Module: Documentary on Screen

Module Specifications.

Current Academic Year 2024 - 2025

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Date posted: September 2024

Module Title	Documentary on Screen
Module Code	CM528 (ITS) / MCO1013 (Banner)
Faculty	Humanities & Social Sciences	School	Communications
Module Co-ordinator	Roderick Flynn
Module Teachers	-
NFQ level	9	Credit Rating	10
Pre-requisite	Not Available
Co-requisite	Not Available
Compatibles	Not Available
Incompatibles	Not Available

None
Array

Description

The aim of this course is to provide students with a theoretical and historical understanding of the development of the documentary form. Documentary is investigated as creative and artistic practice, as a public process of engagement, and as a powerful tool for communication and for fostering understanding and change. The course also stresses aesthetic, scholarly, and ethical considerations involved in representing individuals and cultures.

Learning Outcomes

1. Students will be able to trace the historical evolution of the documentary form, and relate films to the historical, cultural and socio-political context in which they are made.
2. Students will critically relate a range of approaches to documentaries to wider cultural and critical theories.
3. Students will identify and analyze different forms of documentary in its characterization as creative treatment of actuality : documentary as historical archive, as social advocacy, as propaganda, and as aesthetically and formally innovative art form.
4. Students will engage with the ethical debates involved in documentary making, including the burden of representation, and responsibilities towards interviewees and participants.
5. Students will negotiate and debate the epistemological frameworks within which documentary functions, including the contingency of truth in the context of documentary as personal and social expression.
6. Students will investigate the place of documentary within an information-led society, where the wider democratization of documentary practice has led to issues of credibility and public trust.

*Type*	*Hours*	*Description*
Workload	Full-time hours per semester
Lecture	44	No Description
Assignment Completion	30	No Description
Independent Study	30	No Description
Independent Study	146	No Description
Total Workload: 250

All module information is indicative and subject to change. For further information,students are advised to refer to the University's Marks and Standards and Programme Specific Regulations at: http://www.dcu.ie/registry/examinations/index.shtml

Indicative Content and Learning Activities

Lecture 1
General outline of documentary debates – ethical, aesthetical and representational with specific reference to Bill Nichols’ “Documentary Modes of Representation”, “The Domain of Documentary” from Representing Reality.

Eyes on the Revolution
the creative and political development of Non-fiction cinema in Russia – “Kino-Eye”, Dziga Vertov, Eisenstein. Agnes Varda and the historical archive (found footage and the art of gleaning).

Representing Survival
Robert Flaherty, romantic, explorer and advocate, and the ethics of representation.

Documenting the workers
The Griersonian film project, British Documentary Movement, and John Grierson’s critics.

The aesthetics of fascism, and documentary as communal mourning.
Leni Riefenstahl, Alan Resnais; Claude Lanzmann and documenting the unspeakable.

The Cinema Verité movement, reflexivity, and modern ethnography
Jean Rouch & Edgar Morin

Direct Cinema and Reality Fiction
Frederick Wiseman, Richard Leacock and American movements in documentation-realism.

The cinema of social concern, the modern crusading polemic, and documentary in the age of (mis)information.
Errol Morris to Michael Moore

Documentary and multiculturalism
The Black Film Collective. The concept of “Third Cinema”, and its radical possibilities.

Ethnography and surrealism
Creativity in documentary, reflexivity and meaning.

Gender and Documentary
Tracing the contribution of female directors through documentary history and exploring the notion of a "female gaze" in documentary cinema.

The Sensory Turn: tracing the impact of New Queer Cinema in Documentary Practice
Tracing the emergence of a queer aesthetic in documentary cinema since the 1980s and how it fractured extant media standards for presenting truth and evidence.

