Mediaworks

Winter Quarter we will focus on non-fiction media and hybrids that combine fiction and non-fiction to explore specific ideas. We will begin with biography, autobiography and auto-ethnography. Following that we will focus on a few important examples of Third Cinema. We'll end the quarter investigating film and video essays and other documentary forms.

Readings:

Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of Peoples' Lives by Janet Hoskins, Routledge, 1998. Read this over winter break.

Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video by Catherine Russell, Duke University Press, 1999

Memories of Underdevelopment and Inconsolable Memories by Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Edmundo Desnoes, and Michael Chanan Rutgers, 1990

Experimental Cinema: The Film Reader, Dixon, Wheeler Winston and Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey, ed.

Reprints tba

Cathexis: Biographical Objects- Winter Break Assignment

Cathexis: investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object or idea (Miriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition)

There are significant challenges involved in producing a documentary that is highly visual, true to its subject and creative. The purpose of this exercise is to get you to tell a story about someone (this could be yourself) through the personal objects that surround him or her without relying solely on “talking heads” or images of people’s faces or bodies. You are to investigate the symbolic, cultural, mythological, sentimental value attached to the object. These in turn may reveal personal values, attitudes, beliefs or way of life.

Requirements:
1) Read Biographical Objects: How Things Tell the Stories of People’s Lives by Janet Hoskins

2) Do pre-production fieldwork, research and visual and conceptual development for a short work to be produced in January. Other specific parameters depend on which Workshop sequence you signed up for. Look under the Winter Quarter Menu for that workshop to get the assignment. (If you can't remember which one you signed up for then download the winter workshop list below).

3) Seminar Pass on Biographical Objects for Wednesday January 9th.

Syllabus

 

Weeks 1-4: The personal and the performative

Week One
1/8-1/11 Biography, Auto-biography and Auto Ethnography

Read: Biographical Objects by Janet Hoskins

Films: Friedrich, Sink or Swim, 1990, 48 min
Matreyek, Dreaming of Lucid Living, 2007, 10 min
Hubley, Delivery Man, 1982 7 min
Outside screening: Kibben & Bartz, In Good Hands, 30 min

Wrap: Affinity Group Organizing and Work Session

Week Two
1/15-1/18 Auto Ethnography

Read: Experimental Ethnography, by Catherine Russell, preface, Chapter 1 and 10

“The Films of Sadie Benning and Su Friedrich” by Chris Holmlund in Experimental Cinema, The Film Reader

Recommended: on-line biography of Paul Fierlinger-http://www.paulfierlinger.com/

Films: The Works of Sadie Benning, 1990, 50min
Fulbeck, Lilo & Me, 2003?, 9:35min
Wu, Sentimental Journey, 10min
Iimura, I’m Not Seen, 2003, 5min
Soe, All Orientals Look the Same, 2min
Viola, The Passing, 1991, 54 min

Outside screening: Fierlinger, Drawn From Memory, 1998, 55 min.

No wrap: workshop time

Week Three
1/22-1/25 Issues of Representation

Read: “Dark and Lovely, Too: Black Gay Men in Independent Film” by Kobena Mercer in Experimental Cinema, The Film Reader
"The Dramaturgy of C. Rosalind Bell's The New Orleans Monologues", by Geoff Proehl, University of Puget Sound
http://www.evergreen.edu/diversityseries/neworleansreadings.html

Films: Riggs, Tongues Untied, 1989, 55 min

Diversity Series Performance:
Bell, The New Orleans Monologues (Lecture Hall 1) Tues, January 22nd: The New Orleans Monologues the imagined voices of six African American women who suffered the ravages of Hurricane Katrina in vastly different ways. It is a new play by C. Rosalind Bell, a native of Southwest Louisiana, who has authored five screenplays, two novellas, a novel and a collection of short stories. 11 am in Lecture Hall 1 (required).

Special Event: ( Outside "screening"), 7 pm Thursday January 24th Experimental Theater
Mosca and the Meaning of Life Evergreen Expressions performance. Multi-media animation with live performance featuring spoken word/performance artist Beto Araiza and animator Christine Panushka.

January 25th (Friday): Workshop critiques with Christine Panushka and Beto Araiza.

Wrap: Spring Quarter Project Preview and Research

Week Four
1/29-2/1 Issues of Representation 2

Read: “Spectatorship, Power and Knowledge” from Practices of Looking by Sturken and Cartwright- pdf

Films: Riggs, Ethnic Notions, 1986, 57 min
Moffatt, Nice Coloured Girls, 1987, 16min.
Wah, The Color of Fear, 1995, 90 min

No wrap due to workshop final critiques.

