:

• s.d. chrostowska, “vis - a-vis the glaneuse” ANGELAKI journal of the theoretical humanities, 12:2, August, 119-133
• Paul Arthur, “Essay Questions” Film Comment 39:1 [Jan/Feb 2003]

Thursday November 19
Screening: Black Is, Black Aint [USA, Marlon Riggs, 88 min.] VT3058
Reading due:

• E. Patrick Johnson, “The Pot is Brewing: Marlon Riggs’ Black Is… Black Ain’t” from Appropriating Blackness [Durham: Duke University Press, 2003]

10.

10 Tuesday November 24
Screening: Grizzly Man (France, 2005, Werner Herzog, 103 min.) DVD6604
Reading due:

• Steve Baker, “Is It Real or is it Disney?: unraveling the animal system” in Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation [Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993]

Thursday November 26
NO CLASS-- THANKSGIVING WEEKEND

FINAL EXAM

Wednesday December 9th 7:30-10:30pm

You will be answering a short essay question. Paper will be provided but please bring a pen or several sharp pencils

LAPTOP/MOBILE TECHNOLOGY USE:

Laptops can be a useful tool in the service of teaching and learning, however, I ask that you use them productively and respectfully.
A few common sense rules:
1. Always set up your laptop computer before the beginning of class. Setting up the computer and booting it up can take a few minutes depending on what applications are set to open at startup. Turn off all other mobile devices before lecture begins
2. Disable sound
3. During lecture and classroom discussion, you should not be connected to network resources. To do so invites many distractions - web surfing, email, chats, etc. Chatting or emailing during class is no more acceptable than talking on a cell phone during class time. Additionally, your networked screens are distracting to those sitting near and behind you
If you are found to be doing anything other than note-taking (or sanctioned network activity) you will be asked to leave the class immediately and will be marked as absent for that day.
I reserve the right to further legislate laptop use in their classes. For example, you may be asked to close your computer during screenings or be asked to sit in the first two rows of the class if you are actively using your laptop.

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/