UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
DEPARTMENT OF FILM AND TELEVISION STUDIES
BA in Film and Literature / BA in Film Studies
DOCUMENTARY (15 CAT YEAR 3 OPTION)
AUTUMN term 2016
Tutor: PROF. STELLA BRUZZI (Rm A1.19)
STORIES WE TELL (SARAH POLLEY, CANADA 2012)
This module will:
· Offer students the chance to explore documentary and different ways of representing reality in depth, with an emphasis on the use of re-enactment in documentary and nonfictional media.
· Provide a selective history of primarily British and US documentary via the use of re-enactment, focusing on more recent films such as The Arbor (Clio Barnard, 2010) and Stories We Tell.
· Consider some important historical antecedents before focusing on 21st century uses of re-enactment – interesting because documentary filmmakers no longer need to re-enact events but are increasingly electing to do so out of choice.
· Enable students to compare uses of re-enactment in documentary with that in other forms of fact-based film and television, such as drama-documentaries and fact-based or hypothetical films.
· Introduce students to various critical perspectives via each week’s reading, which will be discussed in detail in class.
Timetable
The programme is as follows:
Monday 3—6pm Room A0.26
Tuesday 9—1pm Room A0.26
You are expected to be free for these times. I will generally screen at 3pm Mondays and lecture either following that (at 5—6) or at 9—10am on Tuesdays, followed by a second screening and seminar. But I will sometimes shuffle these around, so check each week for details.
ASSESSMENT
ONE essay of 5,000 words. Deadline: Monday 12 December 2016, 12 noon. Essay questions will be circulated around the middle of the term and tutorials will be offered both and after essay writing. You are required to attend both.
THE ARBOR (CLIO BARNARD, 2010)
Module Outline – Weekly Topics, Reading and Viewing
You are expected to read all the texts listed as ‘Essential Reading’ in preparation for seminars and to bring your notes and thoughts on these texts to the lesson; these pieces of reading will be made available for you to download each week. The ‘Further Reading’ materials are indicative secondary sources available in the library for use when you want to read around a subject or are researching your essays.
Screenings
Week One: 3 and 4 October
The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1965)
Week Two 10 and 11 October
The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)
Week Three 17 and 18 October
The Eternal Frame (Ant Farm and J.T. Uthco, 1975)
The Battle of Orgreave (Jeremy Deller, Mike Figgis, C4, 2001)
Week Four 24 and 25 October
Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990) + Unmade Beds (Nicholas Barker, 1997)
Week Five 31 October and 1 November
The Arbor (Clio Barnard, 2010)
Week Six ------READING WEEK------
Week Seven 14 and 15 November
Stories We Tell (Sarah Folley, 2012)
Week Eight 21 and 22 November
The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006) + Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004)
Week Nine 28 and 29 December
The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2013) + The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh, 2014)
Week Ten 5 and 6 December
The Jinx (Andrew Jarecki, 2015)
Week 1
Introduction to the module; early uses of re-enactment in documentary; drama-documentary; hypothetical re-enactment.
Screening:
The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1965)
Essential Reading:
Nichols, Bill (2008) ‘Documentary Reenactment and the Fantasmic Subject’, Critical Inquiry, 35, Autumn, 72—89.
Timetable
Monday 3—4 Screening; 4—5 Lecture
Tuesday 10—11 Screening; 11—1 seminars.
Further Reading:
Bazin, André (1967) ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’, in What is Cinema? (transl. Hugh Gray), Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Chapman, James (2006) ‘The BBC and the Censorship of The War Game (1965)’, Journal of Contemporary History, 41: 1, January, pp. 75—94.
—(2008) ‘The War Game Controversy—Again’, Journal of Contemporary History, 43: 1, January, pp. 105—112 (this is a response to Mike Wayne’s critique of Chapman’s first article, listed below).
Cook, John R. (2010) ‘‘‘Don’t forget to look into the camera!”: Peter Watkins’ approach to acting with facts, Studies in Documentary Film, 4:3, 227—240.
