CINE540 Documentary Film Form

Spring 2009

Office Hours:

Monday 12:00-1:00

Wednesday 11:00-1:00

or by appointment

Office: FA536

Instructor:

Aaron Kerner

Webstie:

http://online.sfsu.edu/~amkerner

Course Description: Advanced exploration of issues in documentary film form, including work of specific directors, shifting concepts of how to represent reality persuasively.

This course examines the various rhetorical strategies employed to represent non-fiction subjects. The specific films and filmmakers selected here frequently press up against the boundaries of the documentary genre by either explicitly challenging the discourse of “reality” and/or using forms (e.g., animation) that are not commonly associated with the representation of “reality.”

Reading Material:

Required text:

Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Other reading assignments are available either through electronic reserves or through one of the electronic databases (e.g., JSTOR, Project Muse).

Assignments:

1. First paper on the assigned question/prompt – 8 to 10 pages.

2. Second paper on the assigned question/prompt – 8 to 10 pages.

3. Using the provided source material create a written treatment for a documentary.

4. Weekly Questions: each student should have at least four prepared questions premised on the assigned reading. These prepared questions are intended to initiate classroom discussions.

Course Requirements:

1. Attend all class meetings

2. Readings must be completed by the assigned dates

3. All written work must be submitted on time

Course Assessment: The course assessment will be based on three assignments as well as attendance and participation. Student participation is an important part of the learning process. As for the papers, I want to encourage the development of critical thinking and research skills. I will require that you find outside research material to support your argument.

Assignment One	15%
Assignment Two	15%
Assignment Three	30%
Weekly Questions	30%
Attend/Participation	10%

NB: this syllabus is subject to change.

At the Outer Edge of the Genre

Session 1 January 26

Screening:

Bara no soretsu, Toshio Matsumoto, 1969

Session 2 February 2

Screening:

Selected clips from Iraq in Fragments, James Longley, 2006

(compared to Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

Selected clips from Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Alex Gibney, 2005

Selected clips from No End In Sight, Charles Ferguson, 2007

Selected clips from Why We Fight, Eugene Jarecki, 2005

Selected clips from Jesus Camp, Heidi Ewing Rachel Grady, 2006

Selected clips from The Bridge, Eric Steel, 2006

Selected clips from Meat, Frederick Wiseman, 1976

Selected clips from Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., Errol Morris, 1999

Selected clips from Le Sang des bêtes [Blood of the Beasts], Georges Franju, 1949

Selected clips from The Office, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant

Selected clips from The Thin Blue Line, Errol Morris, 1988

Selected clips from Gokushiteki Erosu: Renka 1974 [Extreme Private Eros Love Song 1974], Kazuo Hara, 1974

Selected clips from Bara no soretsu [Funeral Parade of Roses], Toshio Matsumoto, 1969

Reading:

Bill Nichols, “The Domain of Documentary,” in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 3 – 31.

Bill Nichols, “Documentary Modes of Representation,” in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 32 – 75.

Session 3 February 9

Screening:

The Road to Guantánamo, Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom, 2006

Reading:

Roland Barthes, “The Discourse of History,” in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 127 - 140.

Roland Barthes, “The Reality Effect,” in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 141 - 148.

Roland Barthes, “Writing the Event,” in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 149 - 154.

Session 4 February 16

Screening:

The War Game, Peter Watkins, 1965

Punishment Park, Peter Watkins, 1971

Reading:

Alan Rosenthal, “The War Game: An Interview with Peter Watkins,” in Alan Rosenthal ed., New Challenges for Documentary (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 592 – 603.

Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight, “Factual Discourse and the Cultural Placing of Documentary,” in Faking It: mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality (Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Palgrave, 2001), 1 – 23.

Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight, “A Cousin for the Drama-documentary: Situating the Mock-documentary,” in Faking It: mock-documentary and the subversion of factuality (Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Palgrave, 2001), 42 - 63.

In Your Face and Personal

Session 5 February 23

First Assignment due in class

Screening:

Yuki Yukite shingun, Kazuo Hara, 1987 [The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On]

Gokushiteki erosu: Renka 1974, Kazuo Hara, 1974 [Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974]

Reading:

Bill Nichols, “Axiographics: Ethical Space in Documentary Film,” in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 76 – 103.

Session 6 March 2

Screening:

Not Angels but Angels, Wiktor Grodecki, 1994

Selected clips from Comizi d’amore, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1965 [Love Meetings]

Selected clips from Kids, Larry Clark, 1995

Selected clips from Blow Job, Andy Warhol, 1963

Selected clips from Fuses, Carolee Schneemann, 1967

Selected clips from Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston, 1990

Selected clips from The Good Woman of Bangkok, Dennis O'Rourke, 1991

Selected clips from Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, Gough Lewis, 2002

Reading:

Nicholas de Villiers, “How Much Does It Cost for Cinema to Tell the Truth of Sex? Cinéma Vérité and Sexography,” Sexualities vol. 10, no. 3 (2007): 341 – 361. Click here for article.

Bill Nichols, “Pornography, Ethnography, and the Discourses of Power,” in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 201 – 228.

Session 7 March 9

Screening:

Sayonara CP, Kazuo Hara, 1972 [Goodbye CP]

Selected clips from Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter, Deborah Hoffman, 1994

Selected clips from Tarnation, Jonathan Caouette, 2003

Selected clips from Titicut Follies, Frederick Wiseman, 1967

Selected clips from Me and My Brother, Robert Frank, 1969

Reading:

Peter Stastny, “From Exploitation to Self-Reflection: Representing Persons with Psychiatric Disabilities in Documentary Film,” Literature and Medicine vol. 17, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 68-90. Available via Project Muse.

