107-429 Ethnographic and Documentary Cinema

Admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth year honours in cinema studies, see Honours entry.

This subject investigates the place of documentary and ethnographic film in contemporary film theory. Students should become familiar with the postmodern debate surrounding documentary film-making and realism, and the critique of ethnographic cinema as linked to nationalism and imperialism. The films of French, British, American and Australian ethnographers are taken up, with classic works such as F W Murnau's and Flaherty's Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) among those studied. Recent films which are critical of ethnography and the ethnographic gaze such as Marlon Fuentes's Bontoc Eulogy (1996) are considered. The use of ethnography for entertainment as well as surveillance is examined through popular movies such as The Gods Must be Crazy. Students should develop a knowledge of the four classic modes of documentary cinema, namely the Griersonian, 'cinema verite', direct interview and self-reflexive modes; of the relationship between documentary and ethnographic cinema; and of the colonial propaganda film.