EMC: Abstract: What Is a Documentary?; Ways of Storytelling*

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What Is a Documentary?; Ways of Storytelling*

• 1993 ----- color ----- 111 min ----- vhs
• (Constructing Reality: Exploring Media Issues in Documentary series) Presents an overview of the films, filmmakers, and issues in the nine hour collection. Examines the range of choices open to film and videomakers who fashion a story with elements from "real" life. City of Gold (22 min), the first documentary to be made almost entirely of still photos is a stirring account of the Klondike Gold Rush; New Shoes (6 min), a deceptively simple kitchen interview with a young woman whose boyfriend tried to kill her raises provocative questions about memory and the way in which media shape and distort experience; Interview with Ann Marie Fleming (7 min) director of New Shoes talks about the choices she made in presenting her material, and discusses the shaping of the same story first as a documentary, then as a drama; Memorandum (Excerpts) (30 min), a haunting cinema verite inquiry into the "banality of evil" follows a concentration camp survivor back to Bergen-Belsen in Germany years after his liberation; Our Marilyn (27 min), the first crossing of Lake Ontario by marathon swimmer Marilyn Bell becomes the starting point for an impressionistic meditation on heroism, Canadian identity, and cultural mythologies of the female body. (Donated by the Department of Canadian Studies) (Restricted to use by institutions of learning within the State of Washington only)
• Topics: (Audiovisual Education, Canadian Studies, History: Canadian, Motion Pictures: Documentary, Women Studies)

		Educational Media Collection risimiki@u.washington.edu Modified: January 11, 2007