ENGL 245, Documentary Cinema, Fall 2013

Abstract

Drawing on a variety of analytical perspectives, this course provides a comprehensive introduction to documentary film and video. Unlike the various genres of fiction film (comedy, science fiction, thriller, horror, romance, and so on), documentaries address the world as it exists rather than a world created by the filmmaker. Still, documentaries are not mere records of reality. From questions of ethics, ideology, politics, and power to concerns over gender, race, sexuality, and representation, we will explore the nature of documentary films, focusing on production as well as reception, on formal strategies as well as aesthetic pleasures. While we will investigate the documentary form's relation to reality, we will also try to destabilize the assumed boundaries between fact and fiction by considering such recent transformations as mockumentaries and self-reflexive docu-diaries. Overall, our goal will be to assess the ways in which non-fiction films reveal multiple, contingent truths rather than a unitary, unproblematic Truth.