080005 VU B620 Society: Introduction to Documentary Filmmaking: Theory and Practice (2019W)

This course aims to introduce the modes of representations in documentary filmmaking and to concentrate on the audio-visual examination of different socio-cultural structures such as gender and immigration-related issues, economic and political conflicts, post-colonialist and racial interrogations through selected films. However, it is not an introductory course to documentary filmmaking in a traditional and chronological sense but it is an introduction to the subjective documentary. The autobiographical documentary will be the focus of this class as a quest of new representation techniques to examine the relationship between the personal and the cultural, and as the transformation of the dominant ideologies. The subcategories of first-person filmmaking such as diary film, essay film, experimental ethnography will be exemplified and discussed with a selected film. Furthermore, auto-ethnography as a self-reflexive method will be analysed not only theoretically but also will be performed by the students. The practical side of the course focuses on teaching how to produce a short digital documentary film from pre-production to post-production. Students are expected to read the given texts and watch the provided films beforehand and to actively discuss them in the classroom. At the end, groups of students will conduct short documentary films that question the culturally constructed realities in our given Western society.

Wichtig: Die Lehrveranstaltung wird Exkursionen beinhalten und deshalb nicht ausschließlich am angegebenen Termin stattfinden.

There will be a brainstorming session held by the tutor Sarah Anna Bergbauer on 05.11.2019 at 12.45-14.15 to discuss the proposals for documentary films.