Non-Fiction Film History

Catalog description

This course introduces advanced undergraduates and graduate students to the study of nonfiction film. It explores the history and historiography of nonfiction cinema, including – but not limited to – documentary film. We will examine the established milestones of the international tradition of documentary – from the romances of Robert Flaherty to propaganda projects of the 1930s and 1940s, through cinema verité of the 1960s and the activist, institutional, and personal styles of recent decades. However, the course also places documentary in a context that includes forms of nonfiction typically segregated from the traditional conception of documentary. Some are familiar forms, such as travelogues and newsreels. Others have been neglected by scholars until recently: sponsored, industrial, educational, and science films; home movies and other amateur films; outtakes and other archival footage. Viewed both as discrete works of cinema and as artifacts of social and cultural significance, such orphaned films pose problems of history, culture, and aesthetics that challenge traditional conceptions of making, viewing, and studying films. We will read primary sources, as well as scholarly approaches to the history of nonfiction film and to the possible uses and meanings of this vast archive. Students will participate actively in discussions, make in-class presentations, and complete historical research projects on topics developed in consultation with the instructor.