FLM 16 — Camera as Witness: Politics, Culture, and the Power of Documentary Filmmaking
Quarter: Summer
Instructor(s): Jasmina Bojic
Date(s): Jun 24—Jul 29
Class Recording Available: No
Class Meeting Day: Mondays
Class Meeting Time: 6:30—9:00 pm (PT)
Tuition: $405
Refund Deadline: Jun 26
Unit(s): 1
Enrollment Limit: 85
Status: Registration opens May 20, 8:30 am (PT)
Quarter: Summer
Day: Mondays
Duration: 6 weeks
Time: 6:30—9:00 pm (PT)
Date(s): Jun 24—Jul 29
Unit(s): 1
Tuition: $405
Refund Deadline: Jun 26
Instructor(s): Jasmina Bojic
Enrollment Limit: 85
Recording Available: No
Status: Registration opens May 20, 8:30 am (PT)
This course offers a unique chance to become familiar with global political and cultural issues, understand the aesthetic capacities of documentary filmmaking, and view films that are rarely screened. Honoring themes of the transformative power of art, the course will present six unique films, three of them Oscar-nominated, ranging from Missing in Tibet, about a Tibetan-born exile sentenced to 18 years in prison by the Chinese authorities, to the story of a treasure trove of banned Soviet art worth millions of dollars found in Uzbekistan. The Most Dangerous Man in America follows Daniel Ellsberg’s decision to leak the top secret documents that led to the Watergate hearings and the resignation of President Nixon. Regret to Inform is a deeply personal yet universal portrayal of the lasting devastation of war through the eyes of Vietnamese and American widows of the Vietnam War. In Promises, we examine the Israeli–Palestinian conflict from the perspectives of seven children living in Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Israeli neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Finally, in Sing Your Song, we take an up-close look at the great American musician Harry Belafonte, one of the truly heroic cultural and political figures of the past 60 years. This selection of films demonstrates the strength of visual storytelling as a language of culture, and together we will discuss how these diverse topics are refracted through the prism of global politics.
All films will be viewed in class.
JASMINA BOJIC
Founder, Camera as Witness Program; Founder and Executive Director, United Nations Association Film Festival; Lecturer in International Relations, Stanford
Jasmina Bojic has taught at Stanford for more than 20 years and has been an international journalist since the 1980s. She founded the United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAFF), one of the first international documentary film festivals in the United States, in 1998. Textbooks for this course:
(Recommended) Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New - Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (ISBN 978-0375760464)
(Recommended) Mary Robinson, A Voice for Human Rights (ISBN 978-0812220070)
(Recommended) Erik Barnouw, Documentary, A History of the Non-fiction Film, 2nd Revised Edition (ISBN 978-0195078985)
(Recommended) Dorothy Fadiman and Tony Levelle, Producing With Passion - Making Films That Change the World (ISBN 978-1932907445)
(Recommended) Mary Robinson, A Voice for Human Rights (ISBN 978-0812220070)
(Recommended) Erik Barnouw, Documentary, A History of the Non-fiction Film, 2nd Revised Edition (ISBN 978-0195078985)
(Recommended) Dorothy Fadiman and Tony Levelle, Producing With Passion - Making Films That Change the World (ISBN 978-1932907445)