FRS 004 — Sec. 010 — (2 units) — CRN 73094 — T 2:10-4:00 pm — 70 Social Sciences & Humanities
The Rise and Limits of Documentary Film

Instructor: Jaimey Fisher, Department of German and Russian, College of Letters & Science

Description: The last twenty years have seen the rapid ascendancy -- commercially and academically -- of the “documentary” or nonfiction film. The astonishing success of Michael Moore (over $120 million gross domestic on his last film) only underscores this surprising phenomenon. With the advent of television and other technologies, the nonfiction film has become a culturally pervasive and, in many ways, dominant form of filmmaking. This course will look critically at the history of the nonfiction film and consider its representational potential as well as limitations – shortly said, its historical and representational parameters. It will, above all, try to contextualize the recent wave of commercially popular and culturally resonant documentaries in the larger history of nonfiction film. We shall examine such topics as: the context (socio-economic as well as cultural) that produced these films and their increasing popularity; the impact of technical innovation on documentary (Flaherty and Grierson); documentary as social critique (Wiseman); role of documentary in mediating history (Lanzmann); documentary and ideology (Leni Riefenstahl); documentary and politics (Michael Moore); documentary as cinematic avant-garde (Herzog, Forgacs, and Morris).

Format: The seminar will meet for two hours each week for ten weeks. Students and instructor will discuss the assigned film each week. The materials of the course will be two-fold: a weekly film as well as one weekly reading relating to the history and theory of nonfiction film. Grading: This class will be two-units, but not graded. Besides a quiz each class that will confirm that each student has seen the required film, there will be an oral presentation, required with a handout, on which the pass/fail option will be evaluated.

About the Instructor: Prof. Fisher has been teaching at UC Davis, in the Departments of German and Russian as well as in Film Studies, since July 2004. He has considerable experience teaching Freshman Seminars, as he has taught over eight such seminars in his time at Cornell and Tulane Universities. His research and teaching interests include film studies, especially German cinema, literature, and intellectual history. His current project concerns contemporary German cinema within a European and global context. He has published articles on German and Italian cinema, German literature, and philosophy and has co-edited the book Critical Theory: Current State and Future Prospects.