Ethnographic and Documentary Cinema

This subject examines the place of documentary and ethnographic cinema in contemporary film theory. Students will engage with current debates on documentary filmmaking and realism, critically analysing ethnographic film and its connections to nationalism, imperialism and what has been described as the ‘filming of the other’. A central issue for discussion will be the political, aesthetic, and ethical challenges facing documentary cinema today. We will study a wide range of classic and modern works, including Nanook of the North (Flaherty, 1922), Chronicle of a Summer (Rouch 1961), Paris is Burning (Livingston 1990), Nostalgia for the Light (Guzmán, 2010), and Cow (Arnold, 2021). There will be also a focus on recent forms of documentary film that have taken up contemporary social issues such as gender, race, the environment, and the plight of non-human animals. In Ethnographic and Documentary Cinema students will develop a knowledge of various forms of documentary filmmaking, from self-reflective modes to ‘cinéma vérité’, animated documentary, performative approaches, and ethno-fiction.