From movie screens to cell phones, moving images that "document" life have never been more ubiquitous. What do these images tell us about the relationship between representation and reality? How have film and media makers used moving images to represent major cultural, political, and social upheavals as well as communicated an understanding of everyday life? To answer these questions, this course will survey the rich, vibrant legacy of documentary filmmaking as well as demonstrate its ongoing artistic and cultural relevance to newer media. We will examine key modes of documentary film while contextualizing the historical development of these forms within aesthetic, industrial, and political factors. We will also consider ethical issues in filmic representation, especially in relation to the ethnographic tradition.

This course is an introduction to both classical and contemporary film theory. It starts by examining the earliest attempts to understand the nature of cinema as a new art form, and then reviews the ways in which, through successive decades, a variety of theorists have formulated, and applied, their definitions of the essential nature of the medium. The course then examines more recent developments within film theory, notably its attempt to incorporate the insights of other critical and analytical paradigms, such as semiotics, structuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, and postmodernism.