2/5-2/8 Fifth week intensives

Workshops for weeks 1-4: Cathexis (see winter break assignment)

Sequence A: Animation exploring personal experience and transformation: Photoshop, After Effects, soundtrack production, animation to sound

Sequence B: Video art, installation and performance. We will explore video art as tool for personal and social change. Incorporating video art in installation and performance (single, multiple-channel).

Fifth Week Intensives: specific workshops tba after consulting with students.

Week Six: Third Cinema: Cuba

Read: Memories of Underdevelopment and Inconsolable Memories by Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Edmundo Desnoes, and Michael Chanan
“The Beginnings of Non-Western Film Production, Latin America” in Third World Film Making and the West by Armes Roy (PDF)

Films: Alea, Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968, 110 min
Shorts from ICAIC
Outside screening: Alea, Guantanamera, 1997, 104 min

Wrap: Community Arts Panel-SmartMeme, TCTV Robert Kam, Jessica Ekelson YAYA Media/TCTV, Katie Jennings, IslandWood

Week Seven: Third Cinema: Chile

Read: “The Aesthetics of Hunger” by Glauber Rocha (PDF),
“Towards a Third Cinema” by Solanas and Getino online:
http://documentaryisneverneutral.com/words/camasgun.html

“For an Imperfect Cinema” by Julio García Espinosa, Julianne Burton trans., online:
http//www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC20folder/ImperfectCinema.html

Interview with Patricio Guzman pdf

recommended: “Unique No More” by Ariel Dorfman: http://www.counterpunch.org/dorfman.html

Films: Guzman, The Battle of Chile, Part 2, 1976, 90 min.
Outside screening: Guzman, Chile: Obstinate Memory, 58 min, 1997

Wrap: Animated Visual Essays-faculty presentation. Ruth Hayes; Reign of the Dog; A Re-Visionist History, 1994, 16 min.
Work in Progress: On Our Way

Week Eight: Documentary/ Otherness

Read: Experimental Ethnography, by Catherine Russell, chapters 6 and 8
Selected Writings by Barbara Tedlock

Films:Yans, “Margaret Mead: an Observer Observed”, 1995 85min
O'Rourke "Cannibal Tours" 1987, 77min.

Outside screening: Diawara, Rouch in Reverse, 1995, 51 min.
No wrap. Workshop field trip

Week 9: Documentary/ Essayistic Film

read: Experimental Ethnography, by Catherine Russell, chapters 2 and 9

Films: Buñuel, Land Without Bread, 1932, 27 min.
Resnais, Night and Fog, 1955, 31 min
Kravitz, The Trap, 1988, 5 min
Black Audio Film Collective, Handsworth Songs, 1986, 58 min.

Outside screening: Connor, A Movie, 1958, 12 min
Thornton, Peggy and Fred in Hell: the Prologue, 1985, 20 min.

Wrap: Faculty presentation: Beatriz-Excerpts from:
A Hole in the Wall: Socio-cultural Fluctuations along the Mexico-USA Border. On Women’s Recipes, 10min


Week 10: Quarter wrap up and Spring Project Proposals

No readings.  Tuesday and Wednesday:  Spring Project Proposal work sessions.

Wrap: all day screening of winter quarter work, potluck, spring project pitch session.

Workshops for weeks 6-9:
Sequence A: Film/video essays: Students will use the essayistic mode to produce a cultural montage on 16mm w/synch sound. Students will experiment with the concept of process in a real life situation or event of their choice using video.

Sequence B: Essayistic Animation: Photoshop, After Effects, soundtrack production, animation to sound, 16mm animation.

Major Assignments and Activities:

Cathexis: Biographical Objects (see above)

Student affinity groups: You will affiliate with 3-5 other students to investigate theoretical and media issues from a particular perspective, (for example; feminism in media, guerrilla media, activist media, psychoanalysis, structuralism, performance, ethnographic documentary, politics and strategies of representation, sound…). Seminar assignments will be informed by these group inquiries.

Spring Quarter Project Proposal: In the second half of winter quarter you will begin to develop ideas for independent work in the spring. Initial proposals will be due week 10.

Weekly schedule:

Monday	1-2:30	Faculty seminar
Tuesday	9:30-12:30	Screening and lecture, Sem 2 C1105
	2:00-5:00	Production workshops, Com 408, Lib 1540
Wednesday	8:15-9:45	Faculty Office Hours
	10-12:00	Seminar, Sem 2 B3107, Sem 2 B3109
	1:00	outside screening 1 (tentative)
Thursday	5:00	outside screening 2 (tentative)
Friday	9:30-2:30	Production Workshops Com 408, Lib 1540
	2:45-4:30	Wrap, Com 308 or tba