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FMST 333: The Documentary Impulse

Discussions: Tue/ Thurs, 2.45PM-4PM, Little 114
Screening: Wed, 7-10PM, Little 114

Instructor: Ani Maitra
Email: amaitra@colgate.edu
Office Hours (by appointment): Wed/ Fri, 11AM-12.30PM, Little 310C

Course Description:
What is documentary? Is it a genre, a sensibility, a film practice, an ethical
orientation, or a mode of knowledge production? Alongside studying the history
and theory of documentary film and analyzing a wide variety of films, this course
explores the driving force behind the documentary impulse, that is, the impulse
of representing reality. We will approach the ideological investments of the
documentary impulse from three related angles:

(1) We will examine a variety of concepts and practices alongside which the
notion of documentary has evolved in resonance and/ or antagonism, such as
mimesis, spectacle, authenticity, reality, indexicality, art, fiction, and
performance.

(2) We will pay close attention to how different media forms (such as
photography, television, and new media) and exhibition contexts (the art gallery,
the cinema, the smartphone) have shaped the documentary desire for an
encounter with the real.

(3) Finally, we will study the historical emergence of and major debates in
documentary film in conjunction with discussions from other disciplines like
philosophy, art history, anthropology, and media studies.

Course Readings:
The only textbook that you have to purchase for this class is Representing
Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991) by Bill Nichols. The book should be available at the
Colgate University Bookstore.
All other readings for this class are available as PDFs on the Moodle website
for this class (FMST333). You should be able to access the website if you are
registered for this class. Please check the website before/ after each class for
updates.
Readings assigned for any given day must be completed before we meet for
discussion.
You are welcome to bring laptops/ iPads to class if you dont want to print the
readings. However, note that you will be called upon to offer comments on
specific texts and passages. So I encourage you to take notes while you are
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prepping for class and bringing your notes to our discussions. Please dont
use your mobile phone as a reading device in class.

Screenings:
Weekly screenings for this class (Wednesday, 7-10PM, Little 114) are
mandatory.
You will be expected to write weekly posts on the films and readings. So
please take notes during screenings.
All films will be on reserve at the library. You can watch the film(s) in the
library if you have missed a screening. I also strongly encourage you to
review the film(s) that you choose to write about in your response papers.

Course Requirements:
In order to receive a passing grade in this class, you will have to meet the
following requirements. No exceptions will be made:

1. Attendance and Participation (10% of final grade): I will expect active
attendance at all screenings and seminars: This means that you will have
watched the film(s) and read the texts at least once before class. Also, please
remember to bring your texts, reading notes, and blog posts to class. You are
expected to refer to your notes to raise questions and participate in
discussion in class.

Please note that I will not be able give you a passing grade for the class if you
have more than three unexcused absences (including screenings). You will
not receive a passing grade for this class if you miss more than four classes
(including screenings).

If you have medical and/or personal reasons for missing more than four
classes and/or not being able to complete assignments, please get in touch
with your academic adviser and administrative adviser. It is imperative that
you officially let your advisers know your reasons for failing to meet the
course requirements while or even before notifying me. I will not be able to
make a special case unless I hear from your adviser 2-3 days before an
assignment is due and at least 7 days before final grades are due.

2. Weekly Blog Posts (10% of final grade): This class will be divided into
groups A and B. Group A will post for the Tue discussion (by 10 AM on Tue)
and group B will post for the Thurs discussion (by 10 AM on Thurs). Blog
posts are meant to be short and informal and should not be fully formed
arguments. More on blog posts in class. On your non-posting day, you should
read your classmates posts and come prepared to respond to them during
our discussion.

3. 2 Analytic Papers (20% and 30% of the final grade respectively): Over the
course of the semester, you must complete two analytic papers. For each
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essay, you will have the option of choosing from a set of prompts focusing on
materials from a particular unit. The first paper will be 3-4 pages and the
second 7-8 pages. Assessment rubrics will be handed out with each
assignment. Please see the syllabus for specific deadlines. Late papers will
be graded down.

4. Mid-term Exam (10% of final grade): Your midterm exam will be held in
class on Thurs 10/16. The exam will be a combination of factual and
conceptual questions. Some questions may be based on particular film clips
shown during the exam. More instructions/ model questions to follow.

5. Final Exam (20% of final grade): Your final exam will be held on Thurs
12/18 (3-5PM). Like the mid-term, it will be a combination of factual and
conceptual questions from topics covered over the entire semester.

