Performing the Real: Experimental Documentary Filmmaking

Through a series of short exercises students will learn the craft, history and theory of alternative modes in documentary filmmaking. We will emphasize experimentation with various formal strategies to probe the impulse to engage the "real". Topics in this course will include portraits, interviews, ethnography, space and place, narrativity, personal film, re-enactments and performance. Students will be encouraged to draw unexpected connections and use experimental approaches in their aesthetic pursuits.