Corner, John (1999) ‘British TV Dramadocumentary: Origins and Developments’, in (ed.) Alan Rosenthal Why Docudrama? Fact-fiction on Film and TV, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Kahana, Jonathan (2009) ‘Introduction: What Now? Presenting Reenactment’, Framework 50, Nos. 1 & 2, Spring and Fall 2009, 46—60.
Nichols, Bill (1991) Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Rosenthal, Alan (2005) ‘’The War Game: An Interview with Peter Watkins’, in Rosenthal and Corner, John (eds.) New Challenges for Documentary (2nd edition; Manchester: MUP), 110—120.
Shaw, Tony (2006) ‘The BBC, the State and Cold War culture: The case of television’s The War Game (1965)’, The English Historical Review, CXXXI (494): 1351—1384.
Watkins, Peter (1983) ‘The Fear of Commitment’, Literature/Film Quarterly, 11: 4, October
Watkins, Peter with James Blue and Michael Gill (2016) ‘Peter Watkins Discusses his Suppressed Nuclear Film The War Game’ [1965], in The Documentary Film Reader: History, Theory, Criticism, ed. Jonathan Kahana, pp. 420—428.
Wayne, Mike (2007) ‘Failing the Public: The BBC, The War Game and Revisionist History. A Reply to James Chapman’, Journal of Contemporary History, 42: 4, October, pp. 627—637.
WEEK 2
Errol Morris and the hyper-aesthetics of re-enactment.
Screening:
The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)
Essential Reading:
Williams, Linda (1993) ‘Mirrors without Memories: Truth, History and the New Documentary’, Film Quarterly, 46:3, Spring, 9—21.
Timetable
Monday 3—5 Screening; 5—6 Lecture.
Tuesday 9.30—111.30 Screening; 11.30—1 seminar.
Further Reading:
Bloom, Livia (2010) Errol Morris: Interviews, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi
Grundman, Roy and Rockwell, Cynthia (2000) ‘Truth is not Subjective: An Interview with Errol Morris’, Cineaste, 25:3, June, 4—9.
Morris, Errol (2008) ‘Play It Again Sam (Re-enactments, Part One) (April 3) & ‘Play It Again Sam (Re-enactments, Part Two) (April 10), available at: opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com.
—(2011) Believing is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography), New York: The Penguin Press.
—(2016) (with Peter Bates) ‘Truth not Guaranteed: An Interview with Errol Morris’ [1989], in The Documentary Film Reader: History, Theory, Criticism, ed. Jonathan Kahana, pp.807—810.
Musser, Charles (1996) ‘Film Truth, Documentary, and the Law: Justice at the Margins’, San Francisco Law Review, 30: Summer, 963—84.
Resha, David (2015) The Cinema of Errol Morris, Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Ricciardelli, Lucia (2010) ‘Documentary Filmmaking in the Postmodern Age: Errol Morris and The Fog of Truth’, Studies in Documentary Film, 4:1, pp. 35—50.
Rothman, William (2009) Three Documentary Filmmakers: Errol Morris, Ross McElwee, Jean Rouch, New York: State University of New York Press.
WEEK 3
The performative documentary; performance and performativity in documentary.
Screenings:
The Eternal Frame (Ant Farm and J.T. Uthco, 1975)
The Battle of Orgreave (Jeremy Deller, Mike Figgis, C4, 2001)
Essential Reading:
De Groot, Jerome (2012) ‘“I am not a trained historian. I improvise”. Jeremy Deller interviewed by Jerome de Groot’, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, 16:4, pp. 587—595.
Pasolini, Pier Paolo (1967) ‘Observations on the Long Take’, October, Vol. 13 (Summer, 1980), pp. 3—6. Available to download at: http://fdm.ucsc.edu/~landrews/178s2010/Assets/8656165C/observations%20on%20the%20long%20take.pdf.
Timetable
Monday 3—4.30 Screenings; 4.30—5.30 Lecture.
