The following links provide sample questions, screenings, and readings for a course in documentary film and video.
Week 1: How Do We Define Documentary?
Week 2: Primitive Cinema, the Origins of Documentary, and Robert Flaherty
Week 3: Poetic Documentary and Dziga Vertov
Week 4: Depression-Era Social Documentary and Propaganda Films
Week 5: John Grierson and The Documentary Film Movement
Week 6: Propaganda Films and World War II
Week 7: Remembering the Holocaust
Week 8: The Beginnings of Television and Documentary
Week 9: Cinema Verite and Jean Rouch
Week 10: Cinema Verite and Manufacturing a President
Week 11: Observational Cinema and Frederick Wiseman
Week 12: Barbara Kopple and the Social Documentary
Week 13: Documentary and Homosexuality
Week 14: Documentary and Autobiography
Week 15: The Michael Moore Phenomenon
Week 16: Mockumentary