Pioneer film-maker John Grierson first coined the term documentary in 1926. John Grierson first coined the term documentary in 1926. He was describing Robert Flaherty's film Moana, about life in the South Seas and he defined documentary as the creative treatment of actuality. How creative can the treatment be in a documentary film? This question about authenticity is no less important today than it was then. With recent hybrid genres such as mockumentaries, and with the fact that the nature of documentary films has changed in the past 20 years from the cinema verité tradition, the debate about the style of documentary films has become intensified, and the genre has recently become increasingly successful in theatrical release.
The range of lectures in the course is wide with international and national films and directors, just as new documentary films are represented alongside historical ones. The TV medium is not neglected as two lectures are about docu-soaps and the tradition of critical Danish television documentaries.
This media course is the result of cooperation between the Danish Department and the English Department of the University of Aalborg and an overseas partner university. Dr. Sharon R. Sherman Director, Folklore Program and Professor, English Department University of Oregon is our guest lecturer in the Documentary film course.
The teaching language is English.
Fridays 12.15-14.00 in room 3.015 Kroghstræde 1. (These dates are reserved: 17.2. - 24.2. - 3.3. - 10.3. - 17.3. - 24.3. - 7.4. )
Lecture 1 Sharon R. Sherman - NB this one lecture is a Monday, Feb. 13., 12.15-14.00. Room 3.007, Kroghstræde 1.
From Textuality to Performance Studies: Folklore Studies and the Digital Age.
Folklore studies begin during a period of romantic-nationalism and 19th century collectanea. Because of fieldwork tools and the text as they correlated with their literary background, scholars focused on form and content, even though they were actually interested in exploring issues about culture. As fieldwork tools changed from note taking to tape recording to film and video, theories were also changing to answer new questions about folklore as interaction, communicative events, performance, and human behavior. Borrowing on documentary and ethnodocumentary predecessors, some folklorists recognized that film and video might become, for many, the most complete means of documenting folklore, and thus the idea of “film and folklore,” as a topic and approach, was born.
Readings
Sharon R. Sherman, Documenting Ourselves Film, Video and Culture, The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998 (esp. pp. 257-275, pp. 221-222, pp. 61-70)
See http://www.folkstreams.net/
Lecture 2 Sharon R. Sherman Friday, 17.2.
Film for Folklore: The Documentary, the Ethnodocumentary, and the Folkloristic Film
A history of the development of documentary film and its use by anthropologists and folklorists demonstrates that the notion of self and other has slowly shifted in ethnography. Initially developed to study movement, the motion picture camera eventually began to study social action and then to look at disparate peoples in cultures unlike those of the filmmakers. The folkloristic film movement began to challenge these categories and turn the camera on people in our own backyards.
Readings
Sharon R. Sherman, Documenting Ourselves Film, Video and Culture, The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington 1998 (esp. pp. 1-59)
See http://www.folkstreams.net/
Lecture 3 Jørgen
Riber Christensen 24. 2.
Listen to Britain
Humphrey
Jennings: Documentary film, mass observation and surrealism.
Humphrey Jennings’ short documentary Listen to Britain (1942) is one of the classics within the genre, and its direct aim was propaganda. Yet Humphrey Jennings (1907-1950) has also been criticized for being too poetic a filmmaker. His films combine a montage-form of a poetic and associative surrealist nature with social observations. Jennings was interested in defining and describing Englishness. This interest is manifest in Listen to Britain and in his involvement in the Mass-Observation movement, which aimed at recording everyday life in Britain. The sociological method of Mass-Observation was transformed into art in Listen to Britain.
Readings
Kevin Jackson, ed., The Humphrey Jennings Reader, Carcanet, Manchester 2004, pp. 33-35, 255-260
http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/J/jennings/
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/453623/
Lecture 4 Bent
Sørensen 3.3. Room 4.130, KS 3
Teena Brandon - Brandon Teena: Films and texts about a transsexual.
In the 1999 film "Boys Don’t Cry" and several other texts portraying the
violent death of Brandon Teena in rural Nebraska, 1993, the issues of
gender-negotiation find their paradigm examples. Brandon, the
transgendered persona, is depicted as a victim in Kimberley Pierce’s
fictionalised version (starring Hilary Swank) of the case - yet a victim
who for a brief moment finds joy and validation through paradoxically
sharing a masculine identity with his/her later murderers, and later a
lesbian identity with her female lover. These paradoxes make the film
rife with tragic potential: Issues of betrayal, ideals of behaviour,
contrasted with extreme violence and dumbness of sensibility all mingle
in a heady brew that works straight on the viewers’ emotions. Another
account, the true-crime book "All (S)he Wanted" by Aphrodite Jones,
attempts a more factual narrative, yet also dramatizes the events and
takes liberties with point-of-view that disturb our expected non-fiction
contract with the text. Of most interest in this context is Susan Muska
and Gréta Olafsdóttir's documentary about the murder case and the
back-story: "The Brandon Teena Story", which features interviews with
people who knew Brandon, recorded interrogation and trial transcripts,
and photographs and file film footage, and therefore strongly appeals to
us to apply a factual reading protocol. The lecture examines the sliding
scale of factuality and fictionality in these three texts.
