I.
Week One
Class 1: (Jan 18) Introduction to course: Course overview, class mechanics
Reading for next class:

Nichols: chapters 1 & 2 and 6;

Barbash & Taylor: Documentary Styles (reader);

Eitzen, Dirk. When Is a Documentary? (reader);

Godmilow and Shapiro, "How Real is the Reality in
Documentary Film? (reader)
Class 2 (Jan 20): From Real to Reel: What is Documentary Film?: The
What, Why, Who and How of Documentary Film
Reading for next class:

Barnow, 3-30
II.
Week Two
Class 3 (Jan 25): La Vie Sur Le Vif (Life on the Hoof): The Beginnings of
Motion Pictures and the Prehistory of Documentary Film
Screening:

Muybridge sequence photograhy,

Lumiere Brothers (First Films)

Edison shorts
Reading for next class:

Barnow, 33-50;

Rothman: The Filmmaker as Hunter (reader);

Ruby, "Re-examinition of the Early Career of Robert J.
Flaherty" (reader)

Nichols, 82-87
Class 4: (Jan 27): A Lens on World: Documentary and the Romance of
Exploration and Travel
Screening:

Clips from Dawn of the Eye (about early newsreels)

Clips from The Shadow catcher : Edward S. Curtis and the North
American Indian

Clips from: 90 Degrees South (Herbert Ponting, 1916-1933)

Clips: Congorilla (Martin and Asa Johnson, 1932)

III.
Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922)
Week Three:
Class 5 (Feb 1): A Lens on World: Films of Exploration and Travel
(continued)

Nanook of the North (Robert Flaherty) (continued)
Section: Required viewing: In Search of Nanook (55 min.)
Class 6 (Feb 3):
Part I: Researching Documentary Film/Discussion of Assignment I
Part II: Class 7 (Feb 8): Kino Pravda (Cinema Truth): Early Soviet
Documentary
Screening:

Clips: Constructivism (Shock of the New)
Reading for next class:




Feldman, "Peace Between Man and Machine" (reader)
Barnow, 51-71
"Kino Eyes and Agit Trains" (reader)
Nichols, 95-98
Week Four:
Class 7 (Feb 8): Kino Pravda (Cinema Truth): Early Soviet Documentary
(guest lecturer: Ann Nesbit)
Screening:

Clips: Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vetov, 1929)

Clips: Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (Esther Shubb, 1927)
Reading for next class:

Barnow, 71-81;

Nichols, pp. 88-90

Gaughan, Martin: "Ruttmann's Berlin: Filming in a "Hollow
Space." (reader)
Class 8 (Feb 10): The Poetics of Modernity: City Films and other
Documentary Experiments of the 1920's
Screening:

Clips from Shock of the New (Dada and Surrealism)

Clips from: Rhytmus 21 (Hans Richer, 1921); Ghosts Before
Breakfast (Hans Richer, 1928); Emak Bakia (Man Ray, 1926);
Ballet Mechanique (Ferdnand Leger, 1924)

Manhatta (Ralph Steiner, Charles Sheeler, 1921)

Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (Walter Ruttmann, 1927)

Rain (Joris Ivens, Mannus Franken,1929)
Section: Apropos de Nice? Rien que les
Reading for next class:

Grierson on Documentary (first principle of documentary) (reader)

Barnow, 85-100

Nichols, pp: 13-19; 139-148

Corner, John. Coalface and Housing Problems (reader)
Week 5:
Class 9-10 (Feb 15-17): John Grierson and the British Documentary
Movement
Screening:

Clips from The Drifters (John Grierson, 1929)

Night Mail (Harry Watt, Basil Wright, 1939)

Coalface (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1935)

Housing Problems (Edgar Anstey, 1935)
Section: Required viewing: Grierson (59 min)
Reading for next class:
 Barnow, 112-126

New Frontiers in American Documentary Film (reader) (also
posted at: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma01/Huffman/Frontier/frontier.html)
Week Six:
Class 11-12: (Feb 21-24) Documentary and the Great Depression
Screening:

Plow That Broke the Plains (Pare Lorentz, 26 min)

The River (Pare Lorentz, 1938)

Clips: Native Land (Leo Hurwitz, Paul Strand, 1942)
Read for next class:
Austin, Jacqueline
"A battle of wills : how Leni Riefenstahl and Frank Capra fought a war with film and
remade history." In: Artistic strategy and the rhetoric of power : political uses of
art from antiquity to the present / edited by David Castriota. Carbondale : Southern
Illinois University Press, c1986.
--Main Stack NX650.P6.A781 1986
--Moffitt NX650.P6.A78 1986
Bazin, André; Cardullo, Bert, transl.
"On Why We Fight: History, Documentation, and the Newsreel (1946)." Film &
History 2001 31(1): 60-62.
"Why We Fight (1942-45), Frank Capra's seven-part propaganda series about World
War II, represents a new genre - the edited ideological documentary - in which the
brilliant piecing together of newsreel film aims not so much at showing as at making
a point." [America: History and Life]
Week Seven:
Class 13 (March 1): Documentary Goes to War
Screening;

Spanish Earth (Joris Ivens, 1937)

Why We Fight (Prelude to War) (Frank Capra, 1943)

Listen to Britain (Humphrey Jennings, Stewart McAllister, 1942)
Read for next class:

Sontag, Susan, "Fascinating Fascism" (reader)

Nazi cinema
Class 14 (March 4): Documentary Goes to War
Watch: Wonderful, Horrible Life (section)
Class 11: (March 3) Post-War Documentary
Post War Doc
Neo-realism
Night and Fog
TV Doc
Week Eight:
Class 12-13: (March 8, March 10) Cinema Verite / Direct Cinema
Screen:
Chronicle of a Summer
Primary
Salesman
Titicutt Follies
Required viewing: Cinema Verite
Reading: Drew, Robert (Narration Can be a Killer) (Imagining Reality)
Eternal Verites
Documentary: I think we are in trouble
…Winston, Documentary Film: I think we are in trouble
Week Nine: Making Sense of the 70's: Documentary and Social Justice. Voices from
the Margins
Classes 14-15 (March 15, 17)
Newsreel (Columbia on Strike)
Fall of the I-Hotel
Harlan County U.S.A.
Week Ten: March 21-25th Spring Break)
Documenting the Documentarian: Reflexivity
Week 11:
Thin Blue Line
No Lies