Documentaries are not inherently more truthful than other films.  Yet   it does not follow that documentaries, to be truthful, must repudiate the aspiration of revealing reality.  What particular films reveal (or fail to reveal) about reality, how they achieve (or fail to achieve) those   revelations, and what they acknowledge (or fail to acknowledge) about the     revelations they do achieve, are questions best addressed by close critical   readings which illuminate what separates documentaries from fiction films without denying what they have in common: the medium of film.

--Willaim Rothman


I KNOW THAT SOUNDS HALF-BAKED SO FAR.  
Trust me, it is half-baked.  Just thought of it.       
Will of course discuss the project at length in the near future.       
Due Mon. Dec. 13 at 10:30    30% of final grade

English 309: Fall 2004

  

Instructor: Dr. Dale Rigby

Office: 110 A Cherry Hall

Office Phone: 745-5781

Home Phone: 393-2017

Email: dale.rigby@wku.edu

Office Hours: 12-3 Tuesday and Thursday & by appointment

            

NANOOK AND US

     

     

 

 

 

 

 

“Writing for Documentary” will be structured as an introductory foray into close readings of (mostly American, it turns out) 20th century documentary films.  I don't think 309, which fulfills requirements for both our (newish) film studies minor as well as our writing track, has been offered at WKU for ten years.  So the choice of emphasis and films was challenging.  Should the class more closely parallel the immersion into theory of a traditional film studies course or honor the opportunity to grapple in practice with a creative genre of a traditional writing course?  And how to parse fifteen from fifteen hundred worthies?  Newsreel from art house, Fear Factor from Night and Fog?
        

      After a summer watching scores of genre-bending documentaries, I decided that both tracks would be best served by a survey-like introduction to novel experiments in the documentary tradition.  One piece of common ground here is it that writers need to know what film students know and film students need to know what writers know, and each wants to practice conveying (and exhorting?) to the reading public what they each know we should all know.  

  Is there a better model than the essay by Louis Menand we will begin with, “Nanook and Me”?  Not that I know of.  A close reading of “Nanook and Me” offers enough provocation and paradox to sustain our weekly discussions and your weekly meditations about the genre all semester! He also glosses a number of the films (and “schools”) we will study. 

  If we allow Menand's assertion that “People who make documentaries don't make them because they believe that ‘reasonable people can disagree' or that there are two sides to every question,” we might as well extend the impulse to those of us who have chosen to study this (never more than now?) contested genre. 

        The choice of films is both idiosyncratic (a preference for films that push the envelope of the form in provocative ways) and material (many of the films we will watch are written about in the best and most affordable collection of essays I could find on the genre).  So of course there are gaps and there is bias; or, just as Bernard Tavernier saw a “modern” awareness in the Lumiere short about the offscreen soccer ball, absence is often more revealing of meaning than presence.

       As for tonight's “absent” syllabus.  Let's today discuss the “projected projects” and the “tentative viewing/reading schedule” I handed out.  I hope they give you enough writerly freedom in fill in, as you choose, the gaps between my idiosyncracies and biases and your interests and passions.

    

     Our required texts, available at the DUC bookstore, are:

--Documenting the Documentary, Grant and Sloniowski, eds. (1998)

--My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki (1998)

 [Since I have some room on this syllabus…imagine if Nanook took unto Flaherty in the manner that the “subject” of the last film on our list, “Stranger With a Camera,” took unto his filmmaker?!?! Just a thought…]

 

Projected Projects for English 309

 

Weekly Reflective Reading Responses

      Due at the start of class every Thursday.  Typed.  With a real title.  500 words or so.Whatever form these informal reflections find, they should grapple with issues relevant to that week's featured documentary and critical reading/s.  Meditations.  Close readings.  Crafted contemplations free of deadwood filler.

      We will share these reflections in class and use them as springboards for Thursday discussions.  These mini-essays will get easier--as you get more comfortable with the class--see how much time and effort others put into say what they want to say--acquire a richer critical vocabulary--start wedding your brainstorming to the two projects listed below--get feedback from me and your classmates.    

