FAV222 Chapters from the history of world documentary film

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2015
Extent and Intensity
2/0. 4 credit(s). Type of Completion: k (colloquium).
Teacher(s)
PhDr., BcA. Andrea Slováková (lecturer), prof. PhDr. Jiří Voráč, Ph.D. (deputy)
Mgr. Luděk Havel, Ph.D. (assistant)
Guaranteed by
prof. PhDr. Jiří Voráč, Ph.D.
Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Supplier department: Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Timetable
Thu 2. 4. 12:30–15:45 C34, Thu 9. 4. 12:30–15:45 C34, Thu 16. 4. 12:30–15:45 C34, Thu 23. 4. 12:30–15:45 C34, Thu 30. 4. 12:30–15:45 C34, Thu 7. 5. 12:30–15:45 C34, Thu 14. 5. 12:30–15:45 C34
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
there are 39 fields of study the course is directly associated with, display
Course objectives
Lectures will give an overview of an early, between the Wars, dutiny and after the World War II documentary landscape in 12 lectures, according to stylistic and creative approaches in world documentary film. Lecture will explore roots of approaches that constituted the kind of cinema called documentary from 1930s on, its development, genres, limits of documentary cinema, its hybrid forms and different approaches to reality.
It will offer an overview of tendencies and authors of documentary cinema, settled in the location and time. Moreover, we will talk about stylistic procedures, such as commentary, intertitles, music, camera work, editing, about the genre rules, technology of shooting and also institutional background, financial sources and purposes of documentary film.
Lectures will include topics such as idealisation in ethnographic film, social engagement, directing, advertisement, propaganda, science and film, doubts about truthfulness, compilation and found footage film, private diary, film poem, directed reality.
Lectures will be accompanied with excerpts from the films. Lecture is aimed not only to students of Film Studies but also others with interest in audiovisual culture. At the end of the course student will have the basic orientation in the world documentary cinema of the 20th century and in its main development lines.
Syllabus
  • I.+II. Human and landscape in the focus
  • Ethnographic and poetic documentary / recordings of expeditions / testimony vs. idealisation / the protagonists included in the process of shooting / film and science: popular science documentary / science and experiments with film visuality / anthropological exploration / European films about Africa and accusation of colonialism
  • Robert Flaherty, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, Jacque-Yves Cousteau, Jean Painlevé, Vladimir Kobrin, Georges Rouquier, Hans Hass, Bert Haanstra, Jean Rouch, Nicolas Echevarría, Henri Storck, Jørgen Leth
  • III.+IV. From reporting to avant-garde, manipulation with footage
  • Ideological background of documentary / Kino-pravda, Kino-nedielia, manifest of the Kinooks / relation of film and truth / montage / city symphonies / sources of footage and archiving / work with found footage and compilation / work in archives / political found footage films in North America / Canadian experimental documentaries
  • Dziga Vertov, Esfir Shub, Lev Kuleshov, Viktor Turin, Joris Ivens, René Clair, Walter Ruttmann, Artavazd Peleshjan, Yervant Gianikian, Angela Ricci Lucchi, Bruce Conner, Arthur Lipsett, Mathias Müller, Mike Hoolboom, Peter Forgács
  • V.-VI. Documentary and society – mutual responsibility and utilization
  • Social documentary / British documentary school / sound and music in documentary / National Film Board of Canada / colonial films / engaged films – topics and genres / Frontier Film / social, political and ecological topics
  • John Grierson, Alberto Cavalcanti, Basil Wright, Harry Watt, Robert Flaherty, Paul Strand, Pare Lorentz, Herz Frank, Jury Podnieks, Alexandr Sokurov, Fernando Solanas, Santiago Álvarez, Zelimir Zilnik
  • VII.+VIII. New technical development and relation to testimony and truthfulness
  • Cinéma vérité / relation to Vertov / doubts about truthfulness / National Film Board / contact sound / documentary and institutions / camera for those being shooted / Candid Eye / sociological film in Britain / Free Cinema / direct cinema
  • Michel Brault, Pierre Perrault, Richard Leacock, Robert Drew, D. A. Pennebaker, Albert a David Mayslesovi, Frederick Wiseman, Lionel Rogosin, Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Karel Reisz, Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson
  • IX.+X. persuading and persuasion and documentary film in relation to World War II
  • Persuasing strategies / documentary footage in advertisements / commissioned films / visual experiments in commissioned films / propaganda / documentary and WW II – its various roles
  • Herbert Kline, Alexander Hackenschmied, Miro Bernat, Bert Haanstra, Humphrey Jennings, Frank Capra, Leni Riefenstahl
  • XI.+XII. Private and diary film, essay, documentary and fiction
  • Intimate and non-narrative documentary: diary / spontaneous film / diary with political content / film poems / lyrical documentary / different stages of narration, non-narrative film / directed reality / on the border of documentary and fiction / docufiction and docudrama / film essay
  • Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnes Varda, Harun Farocki, Werner Herzog, Leslie Woodhead, Paul Greengrass, Peter Watkins, Jonas Mekas, Walerian Borowczyk, Zoltán Huszárik, Sergej Loznitsa, Naomi Kawase, Chantal Akerman
Literature
    required literature
  • Nichols, Bill. Úvod do dokumentárního filmu. Praha: Nakladatelství AMU a JSAF, 2010. 316 s. ISBN 978-80-7331-181-0
  • GAUTHIER, Guy. Dokumentární film, jiná kinematografie. Translated by Ladislav Šerý. 1. vyd. V Praze: Akademie múzických umění, 2004, 507 s. ISBN 8073310236. info
    recommended literature
  • Theorizing documentary. Edited by Michael Renov. New York: Routledge, 1993. ix, 261 s. ISBN 0-415-90382-3.
  • DO I. – VI. sborník textů o dokumentu (vybrané texty doporučené na jednotlivých přednáškách). Jihlava: JSAF, 2003 – 2008.
  • Wees, William: Doména montáže: kompilácia, koláž, prispôsobenie. Kino Ikon, 9, č. 1 (2005), s. 159-170.
  • Plantinga, Carl: Hlas a autorita. Kino-Ikon, 2007, č. 2 (slovensky).
  • Leacock, Richard: Obrana flahertyovských tradícií. Kino Ikon, 5, č. 1 (2001), s. 136-143.
  • Youdelman, Jeffrey: Narration, Invention and History: a documentary dilemma. Cineaste, 12, č. 2 (1982), s. 8-15.
  • Schneiderová, Alexandra: Performance v rodinném filmu. Iluminace, 16, č. 3 (2004), s. 69-84.
  • PLANTINGA, Carl R. Rhetoric and representation in nonfiction film. 1st pub. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, x, 255. ISBN 0521573262. info
  • NICHOLS, Bill. Representing reality :issues and concepts in documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991, xx, 313 s. ISBN 0-253-20681-2. info
Teaching methods
Lectures and screenings.
Schedule: Apr. 2, 9, 16, 23 and 30, May 7 and 14, 12:30-15:45
Assessment methods
Colloquium: written analysis and oral exam.
Language of instruction
Czech
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Study Materials
Information on the per-term frequency of the course: Jednou za tři roky. / Once in three years.
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2012, Spring 2018.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Spring 2015, recent)
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