Assessment Breakdown
Continuous Assessment	100%	Examination Weight	0%

Type	Description	% of total	Assessment Date
Course Work Breakdown
Assignment	One essay (3,500-4,000 words) chosen from a set of 5-6 titles	100%

Reassessment Requirement Type
Resit arrangements are explained by the following categories: Resit category 1: A resit is available for both* components of the module. Resit category 2: No resit is available for a 100% continuous assessment module. Resit category 3: No resit is available for the continuous assessment component where there is a continuous assessment and examination element.
* ‘Both’ is used in the context of the module having a Continuous Assessment/Examination split; where the module is 100% continuous assessment, there will also be a resit of the assessment
This module is category 1

Indicative Reading List

Bill Nichols: 2017, Introduction to Documentary, Third Edition, 3rd, Indiana University Press, 9780253026859
Betsy A. McLane: 2022, A New History of Documentary Film, 3rd, Bloomsbury Academic, 1501385151
Lisa French: 2021, The Female Gaze in Documentary Film An International Perspective, Palgrave McMillan, 978-3-030-680
Michael Rabiger,Courtney Hermann: 2020, Directing the Documentary, 7th, Routledge, 0367235579
Bill Nichols: 1991, Representing reality, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 0253340608
Erik Barnouw: 1983, Documentary, A History of Non-Fiction Film, Oxford University Press, New York, 0195078985
edited by Michael Renov: 1993, Theorizing documentary, Routledge, New York, 0415903815
Kevin Macdonald, Mark Cousin: 0, Imagining Reality, 0571177239
Harvey O'Brien: 2004, The real Ireland, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 0719069076
William Guynn: 1990, A cinema of nonfiction, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Rutherford, 0838633404
Paul Swann: 0, The British documentary film movement, 1926-1946, Introduction, Manchester University Press, 0521334799
edited with an introduction by Annette Michelson; translated by Kevin O'Brien: 1984, Kino-eye: The writing of Dziga Vertov, Introduction, Pluto Press, 0520047605
Richard M. Barsam: 1992, Nonfiction film, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 0253311241
edited by Alan Rosenthal: 1988, New challenges for documentary, University of California Press, 0520057252
William Rothman: 1997, Documentary film classics, University of Cambridge Press, 0521456819
Coner, John: 1996, The art of record: a critical introduction to documentary, Manchester University Press,
Vlada, P. ed. by Waugh, T.: 1984, Show us life - towards a history of asthetics of the committed documentary, Esther Shub: Film as a Historical Discourse, The Scarecrown Press,
edited and translated by Richard Taylor; co-edited with an introduction by Ian Christie: 1988, The Film factory, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 0710096283
Jay Leyda: 1983, Kino, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 0691003467
Vlada Petrić: 1987, Constructivism in film, (Vertov / Eisenstein controversy) 'The man with the movie camera, a cinematic analysis', Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 0521443873
Edited by Luda and Jean Schnitzer and Marcel Martin. Translated and with additional material by David Robinson: 1973, Cinema in revolution, Dziga Vertov Chapter 5, Secker and Warburg, 0809013703

Other Resources

59481, DVD, Robert Flaherty, 1922, Nanoon of the North, 59482, DVD, Dziga Vertov, 1929, Man With A Movie Camera, 59483, DVD, Leni Riefenstahl, 1934, Triumph of the Will, 59484, DVD, Basil Wright, 1936, Night Mail, 59485, DVD, Claude Lanzmann, 1985, Shoah, 59486, DVD, Alain Resnais, 1956, Night and Fog, 59487, DVD, Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, 1961, Chronicle of A Summer, 59488, DVD, Albert Maysles and David Maysles, 1969, Salesman, 59489, DVD, Errol Morris, 1988, The Thin Blue Line, 59490, DVD, Michael Moore, 1989, Roger and Me, 59491, DVD, Octavio Getino and Fernando E. Solanas, 1968, The Hour of the Furnaces, 59492, DVD, Barbara Kopple, 1976, Harlan County USA, 59493, DVD, Agnes Varda, 2000, The Gleaners and I, 59494, DVD, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 1995, The Celluloid Closet,