SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION

CMNS 386-4

(SPECIAL TOPICS)
PROBLEMS OF DOCUMENTARY

Prerequisites:

60 credits and permission of instructor.

Course Description:

Documentary film and television narratives have become a prevalent feature of our media environment. Yet what can be called a documentary has not always been so obvious. Documentary film has a long and fascinating history steeped in philosophical reflection about the implications of filmic representation that goes back over a century to the beginnings of moving pictures. In this course, we will focus on the communicative “problems” of documentary, especially its contentious claims to represent reality, by examining a set of “limit texts” that work with and against notions of objectivity, subjectivity, knowledge, truth and performance. We will also draw upon the wealth of critical writing produced in the past decade to learn to decipher the textual strategies that create documentary films’ all-important “reality effect.” By the end of the course, students will be able to identify the formative strands in documentary history and theory as they continue to operate in contemporary cultural productions.

Required reading:

Barnouw, Eric. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film (second, revised edition). New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Winston, Brian. Claiming the Real: The Documentary Film Revisited. London: BFI, 1995.
Course readings package

Assignments:

Weekly journal responses to films and readings 30%
Take-home Mid-term 25%
Term paper 35%
Tutorial participation 10%

The School expects that the grades awarded in this course will bear some reasonable relation to established university-wide practices with respect to both levels and distribution of grades. In addition, the School will follow Policy T10.02 with respect to “Intellectual Honesty” and “Academic Discipline” (see the current Calendar, General Regulations section).