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Special Topics in Film and Digital Media: Performance Documentary/Documenting Performance

Course: 
FILM 080S
Quarter: 
Spring
Academic Year: 
2020-21
Days: 
WF
Times: 
12:00PM-1:35PM
Location: 
Remote Instruction

The class explores cultural and political resistance through the documentation of performance, or Live Art. While class discussions engage with the performance itself, the focus of the lectures will fall on the creativity and authorship of the documentary maker, exploring how performance documentation is a creative collaboration between artists and deserves to be considered a genre in itself. We’ll explore different mediums of performance documentation, including photography, cinema, music videos, and television.

The class will begin by considering the social and historical context of the formation of performance documentation as a specific genre within the, documentary tradition, and the creation of an authorial position that emerged with graphic art and photography. We will explore photographers such as Alexy Brodovitch, Paul Strand, Agnes Varda, Stanley Kubrick, and continue through with the work of Annie Liebowitz and Hiroshi Sugimoto. As the genre developed cinematically in the 1960s, we will examine artists and media texts such as Shirley Clarke, D.A. Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back, 1967; Monterey Pop, 1968) Robert Frank (The Rolling Stones, 1972), and later Martin Scorsese (The Last Waltz, 1978), as well as Jonathan Demme (Stop Making Sense, 1984; Swimming to Cambodia, 1987). These films allow us to discuss the ways that cinema can be used as a tool of resistance while students also interrogate the limits of the documentary form in representing identities and social issues. The course incorporates other mediums of performance documentary including television: Luis Valdez (El corrido: Ballad of a Farmworker, 1976), Chris Marker (Junktopia,1981); music videos: Spike Lee, Anton Corbjin; web streaming Beyonce (Homecoming, 2019) and Chris Rock (Total Blackout: The Tamborine Extended Cut, 2021); and social media with K-pop.

The course addresses key issues in cultural, film, media and performance theory by pairing these visual texts with readings pulled from those disciplines.  Lectures and discussions will focus on analyzing the structures, performers, and acts of resistance, rebellion, and revolt not just in the captured Live Art event but represented in the documentation process (camera angles, editing, coloring, etc.)  A main goal of this class will be to explore performance documentation in the context of different cultural and political movements, such as farm labor organizing, the politics of race and representation, and ideas of authenticity.  We will also consider the specific aesthetics of the genre of performance documentary which at its best creates intrigue and suspense, and prompts questions of ethics, credit and ownership among artist, subject and audience. Finally, the course requires a hands-on component, encouraging students to experiment with methods of the digital humanities, media art, and other creative practices in their final project.