Grade Distribution and Final Grade Calculation:

Attendance and participation: 10%
Weekly blog posts: 10%
2 Response papers: 50% (20%+30%)
Mid-term exam: 10%
Final exam: 20%

Final grades for this class will be calculated using the following 100-point scale:
A denotes the grade 90 100 (Excellent)
B denotes the grade 80 89 (Good)
C denotes the grade 70 79 (Satisfactory)
D denotes the grade 60 69 (Poor)
F denotes the grade below 60 (Failure)

Academic Resources For You:
As your instructor, I am aware that a lot of this material will be new to you. Please
note that its ok to have moments of confusion and uncertainty! But those are
also moments when you should turn to resources on campus starting with

Me, your instructor Please note my office hours above. I take my office hours
as an opportunity to get to know your areas of interest in the course, ideas for
your assignments, and/ or questions on material covered in class. I therefore
expect you to come in as often as you want but with an appointment. I encourage
you to come in every week if necessary. I will not be able to respond to queries
about course materials over email.

The Writing and Speaking Center in 208 Lathrop, committed to helping all
Colgate students succeed as clear, effective communicators. Peer writing
consultants can help you refine your writing by reviewing a paper's focus,
development, organization, clarity, grammar, source integration, or other aspects.
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Peer speaking consultants can help you prepare or organize the content of an
oral presentation; they can also help you improve your delivery to an audience.
For more information or to make an appointment,
visit http://www.colgate.edu/writingcenter or call (315) 228-6085.

The Library You will be working with the Digital Media Learning Center for your
final project. But you should also get to know the Film and Media Studies
librarian Debbie Krahmer (dkrahmer@colgate.edu). Debbie is a great resource
and can guide you to books, articles, and visual media relevant to our class. I
also encourage you to explore the research tools available through the library
website: http://exlibris.colgate.edu/help/guides/getting-started.html.

You also need to know about
Plagiarism:
Plagiarism is the unacknowledged use of someone elses work as ones own in
all forms of academic endeavor (such as essays, theses, examinations, research
data, creative projects, etc.), intentional or unintentional. Plagiarized material
may be derived from a variety of sources, such as books, journals, internet
postings, student or faculty papers, etc. This includes the purchase or
outsourcing of written assignments for a course. A detailed definition of and the
University policy on plagiarism can be found in the Colgate University Academic
Honor Code available here: http://www.colgate.edu/offices-and-
services/deanofthecollege/academichonorcode.

Special Needs and Accommodations:
Colgate is committed to offering services that are responsive to the individual
talents and needs of students who have disabilities. Any student requesting
accommodations must first contact Lynn Waldman, director of Academic Support
and Disability Services. The instructor and the student will together work out the
best possible accommodations. Visit http://www.colgate.edu/centers-and-
institutes/center-for-learning-teaching-and-research/academic-support-and-
disability-services/how-to-make-your-needs-known and call (315) 228-7375 to
make an appointment with Lynn Waldman.

Discussion Etiquette:
The classroom must be a safe space for all participants. While one of the primary
goals of the course is to foster critical thinking, please be respectful of others
identities and faiths. Your participation is key to a productive discussion sessions
and in-class activities. However, please try to offer comments, insights, and
questions that do not shut the discussion down but propel it forward and
encourage others to join in.

Harassment Prevention and Resources for Help:
Colgate University is committed to the goals of fairness and equity in all aspects
of the educational enterprise, and to a learning and living environment where all
members of the community feel safe and respected. For definitions of and
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Colgates policies on discriminatory and bias-related harassment, sexual
harassment, and sexual misconduct, please visit: http://www.colgate.edu/offices-
and-
services/deanofthecollege/biassexualmisconductresources/eonondiscriminationp
olicy. The same page will also give you information about reporting harassment,
confidentiality, and remedial action.

SYLLABUS

Week Zero: Overview

Thurs 08/28

Preliminary meeting and overview
Week One: What is Documentary?
Fri 8/29 Readings:
Plato, Selection from Book 7 of The Republic, trans. Tom Griffith, 220-
226.

Bill Nichols, The Domain of Documentary from Representing Reality:
Issues and Concepts in Documentary, 3-31.

Week Two: Desiring the Real
Tue 09/02 Readings:
Dai Vaughan, Let There Be Lumire, in For Documentary, 1-8.

Elizabeth Cowie, The Spectacle of Actuality, in Collecting Visible
Evidence, 19-45.

Also watch the following shorts before class (see YouTube links included
after PDFs):
"Demolition of a Wall,"
"Arrival of a Train,"
"Electrocuting an Elephant"
Wed 09/03 Screening:
Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929, 68 min)
Thurs 09/04 Readings:
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Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov, ed. Annette
Michelson, trans. Kevin O Brien, 6-9; 14-21; 35-38; 40-42; 85-92.

[Recommended: David Bordwell, The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and
Film, Cinema Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Spring 1972): 9-17.]
Week Three: Ethnographic Authenticity
Tue 09/09 Readings:
Jean Rouch, "Camera and Man" from Cin-Ethnography, ed. and trans.
Steven Feld, 29-46.

