Questions We Can Help You To Answer
Paper instructions:
In "Social Observers," Grimshaw and Ravetz describe '60s direct cinema as a "new filmmaking approach that was hailed as a radical break with established forms of documenting social life...understood as a commitment to 'showing,' not telling-that is, in place of narrated films with their summary and expert opinion, audiences were now to be presented with materials generated from recording events, situations, and relationships as they unfolded... audiences were now expected to engage actively with what was presented, to evaluate the different kinds of evidence and interpret the significance of what they were being shown." In "The Reality-Based Community," Erika Balsom talks about contemporary returns to observational modes of documentary making in the context of the urgency of “the judicious study of discernible reality in an age of alternative facts." Use these two texts (and other readings from this week, if you'd like) as a framework for considering at least one film from Tuesday's class and one film from Thursday's class. How do you understand the changing significance and stakes of realism and observation in documentary filmmaking from the '60s to now?
