History, memory, truth, fiction: contemporary documentary practices

• Grant number: 18/26695-9
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Visiting Researcher Grant - International
• Start date: August 01, 2019
• End date: September 15, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Jane Mary Pereira de Almeida
• Grantee: Jane Mary Pereira de Almeida
• Visiting researcher: Greg David Cohen
• Visiting researcher institution: University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), United States
• Host Institution: Pró-Reitoria de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação. Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie (UPM). Instituto Presbiteriano Mackenzie. São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

An examination of critical documentary practices in contemporary filmmaking since the1960s, this course focuses primarily on non-fiction film and video, with additionalconsiderations of documentary photography, art installation, and participatory media. Ratherthan offer a survey of cinema history, the course instead addresses the ways in whichdocumentary artists from diverse contexts and periods have negotiated the complexities ofdocumentary representation itself. Themes may include the relationship of the present to thepast and of cultural knowledge to the archive; the construction of individual and collectivememory; the nexus of political agency and social space; the tension between art andeveryday life; and the limits of "truth" and "fiction". (AU)