Tuesday 10—11.30 Screening; 11.30—1 seminar.
Further Reading:
Bishop, Claire (2012) ‘The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents’, Chapter 1 of Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, London: Verso.
Correia, Alice (2006) ‘Interpreting Jeremy Deller’s “The Battle of Orgreave”’, Visual Culture in Britain, 7:2, 93—112.
Deller, Jeremy (2001) The English Civil War, Part II: Personal Accounts of the 1984—85 Miners’ Strike, London: Artangel.
Farquharson, Alex (2001) ‘Jeremy Deller: The Battle of Orgreave’, Frieze, Issue 61, https://www.frieze.com/issue/review/jeremy_deller/. (Accessed 4 February 2014).
Jones, Amelia (2011) ‘“The Artist is Present”. Artistic Re-enactments and the Impossibility of Presence’, TDR: The Drama Review, 55:1 (T209), Spring, pp. 16—45.
Mullin, Tom (1995) ‘Livin’ and Dyin’ in Zapruderville: A Code of Representation—Reality and its Exhuastion’, CineAction 38, 12—15.
Simon, Art (1996) Dangerous Knowledge: The JFK Assassination in Art and Film, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Slyce, John (2003) ‘Jeremy Deller: Fables of the Reconstruction’, Flash Art International, 36: 228, 74—7.
Spigel, Lynn and Curtin, Michael (1997) (eds) The Revolution Wasn’t Televised: Sixties Television and Social Conflict, New York and London: Routledge.
Stallabrass, Julian (2013) (ed.) Documentary: Documents of Contemporary Art, London: Whitechapel Gallery
Vågnes, Øyvind Zaprudered: The Kennedy Assassination: Film in Visual Culture (2011), Austin: University of Texas Press.
Wasson, Haidee (1995) ‘Assassinating an Image: The Strange Life of Kennedy’s Death’, CineAction 38, 4—11
WEEK 4The performative documentary; performance and performativity in documentary.
Screenings:
Paris is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990) + Unmade Beds (Nicholas Barker, 1997)
Essential Reading:
Butler, Judith (1993) ‘Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion’, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”, London and New York: Routledge
Timetable
Monday 3—6 Screenings;
Tuesday 10—11 Lecture; 11—1 seminars.
Further Reading:
Barker, Nicholas (1998) Unmade Beds, London: Dewi Lewis Publishing
Bruzzi, Stella (2006) ‘The Performative Documentary’, New Documentary (2nd edition), London and New York: Routledge
—(2000) New Documentary: A Critical Introduction. This has a longer section on Nicholas Barker, which might be useful.
Butler, Judith (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London and New York: Routledge.
Corner, John (2002) ‘Documentary Values’, in Realism and ‘Reality’ in Film and Media, ed. Anne Jerslev, Copenhagen: Museumn Tusculanum Press.
Cvetkovich, Ann (1993) ‘The Powers of Seeing and Being Seen: Truth or Dare and Paris is Burning’, in Film Theory Goes to the Movies, eds. Ava Collins, Jim Collins and Hilary Radner, London and New York: Routledge.
Ellis, John (2011) Documentary: Witness and Self-Revelation, London and New York: Routledge.
Flynn, Caryl (1998) ‘Performance in Paris is Burning’, in Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video, eds. Barry Keith grant and Jeannette Sloniowski, Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
WEEK 5Ventriloquism and verbatim techniques; lip synching as re-enactment
Screenings:
The Arbor (Clio Barnard, 2010)
Essential Reading:
Freud, Sigmund (1914) ‘Remembering, Repeating and Working Through’, The Penguin Freud Reader (ed. Adam Phillips, London: Penguin, 2006)
Timetable
Monday 3—4.30 Screening; 4.30—5.30 Lecture.
Tuesday 10—11.30 Screening; 11.30—1 seminar.
