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Winter 2009 • HUM 596 | FRENCH 570 | COMP LIT 596
Making Waves: French Postwar Documentary, 1945-1967
Instructor: Steven Ungar, French and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa
MTWTh 5:30-7:20 PM COM 243
Registrar - Time Schedule
This seminar studies documentary filmmaking in France during the two decades following the end of the 1940-1944 Nazi occupation. Readings, discussions, and screenings will explore links between documentary practices and the emergence of the French New Wave whose impact on filmmaking between 1959 and 1968 was worldwide. Analyses of individual films will alternate with contextual approaches to social and political crises of the period such as U.S.-style modernization, the Cold War, decolonization, and generational clashes involving an emergent youth culture. Films to be studied include The Blood of the Beasts (Georges Franju), Night and Fog & All the Memory of the World (Alain Resnais), L’Opéra Mouffe (Agnès Varda), Chronicle of a Summer (Jean Rouch), The Merry Month of May & The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (Chris Marker), and Statues Also Die (Resnais & Marker). Readings will include book-length studies by Bill Nichols, Michel Marie, and Kristin Ross as well as a course-pack of articles. We will begin with an overview of early documentary practices in France, from the Lumière Brothers to Jean Vigo and Luis Buñuel. (Screenings may include films by Robert Flaherty, Joris Ivens, and Dziga Vertov.)
Students will be expected to: (1) prepare all assignments on the syllabus; (2) attend all seminar meetings and screenings; (3) complete a 15-20 pp. research paper whose topic is determined in consultation with the instructor during the first three weeks of the quarter; and (4) make a 20-minute seminar presentation in conjunction with their research topic. They should come away from the seminar with: (1) improved analytical skills; (2) knowledge of the history of documentary filmmaking in France: and (3) a sense of the political and social history in France between 1945 and 1967. Final grade will be computed as follows:
- Preparation, Attendance, & Participation: 60%
- Seminar Presentation: 15%
- Research Paper: 25%
This course is intended for graduate students with interests in Film Studies, Comparative Literature, French &Francophone Studies, and History. Assigned readings and seminar discussion will be in English. Knowledge of French is recommended, but not required. Whenever possible, screenings will be shown with English-language subtitles or with translations.
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Undergraduate Courses