Documentary Truths, American Fictions

Catalog description

This course explores the genre of documentary film and its historical and aesthetic evolutions in the U.S. It is designed to provide students with a critical vocabulary to define and discuss the specificity of documentary film form, while also interrogating practices of representation in non-fiction film and the genre’s relationship to notions like truth, reality, memory and history. Students will grapple with some of the ethical issues central to documentary filmmaking and examine how non-fiction films have addressed social and political issues relevant to American life at different historical moments. Readings will include the work of Patricia Aufderheide, bell hooks, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Bill Nichols, and Paula Rabinowitz, among others. Filmmakers may include Madeline Anderson, Elizabeth Barret, Garrett Bradley, Adam and Zack Khalil, Sky Hopinka, Cheryl Furjanic, William Greaves, Sterlin Harjo, Terence Nance, Jan Oxenberg, Marlon Riggs, Rea Tajiri, and more.