     I'll return them to you each Thursday when you give me your latest response.  Will respond to your meditations and grade them on a 10-point scale.  At the end of the semester you'll include all 15 of them in your portfolio.  I'll throw out the 3 lowest grades [note—that DOES NOT count any that you failed to do and/or handed in late—those, to be fair to everybody have to count].   40% of final grade

 

* * *

 

WKU Undergraduate Conference on Literature and Culture

      Next Spring will be our 4th annual Undergraduate Conference.  And it promises to be the best yet, because everybody in this class is going to submit a paper/essay for possible inclusion in the conference! (there was about a 50% acceptance rate last year).

      Note that the due date here is way down the road because you will be held to a high standard for these projects.  It'll take time to get our bearings within the cultural and critical conversation about documentary films.  Start keeping on eye open right away for potential angles/foci fresh enough to interest you.

The global guidelines:  5 double-spaced pages.
The local guideline:  will fit into panels on “documentary film.”

Due Date: --first polished draft due Nov. 23--final draft in your portfolio Dec. 13 @ our final “exam.”  %30 of final grade

 

* * *

     

Your Syllabus for English 409

            309 is by necessity an introductory survey.  But imagine the next course in the sequence as an advanced, more specialized focus on Documentary.  And imagine you are asked to create a syllabus for 409.

The only guidelines for the course: 

--you must include at least 10 films by at least 5 different directors;

--you must include copies of relevant weekly critical readings

--attached to your syllabus will be a five-page essay written to your prospective students introducing them to the critical issues you plan for 409 to address.  How will they complement what they've already covered in their 309 survey course? Why this/these chosen focus/foci?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EMERGING(and tentative) 309 DOCUMENTARY VIEWING/READING SCHEDULE

August 23: Lumiere Shorts (1895- 97, 61 minutes), Nanook of the North, Robert Flaherty             (1922, 79 Minutes)

Reading: “The Filmmaker as Hunter," (23-39)

          "Nanook and Me", Loius Menand (Handout)

             

August 30:  Man With a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov (1929, 69 mins)

Reading: “Peace between Man and Machine,” (40-54)

 

Sept. 6:  Labor Day (no class—we'll view film in T/TH classes)

          Que Viva Mexico! Sergei Eisenstein (1932, 85 mins)

Reading: “Paradise Regained,” (55-69)

 

Sept. 13: Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl (1935, 113 minutes)

Reading:  “The Mass Psychology of Fascist Cinema” (99-118)

 

Sept. 15: Supersize Me, Morgan Spurlock (2004—7-10 DUC Theatre)

 

Sept. 20: Night and Fog, Alain Resnais (1955, 32 minutes)

Reading:  “Documenting the Ineffable,” (204-222)

          “In Search of the Centaur,” Philip Lopate (handout)

 

Sept. 27: Salt of the Earth, Herbert J. Biberman (1954, 94 mins)

Reading:  to be determined

 

Oct. 4:   Primary, Robert Drew (1960, 60 minutes)

          Don't Look Back, D.A. Pennebaker  (1967, 96 mins)

Reading: “Cinema-Verite and the New Documentary” (handout)

         “Don't You Ever Just Watch?” (223-237)

 

Oct. 11:  Salesman, Albert Maysles (1968, 85 minutes)

Reading:  My Year of Meats, Ruth Ozeki

 

Oct. 18:  film to be determined 

[Oct. 19   Halving the Bones Ruth Ozeki, (1995, 70 minutes)]

 

Oct. 25:  Harlan County, U.S.A, Barbara Kopple (103 mins)

Reading: to be determined

 

Nov. 1:   Sherman's March, Ross McElwee (1985, 155 mins)

Reading: “Doc Film…Hysterical/Historical Narrative,” (333-343)

 

Nov. 8:   Roger and Me, Michael Moore (1989, 91 minutes)

Reading: “Documentaphobia and Mixed Modes, (397-415)

 

Nov. 15:  This is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner (1984, 83 mins)

 

Nov. 22:  Thin Blue Line, Errol Morris (1987, 101 minutes)

Reading: “Mirrors Without Memories” (379-396)

Nov. 29:  Tongues Untied, Marlon Riggs (1989, 55 minutes)   
          Paris is Burning, Jennie Livingston (1991, 78 minutes)

Dec. 6:   Stranger With A Camera, Elizabeth Barret (2000, 58 mins)                  
          Southern Comfort, Kate Davis (2001, 90 mins)