Led by curator, writer and lecturer Helen de Witt, this short course will investigate strategies of exploration and representation of the physical world, the imaginary realm and the transient experience of human life through experimental, ethnographic and documentary film.

From the earliest reels of the Lumiere Bros, cinema has sought to capture and, on occasion, provoke a human reaction to the environment. Sometimes naively observational and at others deliberately interventionist, filmmakers have provided vivid interpretations of the world and its people through numerous visual strategies from cinema verite to rich experimentations in the creation of self-image. The course will combine introductory lectures, screenings and group discussions.

Course Content over eight sessions:

• Early ethnographic experiments in reality and transformation: From Lumiere Bros to Jean Rouch and Maya Deren via Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson.
• Totalitarianism’s destructions and constructions: Vertov’s Kino Pravda, Pudovkin’s Storm Over Asia and Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a City and Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.
• Whose life, whose voice? British documentary from the Griersons through War propaganda to Free Cinema and Feminist Protest.
• Manifestos and manifestations in Latin American Liberation: Octavio Getino/Fernando Solanos and Julio Garcia Espinosa’s call for revolutionary cinema.
• African heritages: post-colonial versions from Zora Neale Hurston through Ousmame Sembene to Raoul Peck, Ava Duvernay and Yance Ford.
• Observational and participatory anthropology: Frederick Wiseman’s ‘Follies’ and Agnes Varda’s ‘Gleaning’
• Aesthetic explorations from Chris Marker Sans Soleil to Harvard’s Sensory Ethnographic Lab’s Leviathan.
• Migrating of bodies/changing identities: Michael Winterbottom’s In This World; John Akomfrah’s The Nine Muses, Gianfranco Rosi’s Fire at Sea, Ai Wei Wei’s Human Flow;  Gabo Arora and Chris Milk’s Clouds Over Sidra.

Dates: May 13 — Jul 8. The course takes place on Monday evenings from 7-9pm.

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