This course offers a broad study of documentary film and theory which addresses the many kinds of style, form, content and social performance issues related to documentary filmmaking and reception. Films will range from early documentary through to animated and experimental/art documentary, transcultural, and web-based documentary; screeenings will include documentaries made for television as well as for theatrical release. The course will particularly focus on the significance of documentary as a 'non-fiction' format and will interrogate the relationship between past and present filmmaking technologies and the blurring of fiction and non-fiction in documentary film. Discussions will also include the categories of docudrama and 'mocumentary'. Students who take this course will develop a broad understanding of 'non-fiction' film and the ways in which documentary films operate in a social context -as unreal presentations of time and space in real life.

On completion of this course, students will have the ability to locate Documentary Film within the  wider field of Cinema, and to analyse Documentary for its ability to comment on society, for its aims and for its outcomes.

Finally, students will have an understanding of how Documentary works as a 'truth saying' platform.

Tutorial presentation and participation (20%), 1,500-2,000 word essay (40%) 1,500-2,000 word essay (40%).

For students taking this course as part of the Film Studies major, Introduction to Film Studies FILM1001.
Otherwise, 12 First Year units from or accredited by the Faculty of Arts.

Nichols, Bill, Introduction to Documentary, Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001

There will also be a brick of readings (also available electronically) prepared by the lecturer for this course.