nada /DANM299
I am working with B. Ruby Rich for this class and DANM requirement.
Here is the 
syllabus and the reader.
Prior to the beginning of this class, I had three recommendations from my thesis committee. Soraya recommended that watch Passage/Pulse/Possessed by Shirin Neshat. Ruby recommended that I watch Local Angel by Udi Aloni. Beth recommended that I watch Surname Viet Given Name Nam by Trinh T. Minh-ha. I watched them all.
Another documentary that I watched was Chris Sollar's "C RED BLUE J". This movie is pieced together through an archive of family super-8 films, photos, interviews, and art videos. The story personalizes the policital division of the 2004 Presidential campaign as the Gay Marriage Vote is tactically used to split the Nation's vote and the director's family. "C RED BLUE J" puts a face to the name of the opposition and reconstructs the lack of communication within a family and the nation.
The movie can found here His website is 667Shotwell Here's his piles of trash video
With this class, I'm watching, reading and listening about Social Documentation. For our first class, I watched two documentaries: Chile Obstinate by Patricio Guzman and Memory and Stranger with a Camera by Elizabeth Barrett.
I also read about murmur a brilliant concept involving site specific audio artwork. The project has these locations with a murmur sign and "a telephone number on it that anyone can call with a mobile phone to listen to that story while standing in that exact spot, and engaging in the physical experience of being right where the story takes place. Some stories suggest that the listener walk around, following a certain path through a place, while others allow a person to wander with both their feet and their gaze." murmur was initially developed with the assistance of the CFC Media Lab, Toronto.
The stories range from personal recollections to more "historic" stories, or sometimes both -- but always are told from a personal point of view, as if the storyteller is just out for a stroll and was casually talking about their neighborhood to a friend. Here's a map of Kensington. The red dots represent the murmur stations.
For the second class;
I listened to Ghetto Life 101 from Chuck Kleinhans review in Jump Cut called the "Audio documentary: a polemical introduction for the visual studies crowd" Some links he recommended: http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml
link to: http://liveradio.indymedia.org/
This is the type of documentary allows the people (kids) tell their stories.
Indymedia is the premiere progressive alternative media source; a hub for hundreds of different sources — print, video, audio, etc. around the world. Started by activists involved in the Seattle WTO protests, it has expanded to many different social action issues.
I watched Primary by Robert Drew. This is the first US Cinema Verite with a new small camera and synch sound. The story is about Jack Kennedy running against Hubert Humphrey in Wisconsin 1960. There are beautiful pictures of the young couple. The crew followed both democratic candidates for presidency for a week night and day.
Inlaws and Outlaws by Drew Emery was another documentary I watched about love and marriage. It's a pretty typical style with staged musical interludes. The shots were more mid and full body shots with tailored seating area but in the same garage.
Bill Nichols speaks of Harvest of Shame and Primary in his book Representing Reality. Chapter II, talks about the documentary modes of representation, the expository mode, the observational mode, the interactive mode, the reflexive mode of representation and strategies. Chapter III speaks of the ethical space in documentary film, axiographics.
I want to go through these modes. The expository mode has voice of god, Harvest of Shame would be a good example, disclosing information. Observational mode of representation in documentaries record unobtrusively people's actions, Primary for example. Interactive mode would engages the subject and allows the filmmaker to be more present. The reflexive mode concerns (Dziga and Vertov) with historical the world addressing questions and are the most self-conscious. The Thin Blue Line is an example of a reflexive representation. This type of documentary may contain unusual juxtapositions, graphic intertitles and unusual cuts or framing of shots. Also the filmmaker may engage in participatory, conversational, or interrogative fashions of interactivity.
I watched Harvest of Shame that is about the plight of migrant workers, broadcast 1960. Standard documentary with voices of god such as Edward R Murrow. "We used to own our Slaves, now we rent." "The talking head says...." The racism is outrageous particularly the Florida Agriculture Secretary. Workers of sweatshop of the earth. Murrow's poetic morality drama. Brings to mind the movie "Stranger with a camera." This is exploitative yet had to be told. There is the quandary. The talking heads were introduced at the beginning quickly and then revisited later. Black head, white head, talking head, black , AFL-CIO. Ends with appeal for call to action.
Sebasto Saldago "looking back at you" BBC 1993 a story about a photojournalist working on manual labor around the world. Begins with gold mine in Brazil. The artist speaks of the modernist spectacle of commodity disengages the consumer from the production. Then he went to sugar cane production in Brazil and documented the violence of the work with the machete. "I take pictures with my friends, my mother, father. I take pictures with my ideology." As a child, he witnessed the movement to modernity without negative judgment. His pictures of the steel mill show the enormity. He shares his tools with the filmmaker. He doesn't use the zoom much. This is when he knows he is not inside the picture. He is not concentrating enough. He gets to know the subjects, speaks with them, takes the time. He takes six years to make a documentary so that he can belong in the group to recieve the photos. He doesn't pose them because he doesn't want the photographer in the photo. He is very concerned with the dignity of the subject, preserve and protect and not degrading. He follows the huge transition of modernization.