Bill Nichols, “Representing the Body: Questions of Meaning and Magnitude,” in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 229 - 266.

Session 8 March 16

Screening:

Looking for Langston, Isaac Julien, 1988

Selected clips from This Is Not an AIDS Advertisement, Isaac Julien, 1988

Selected clips from The Darker Side of Black, Isaac Julien, 1993

Selected clips from Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask, Isaac Julien, 1996

Selected clips from Derek, Isaac Julien, 2008

Reading:

Jonathan Kahana, “Cinema and the Ethics of Listening: Isaac Julien’s Frantz Fanon,” Film Quarterly vol. 59, no. 2 (Winter 2005-2006): 19 – 31. Available via JSTOR.

Isaac Julien interviewed by Bruce Morrow, Callaloo vol. 18, no. 2 (1995): 406 - 415. Available via Project Muse.

Manthia Diawara, “The Absent One: The Avant-Garde and the Black Imaginary in Looking for Langston,” Wide Angle vol. 13, no. 3/4 (July-October, 1991): 96 - 109.

NO CLASS – March 23 Spring Break

Session 9 March 30

Screening:

Free Fall, Péter Forgács, 1997

History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige, Rea Tajiri, 1991

She Wants To Talk To You, Anita Chang, 2001

Reading:

Bill Nichols, “The Memory of Loss: Péter Forgács’s Saga of Family Life and Social Hell,” Film Quarterly vol. 56, no. 4 (2003): 2 - 12. Available via JSTOR.

Bill Nichols, “Sticking to Reality: Rhetoric and What Exceeds It,” in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 134 - 164.

Session 10 April 6

Screening:

Reassemblage: from the firelight to the screen, Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1982

Selected clips from Surname Viêt, given name Nam: a film, Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1989

Selected clips from The couple in the cage: a Guatinaui odyssey, Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco, 1993

Selected clips from Hiroshima mon amour, Alain Resnais, 1959

Reading:

Trinh T. Minh-ha, “The Totalizing Quest for Meaning,” in When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge, 1991), 29 - 50.

Scott MacDonald, “Trinh T. Minh-ha: Naked Spaces - Living Is Round,” in Avant-Garde Film (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 147 - 156.

Session 11 April 13

Screening:

Selection of Chris Marker films

Sans Soleil, Chris Marker, 1982

Level Five, Chris Marker, 1997

Reading:

Bill Nichols, “The Fact of Realism and the Fiction of Objectivity,” in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 165 - 198.

Maureen Turim, “Virtual Discourses of History: Collage, Narrative or Documents in Chris Marker's Level 5,” Sites: Journal of the Twentieth-Century/Contemporary French Studies vol.4, no. 2 (2000): 367 – 382. Available via Academic Search Premier.

Reenactments, Animation, and Representation in Political Documentaries

Session 12 April 20

Second Assignment due in class

Screening:

Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris, 2008

The Thin Blue Line, Errol Morris, 1988

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., Errol Morris, 1999

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, Errol Morris, 2003

Reading:

Linda Williams, “Mirrors Without Memories: Truth, History and the New Documentary,” Film Quarterly vol. 46, no. 3 (Spring 1993): 9 – 12. Available via JSTOR.

Bill Nichols, “Telling Stories with Evidence and Arguments,” in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 107 – 133.

Catherine M. Soussloff, “Post-Colonial Torture: Rituals of viewing at Abu Ghraib,” in Mark Franko ed., Ritual and Event (New York: Routledge, 2007), 159 – 187.

Baudrillard, Jean. “War Porn.” Translated by Paul A. Taylor. International Journal of Baudrillard Studies vol. 2, no. 1 (January 2005): no pagination. http://www.ubishops.ca/BaudrillardStudies/vol2_1/taylor.htm

Session 13 April 27

Screening:

[Yuki Yukite shingun, Kazuo Hara, 1987 (The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On)]

Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, PBS series America at the Crossroads, Richard E. Robbins, 2005

Reading:

Brian Turner interview on Fresh Air, “Soldier-Poet Brian Turner, Framing War In Verse,” July 22, 2008.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92771250

Bill Nichols, “The Terrorist Event,” in Mark Franko ed., Ritual and Event (New York: Routledge, 2007), 93 – 108.

Wolfgang Ernst, “Distory: Cinema and Historical Discourse,” Journal of Contemporary History vol. 18, no. 3 (July 1983): 397 – 409. Available via JSTOR.

Session 14 May 4

Class dedicated to Hara Kazuo Panel in the Coppola Theater

Screening:

Chicago 10, Brett Morgen, 2007

Reading:

Brett Morgen interviewed on Fresh Air, “Political History Gets Animated in Chicago 10,” February 27, 2008

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93870724

Craig Hight, “The field of digital documentary: a challenge to documentary theorists,” Studies in Documentary Film vol. 2, no. 1 (2008): 3 – 7. Click here for article.

Craig Hight, “Primetime digital documentary animation: the photographic and graphic within play,” Studies in Documentary Film vol. 2, no. 1 (2008): 9 – 31. Click here for article.

Session 15 May 11

Screening:

Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman, 2008 (subject to availability)

Persepolis, Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, 2007

Reading:

Ari Folman interview on Fresh Air “Dancing With Memory, Massacre In 'Bashir'” December 23, 2008

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98634515

Selected material excerpts from Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History Volume I (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986).

Selected material excerpts from Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began Volume II (New York: Pantheon Books, 1991).

Hayden White, “Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth,” in Saul Friedlander, ed., Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution” (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 37 – 53.

Session 16 May 18

Final’s Week – No class

Final Paper Due