Brendan,
This month certainly was a challenge. I always admired my professors but now I have a tremendous amount of empathy for the time and energy they pour into teaching.
Here’s what I learned while attempting to create a syllabus for “The Contemporary American Documentary” imaginary college course:
a. The more you know, the less you know. I thought I knew a thing or two about docs, but the deeper I dove the less grounded I felt. There is nothing more humbling than trying to wrap your brain around teaching someone else about something you love.
b. The internet is a mixed blessing. Yes there is more information at your finger tips, but while searching for relevant criticism about filmmaking I was reminded yet again that there is a lot more noise than signal online. One of the beauties of affiliating with an institution of higher learning is access to periodicals and journals. I miss that access.
c. I still love documentaries. Love. Love. Just as I am far more inclined to read narrative nonfiction than pick up a novel, I tend to gravitate more to documentaries than mainstream features. When compiling the list of films to watch for the course I impressed myself with how many of them I had already seen.
d. It would be super fun to actually teach a class on documentaries. For years I’ve harbored some fantasy of starting a film club, perhaps this is the motivation I need to make it a reality.
I’ve put up a 15-week syllabus online for you and others to review. I built the class off of pairs of themed movies in order to spark discussion about technique, genre and content.
The bones are there, but it is definitely a work in progress. You’ll notice that while I have two required texts, I haven’t yet figured out the reading schedule nor have I identified the right articles to supplement each weeks’ readings.
I have a sample lecture and lesson plan in the works… I’m planning on lecture on the basics of film language and a lesson plan on writing a treatment.
More to come, thank you for the challenge…