Lucien Castaing-Taylor, "Iconophobia: How Anthropology Lost It at the
Movies," Transition No. 69 (1996): 64-88.

Bill Nichols, The Ethnographers Tale from Blurred Boundaries, 63-91.

Wed 09/10 Screening:
Nanook of the North (dir. Robert Flaherty, 1922, 79 min)
The Couple in the Cage: A Gautinaui Odyssey (dir. Paula Heredia and Coco
Fusco, 1993, 30 min)
Thurs 09/11 Readings:
Fatimah Tobing Rony, "Taxidermy and Romantic Ethnography: Robert
Flaherty's Nanook of the North," from The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and
Ethnographic Spectacle, 99-126.

Bill Nichols, "The Reflexive Mode" from Representing Reality, 56-75.

[Recommended: Rey Chow, Keeping them in their Place: Coercive
Mimeticism and Cross-Ethnic Representation, from The Protestant Ethnic
and the Spirit of Capitalism, 95-115.]
Week Four: Exposition and Authorial Voice
Assignment #1 and instructions posted
Tue 09/16 Readings:
Bill Nichols, The Expository Mode, from Representing Reality, 34-38.

Bill Nichols, "Telling Stories with Evidence and Arguments,"
from Representing Reality, 107-134.

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Jane L. Chapman, "Authorial Voice: Editorial and Message," from Issues
in Contemporary Documentary, 93-113.

Wed 09/17 Screening:
An Inconvenient Truth (dir. David Guggenheim, 2006, 100 min)
Thurs 09/18 Readings:
Thomas Rosteck and Thomas S. Frentz, Myth and Multiple Readings in
Environmental Rhetoric: The Case of An Inconvenient Truth, Quarterly
Journal of Speech 95.1 (February 2009): 1-19.

Felicity Mellor, The Politics of Accuracy in Judging Global Warming
Films, Environmental Communication Vol. 3 No. 2 (July 2009): 134-150.
Week Five: Observation and Identification
Tue 09/23 Readings:
Bill Nichols, "The Observational Mode," from Representing Reality, 58-44.

Brian Winston, Documentary Film as Scientific Inscription, in Theorizing
Documentary ed. Michael Renov, 37-57.

Dai Vaughan, The Space Between Shots, in For Documentary, 9-28.

Wed 09/24 Screening:
Assignment #1 due by 6PM
Soul of the Bone (A Alma do Osso, dir. Cao Guimaraes, 2004, 74 min)
Thurs 09/25 Reading:
Elizabeth Cowie, Documentary Desire: Seeing for Ourselves and
Identifying in Reality from Recording Reality: Desiring the Real, 86-117.
Week Six: Excesses of the Photographic Trace
Tue 09/30 Reading:
Roland Barthes, excerpt from Camera Lucida, 3-60.

Wed 10/01 Screening:
Finding Vivien Maier (dir. John Maloof and Charlie Siskel, 2013, 83 min)
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Thurs 10/02 Readings:
Gregory Currie, Visible Traces: Documentary and the Contents of
Photographs, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57.3 (Summer
1999): 285-297.

Bill Nichols, The Participatory Mode, in Introduction to Documentary,
115-124.
Week Seven: Interview, Testimony, Evidence
Tue 10/07 Readings:
Philip Bell and Theo van Leeuwen, A Short History of the Modern Media
Interview in The Media Interview: Confession, Contest, Conversation, ed.
Philip Bell and Theo van Leeuwen, 28-59.
Leger Grindon, "Q & A: Poetics of the Documentary Film Interview," The
Velvet Light Trap, Number 60 (Fall 2007): 4-12.

Shawn Rosenheim, Interrotroning History: Errol Morris and the
Documentary of the Future, in The Persistence of History: Cinema,
Television, and the Modern Event, ed. Vivian Sobchack, 219-234.
Wed 10/08 Screening:
Standard Operating Procedure (dir. Errol Morris, 2008, 115 min)
Thurs 10/09 Readings:
Linda Williams, Cluster fuck: The Forcible Frame in Errol
Morriss Standard Operating Procedure, Jump Cut: A Review of
Contemporary Media No. 52, (Summer 2010).

Judith Butler, Torture and the Ethics of Photography,
in Documentary, ed. Julian Stallabrass, 135-144.

Week Eight: Recap
Tue 10/14 No Class: Mid-term Recess
Wed 10/15 No Screening
Thurs 10/16 Mid-term Exam
Week Nine: (Re-)Enacting the Traumatic and the Ineffable
Tue 10/21 Readings:
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Vivian Sobchack, Inscribing Ethical Space: Ten Propositions on Death,
Representation, and Documentary, in Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and
Moving Image Culture, 226-257.

Dierdre Boyle, Trauma, Memory, Documentary: Re-enactment in Two
Films by Rithy Panh (Cambodia) and Garin Nugroho (Indonesia), in
Documentary Testimonies, 155-172.

