Class Notes - 11/3/14

Documentary as a challenge to history

Capital H history> official, institutional
sanctioned, documented

Little H history - undocumented, offer oral renegade, in its impulse to speak truth to power, handled down and unsancteous.

Documentary as Critical Art fact as history.

Documentary cinema is intimately tied to historical memory
- not only does it seek to reconstruct historical narrative, but often functions as an historical document itself
 - different uses of documentary results in a wide variety of formal strategies

To persuade audience of films truth
these stratgies are based on a desire to enlist the audience in the process of historical reconstruction

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Documentary Form

documentary film differentiates itself from narrative cinema by claiming its status as a truth-telling mode

The documentary calls upon audience to participate in historical remembering by presenting an intimate view of ...

It relies on cinematic seimosis
- to convince its audience of its validity and truth
Through cinematic devices such as montage, voice-over in intertitles + long takes, documentary provokes its audience to new ....

Matt's Presentation----

Watched Paris is Burning
Drag Culture - what about issues about the film?

Subverting hegemonic ideal

Hooks argues that Livingston is too far ensconsed in white hegemonic power structures to do this accurately.

Camera changes behavior

"Observer effect"

Issue representative of "whiteneing" of class w/ film

Bell hooks says Livingston uses Venus Xtravaganza as "spectacle"
Film pays more attention to her life as a sex worker than her murder
no scenes of grief is shown

--Referencing Linda Alcoff's Speaking for others essay

- Speaking from within is speaking directly from experience
- first hand knowledge of culture problems, etc
 - passionate about group/cause

- speaking from outside is to speak from observation
-detached look
- perhaps access to resources outside of group (money, equipment, etc)

Criteria for legitmacy
- Awareness of hegemonic hierachy

Hooks positions Paris is Burning

- Speaking to rather than FOR
- Embrace of dicservice role
rather than rejection
accept and acknowledge position.
- Do not pressure authority over group
 - Accept the possibility of the group to produce their own counter-narrative

-When going to speak - figure out where you are going to speak from
Who is being represented in the documentary
Whose interest does the representation serve
who controls the means of documentary representation.