Documentary Film and History - HIST2036

   
   
 
Course Outline: See below
 
 
Campus: Kensington Campus
 
 
Career: Undergraduate
 
 
Units of Credit: 6
 
 
EFTSL: 0.12500 (more info)
 
 
Indicative Contact Hours per Week: 4
 
 
Enrolment Requirements:
 
 
Prerequisite: 36 units of credit
 
 
Equivalent: MEFT2204
 
 
Fee Band: 1 (more info)
 
 
Further Information: See Class Timetable
 
 

Description


Explores documentary films as historical, cultural and philosopical texts. Analyses the ways in which documentary films represent, construct and rememer the past, and the ethical and political dimensions of the genre. Covers a broad spectrum of twentieth-century documentary traditions. Issues discussed may include: photography and historical memory, ideology and practice, propaganda and the state, representations of war, ethnographic film, enrvironmental and natural history, popular memory and gender, narrative forms, cinema verite, dramatised documentaries and television and contemporary history.


Learning Outcomes


Students who successfully complete the course will be able to:
  • Offer a theoretically and historically informed analysis of documentary film as a form of historical narrative and as a cinematic genre
  • Describe and assess the similarities and differences between the way that written texts and films represent and construct history
  • Give a critical account of the use and abuse of memory and the political and subjective nature of history in film
  • Situate documentary films in their national, generic, cultural and historical contexts.