Readings
Aphrodite Jones: All S/He Wanted. Pocket Books/Simon & Schuster, New York etc., (1996)
Lecture 5 Torben
Poulsen 10.3.
Mock-Documentaries – subverting the representation of reality
Mock documentaries have over the last couple of decades become increasingly popular, and can be seen both as ironic commentary to the current interplay between fiction and reality based programming, and as a subversion of documentary films – especially with regards to documentary films’ claim to objectivity and truth. This lecture will, largely by showing examples and introducing some theoretical musings on the mock documentary form, give a general introduction to the genre.
Readings
Hight & Roscoe, Faking It, Manchester Uni Press (2001) - pp. 64-75.
PowerPoint from lecture is here.
Lecture 6 Gunhild Agger 17.3.
The Image of Denmark
The task of representing the nation in documentaries has been object to several attempts accompanied by both criticism and approval. Consequently, Theodor Christensen, one of the pioneering documentary film makers in Denmark, regarded the genre 'Danmarksfilm' as a 'problem' (1948). It is difficult to combine the documentary genre with the traditional, official demand for a positive image of a nation. Nevertheless, Theodor Christensen praised Poul Henningsen's film Denmark (1935) as a true documentary. The lecture will discuss questions of genre and representation in 'Danmarksfilm'. Clips from Poul Henningsen's Denmark, Klaus Rifbjerg's Danske billeder (1970) and Peter Klitgaard’s I Danmark er jeg født (2005) will be screened.
Readings
Karel Capek: "A Danish Idyll in a Tormented World 1936". From Travels in the North Exemplified by the Author's Own Drawings. London: Allen & Unwin. 1939. Here reproduced from Kristian Hvidt: You on Us. Copenhagen: The Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 2002.
Michael Billig: “Introduction”. In Banal Nationalism. London: Sage, 1995 pp. 1-9.
Lecture notes are here.
Lecture 7 Brian Lorentsen This lecture is moved to 7/4 10.30 - 14.00 where both lectures 7 and 8 will be held.
Docu-Soaps
The term docu-soap has become extremely popular in TV-production both in British broadcasting as well as in a Danish context. This lecture will focus on a discussion of the genre and its significance for documentary television and the discussion will centre on public service values. The public service channels BBC and DR are in a situation where they have to deal with their positions in a competitive media landscape – and that means for example that programmes need to be popular concerning ratings, which is a historical change that has clear implications on defining public service broadcasting.
Readings
Kilborn, Richard: “The changing factual landscape” pp. 24-50”, in Staging the real. Factual TV programming in the age of Big Brother, Manchester University Press, 2003.
Kilborn, Richard: ”The docu-soap: A critical assessment” pp. 111-119, in John Izod and Richard Kilborn with Matthew Hibbard (eds.), From Grierson to the Docu-Soap: Breaking the Boundaries, University of Luton Press, 2000.
Lecture 8 Brian Lorentsen This lecture is moved to 7/4 10.30 - 14.00 where both lectures 7 and 8 will be held.
Danish TV Documentaries - a historical perspective
In Danish television, there has been a very strong tradition of television documentaries. Presenters like Poul Martinsen, Lars Engels, Erik Stephensen, Jørgen Flindt Pedersen and Stig Andersen among others have historically stood for a quality label. We will discuss how especially the critical television documentary has developed and how its position is in 2006 where terms like ‘reality television’ and the need for ‘ordinary people’ very often determine which stories are produced. We will consider spectacular examples of programmes shown in Danish television during the past 25 years including the new serial ‘Krigerne’ (The Warriors) made by Poul Martinsen, which has been screened on DR1 January 2006.
Readings
Corner, John: “Documentary Values” pp. 139-158, in Anne Jerslev (ed.), Realism and ‘Reality’ in Film and Media, Northern Lights. Film and Media Studies Yearbook 2002, Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002
General Literature
Aitken, Ian, ed., The Documentary Film Movement, An Anthology, Edinburgh University Press, 1998
Corner, John: The art of record. A critical introduction to documentary. Manchester: Manchester University Press 1996.
Corner, John: Television Form and Public Address. London: Edward Arnold. 1995.
Corner, John: "Documentary values?" In Anne Jerslev (ed.): Realism and 'Reality' in Film and Media. In Northern Lights. Film and Media Studies Yearbook. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. 2002.
Dahl, Rasmus: "Distinctions in Documentary Television." In Agger, Gunhild & Jens F. Jensen (eds.): The Aesthetics of Television. Media And Cultural Studies 2. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press. 2001.
Ellis, John: Seeing Things. London: Tauris. 1999.
Langkjær, Birger: "Reality under Critical Examination". In Torben Grodal et al. (eds.): Realism and 'Reality' in Film and Media. In Northern Lights. Film and Media Studies Yearbook. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. 2002.
Nichols, Bill: Representing Reality. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1991.
Winston, Brian: Lies, Damn Lies and Documentaries. London: BFI. 2000.
Issue no. 229, summer 2002, of the Danish film magazine Kosmorama is devoted to documentary film.
http://www.dfi.dk/tidsskriftetfilm/12/stateof.htm
http://www.dfi.dk/tidsskriftetfilm/32/gainingground.htm
A course compendium will be for sale at Universitetsboghandelen.
International organizer: Janeen S. Joergensen
Mail
to all lecturers here.
The Internet Movie Database