FTVMS 316

Mockumentary and Docu-Genres

Please note: this is archived course information from 2017 for FTVMS 316.

Description

This course exposes students to key debates in documentary studies, cinematic realism and generic innovation. From its inception, documentary’s status as a representation of the "truth" has been fiercely contested. What is documentary’s relationship to fact and reality? How are audiences influenced ideologically and emotionally by cinematic technique including highly sophisticated and increasingly ubiquitous digital technologies?

Studying the emergence of fake documentary, mockumentary, docu-soap and docu-drama will show students not only how documentary is conventionally conceptualised, but also how reflexivity, irony and parody operate in factual filmmaking. By looking at ways in which documentary form has been modified, hybridised and applied to non-documentary genres, this course examines how truth claims have been constructed and how genres undergo transformation. Students will also have an opportunity to examine how documentary and dramatic narrative interrelate historically and in the present.

Availability 2017

Not taught in 2017

Lecturer(s)

Coordinator(s) Associate Professor Sarina Pearson

Reading/Texts

Points

FTVMS 316: 15 points

Prerequisites

30 points at Stage II in Media, Film and Television

Restrictions

FTVMS 220