Transcript Week7StudyGuide.ppt

Week 7: Study Guide for Oct. 25
Godmilow, “Kill the Documentary as We Know It”;
Nichols Ch. 8 – See Assn.#3 Austin, “To Leave the Confinements of His Humanness”
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1. What does Godmilow mean by documentary as the “pornography of the real”?
2. Which, of all of the 11 “Documentary Film Dogma” points, do you think it is most possible
and most productive for filmmakers to follow?
3. How does classical documentary answer the question, “How do we know”?
4. What does Godmilow, using the story about Picasso, mean when she says that the world
“cannot be represented”?
5. List aspects of the Inuit life in the twentieth century that are “erased” by Nanook of the
North?
6. Assess the difficulty of making a film that utilizes Godmilow’s idea of the “second track”
that is about ourselves. What would this film look like?
1. How are the two voices in Grizzly Man in opposition and in agreement?
2. How do the voice-overs then function to control images that “defy mastery” (Nichols) or
not, as Austin asks us to consider?
3. How exactly does Werner Herzog “perform” his role as motion picture auteur and is this
role in competition with his role as “male adventurer” or not?
4. Explain how Grizzly Man is to a degree structured (but not completely) like classical
narrative fiction film in its use of two devices: a) use of suspense (definition: withholding
or delaying outcomes) b) use of enigma in relation to closure (definition: all questions
answered, the fate of all characters decided at end of narrative)