Further Reading:
Blythe, Alecky (2008) in Hammond, Will and Steward, Dan (eds) Verbatim Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre, London: Oberon Books
Dunbar, Andrea (1980) The Arbor PR 6007.U61
—(1982) Rita, Sue and Bob Too (also made into a film directed by Alan Clarke – VHS in library)
—(1986) Shirley
Forsyth, Alison and Megson, Chris (eds.) (2011) Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present, London: Palgrave Macmillan
Johnson, Beth (2016) ‘Art Cinema and The Arbor: Tape-recording, Testimony, Fine Art and Feminism’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, 13:2, 278—91.
Lim, Dennis (2011) ‘Lip-syncing the realities of a tragic life’, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/movies/the-arbor-revisits-the-troubled-life-of-andrea-dunbar.html?_r=1&.
Muir, Kate (2013) ‘The Instability of Truth’, Sight and Sound, 23:11, November, pp. 32—33.
Reinelt, Janelle (2009) ‘The Promise of Documentary’, in Forsyth, Alison and Megson, Chris (2009) (eds) Get Real: Documentary Theatre Past and Present, London: Palgrave.
Rosen, Philip (1993) ‘Document on Documentary: On the Persistence of Historical Concepts’, in Michael Renov (ed.) Theorizing Documentary, London and New York: Routledge.
Taylor, Lib (2013) ‘Voice, Body and the Transmission of the Real in Documentary Theatre’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 23: 3, 368—79.
Thomson, David (2011) ‘David Thomson on films: The Arbor’, New Republic, May 20. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/film/88732/the-arbor-clio-barnard-andrea-dunbar-playwright.
Walters, Ben (2011) ‘Talking Cure’, Film Quarterly, 64:4, Summer, 6—7.
Ventriloquism and verbatim techniques; lip synching as re-enactment
WEEK 6: READING WEEK
WEEK 7
Autobiographical documentary and re-enactment; false archive; performing the self
Screening:
Stories We Tell (Sarah Folley, 2012)
Essential Reading:
Dowmunt, Tony (2013) ‘Autobiographical Documentary – The “Seer and the Seen”’, Studies in Documentary Film, 7:3, 263—277.
Timetable
Monday 3—5 Screening; 5—6 Lecture.
Tuesday 10—12 Screening; 12—1 seminar.
Further Reading:
Bruzzi, Stella (2013) ‘The Performing Film-maker and the Acting Subject’, in Brian Winston (ed.) The Documentary Film Book, London: BFI/Palgrave, 48—58.
Corrigan, Timothy (2011) The Essay Film: From Montaigne, After Marker, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cuevas, Efrén ‘Home Movies as Personal Archives in Autobiographical Documentaries’, Studies in Documentary Film, 7:1, 2013, 17—29.
Ellis, John (2012) Documentary: Witness and Self-Revelation, London and New York: Routledge.
Lane, Jim (2002) The Autobiographical Documentary in America, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Lebow, Alisa (2012) (ed.) The Cinema of Me: The Self and Subjectivity in First Person Documentary, London: Wallflower Press.
Nichols, Bill (2016) ‘To See the World Anew: Revisiting the Voice of Documentary’, Chapter 6 of Speaking Truth with Film: Evidence, Ethics, Politics in Documentary, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 74—110.
Rascaroli, Laura (2009) The Personal Camera: Subjective Cinema and the Essay Film, London: Wallflower Press.
Renov, Michael (2004) The Subject of Documentary, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Waugh, Thomas (2011) ‘Acting to Play Oneself: Performance in Documentary [1990]’, in The Right to Play Oneself: Looking Back on Documentary Film, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
WEEK 8
Ventriloquism as re-enactment; Tony Blair (1) and the ‘new’ drama documentary.
Screenings:
The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006) + Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004)
Essential Reading:
Paget, Derek (2007) ‘“Acting with Facts”: Actors performing the real in British theatre and television since 1990. A preliminary report on a new research project’, Studies in Documentary Film, 1:2, 165—176.
Timetable
Monday 3—6: Screening Downfall.
Tuesday 9—10.45 Screening The Queen; 10.50—1.00: Lecture + Seminar