Clocks for Seeing
Documentary Theory & Practice
In case you do not know where the Institute for Modern Media is located the building is pinpointed on the map below. Our classroom will be the third floor New Media Lab.
This is where we will post reading and homework assignments for our Documentary Theory & Practice course.
For March 2
Required Reading for Week 7: Lopate, Phillip ‘Totally, Tenderly, Tragically’ (1998) Essays and Criticism From a Life-long Love Affair With the Movies, 384 pp. New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday.
Assignment: 12 minute Presentation of Lopate’s key points, references and argument:
(Bashar Saadeh, respondent: Fadi Abu Nimeh)
(Reham Abdelrahman, respondent: Salah Shbak)
All presentations will use no more than 3 minute clips to illustrate the authors points. Your proposal/argument of the AUTHOR's work will be well structured, your notes and summary will be concise, well researched, and well annottated.
Respondents can only use the auther's percieved intent in counter-presentation, (no personal opinions). The repondent will write notes throughout the presenters presentation to reply in a relevent manner.
For February 23
Assignment: The short paper about institutional sponsorship as assigned in class due Saturday Feb 22. Also your "on the way to IMM" photos.
Reading: Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Documentary Is/Not a Name, October, Vol. 52 (Spring, 1990), pp. 76-84 only
A simple example of the expository mode is here on Al Jazeera.
Enrichment reading due week 6
Hot off the press- an interview with Akram Zaatari on the film we viewed 'On Photography, People and Modern Times'. Note also his other remarks on: effective Kodak marketing matarialised into 1950's photographs looking the same across the world, the economy of studio production after colour processing labs opened up in the Arab world, and his sudden 'mistrust' of archival institutions after he effectively created them.