[Recommended: Bill Nichols, Documentary Reenactment and the
Fantasmatic Subject, Critical Inquiry 35.1 (Autumn 2008): 72-89.]
Wed 10/22 Screening:
The Act of Killing (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012, 115 min)
Thurs 10/23 Readings:
Janet Walker, Referred Pain: The Act of Killing and the Production of a
Crime Scene, Film Quarterly 67.2 (Winter 2013): 14-20.

Irene Lusztig, The Fever Dream of Documentary: A Conversation with
Joshua Oppenheimer, Film Quarterly 67.2 (Winter 2013): 50-56.

Jill Godmilow, Killing the Documentary,Indiewire (March 05, 2014).
Week Ten: The Performance of Reality (TV)
Assignment #2 and instructions posted
Please note the change in schedule this week: Discussion on Tue and Wed.
No class on Thurs.
Tue 10/28 Readings:
Bill Nichols, At the Limits of Reality (TV), from Blurred Boundaries, 43-
62.

Margaret Morse, "The Television News Personality and Credibility:
Reflections on the News in Transition," in Studies in Entertainment: Critical
Approaches to Mass Culture, ed. Tania Modleski, 55-79.

John Corner, Performing the Real, in Reality TV: Remaking TV Culture,
44-64.

Wed 10/29 Screening and Readings:
Trouble the Water (dir. Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, 2008, 93 min)
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Hito Steyerl, Documentary Uncertainty, The Long Distance Runner 72
(2007): 1-8.

Janet Walker, Rights and Return: Perils and Fantasies of Situated
Testimony After Katrina, in Documentary Testimonies: Global Archives of
Suffering, ed. Bhaskar Sarkar and Janet Walker, 83-114.

Thurs 10/30: No class!
Week Eleven: Sergei Loznitsa at Colgate
Tue 11/04 Readings: TBA
Wed 11/05: Loznitsa Event at the Golden Auditorium
Thurs 11/06: Loznitsa in class (Readings TBA)
Fri 11/07 Screening: Maidan (dir. Sergei Loznitsa, 2014, 130 min)
Final paper proposal due if you are choosing your topic
Week Twelve: Documentary/ Art
Tue 11/11: In-class screening of video installations--TBA
Wed 11/12: No Screening
Thurs 11/13 Readings:
Bill Nichols, The Poetic Mode and The Performative Mode,
in Introduction to Documentary, 102-105; 130-138.

Maria Lind and Hito Steyerl, Introduction: Reconsidering the
Documentary and Contemporary Art, in The Greenroom: Reconsidering
the Documentary and Contemporary Art, CCS Bard, 8-25.

Elizabeth Cowie, On Documentary Sounds and Images in the
Gallery, Screen 50.1 (2009): 124-134.
Week Thirteen: Fictive Facts
Tue 11/18 Readings:
Dai Vaughan, What Do We Mean by What? and From Today: Cinema
is Dead from For Documentary, 84-89, 181-192.

Alisa Lebow, Faking What? Mockery of Documentary, in F is for Phony:
Fake Documentary and Truths Undoing, 223-237.
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Philip Rosen, Document and Documentary: On the Persistence of
Historical Concepts, from Change Mummified, 225-264.

Wed 11/19 Screening:
Dong (dir. Jia Zhang-ke, 2006, 66 min)
Still Life (dir. Jia Zhang-ke , 2006, 108 min)
Thurs 11/20 Readings:
Barbara Jenni, Fusion Cinema: The Relationship between Jia Zhangkes
films Dong and Still Life, in dekalog 4: On East Asian Filmmakers, 45-61.

Fredric Jameson, excerpt from The Signatures of the Visible: TBA

Final paper drafts due by 6PM
Week Fourteen: Thanksgiving Break!
No class on Tue 11/26, Wed 11/27, and Thurs 11/28
Week Fifteen: Sensory Encounters
Tue 12/02 Readings:
Irina Leimbacher, The World Made Flesh, Film Comment (March/ April
2014).

Laura U. Marks, The Memory of Touch, from The Skin of the Film, 127-
193.

Wed 12/03 Screening:
Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (dir. Maya Deren, 1985, 55 min)
Thurs 12/04 Reading:
Catherine Russell, Ecstatic Ethnography: Maya Deren and the Filming of
Possession, in Rites of Realism: Essays on Corporeal Cinema, ed. Ivone
Margulies, 270-293.

Friday 12/05 Screening
Leviathan (dir. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Vrna Paravel, 2012, 87 min)
Week Sixteen: Review and Finals
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Tue 12/09 Review/ makeup class
Wed 12/10 No screening
Final papers due by 6PM
Thurs 12/11 Final class + review
Final Exam on Thurs 12/18 (3-5PM)