CDM 216 | Course Introduction and Application Information - Department of Cinema and Digital Media

Course Name

History and Theory of Documentary Film

Code	Semester	Theory (hour/week)	Application/Lab (hour/week)	Local Credits	ECTS
CDM 216	Fall/Spring	3	0	3	4

Prerequisites	None
Course Language	English
Course Type	Elective
Course Level	First Cycle
Mode of Delivery	face to face
Teaching Methods and Techniques of the Course	Discussion Q&A Lecture / Presentation
National Occupation Classification	-
Course Coordinator	-
Course Lecturer(s)	Prof. Dr. DİLEK KAYA
Assistant(s)	-

Course Objectives	This course examines the history, theory, and practice of documentary film through close engagement with films from different periods, traditions, and formal approaches. Documentary cinema is approached as a mode of knowledge production, an artistic form, and a powerful means of storytelling. Through viewings, discussion, and assignments, students explore how documentaries construct perspectives on reality rather than simply record it.
Learning Outcomes	The students who succeeded in this course; Identify major historical developments, movements, and approaches in documentary film. Classify documentary films according to major modes and explain the characteristics that support their classification. Analyze how cinematography, framing, sound, editing, narration, interviews, archival material, reconstruction, animation, and narrative structure construct meaning and shape perspectives on reality. Compare documentary films from different periods and approaches in terms of their formal strategies and relationships between filmmaker, subject, and audience. Evaluate documentary representations in relation to truth, evidence, ethics, power, memory, and representation, using specific examples from films.
Course Description	The course moves through major documentary modes tracing how each shapes the relationship between filmmaker, subject, and audience. Along the way, it discusses questions of truth, evidence, ethics, power, and representation, and considers how reconstruction, animation, archival material, and experimental narrative strategies expand the possibilities of documentary filmmaking. Historically foundational and canonical works are introduced through in-class clips and lectures, while the full-length films assigned for viewing are drawn from recent and contemporary documentary practice.
Related Sustainable Development Goals

Course Category	Core Courses
	Major Area Courses
	Supportive Courses	X
	Media and Management Skills Courses
	Transferable Skill Courses

Week	Subjects	Related Preparation
1	Introduction and Course Overview Preliminary remarks on documentary form; overview of the course structure and expectations.	Course syllabus on IEU Learn
2	Whose Reality? Documentary and the Filmmaker’s Perspective How filmmakers select, frame, organize, and present reality; introduction to documentary voice and address. In class viewing and discussion: Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary (Pepita Ferrari, 2008, 97 min.)	Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary (Pepita Ferrari, 2008, 97 min.)
3	From Actuality to Documentary: Origins and Early Innovations From actuality films and early nonfiction practices to more interpretive, persuasive, and organized approaches to representing reality.
4	Documentary as Argument: The Expository Mode How documentaries use narration, evidence, interviews, archival material, and editing to construct an argument.	Ecumenopolis: City Without Limits (Imre Azem, 2011, 88 min.)
5	Documentary as Poetry and Thought: The Poetic Mode and the Essay Film Visual association, rhythm, montage, found footage, and meaning-making through images and sound.	Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1982, 86 min.) and/or The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000, 82 min.)
6	One Place, One Voice: A Documentary Challenge An independent, hands-on documentary exercise exploring how form, voice, and perspective shape the representation of a familiar place on campus.	Mobile phone or digital camera
7	Watching Without Intervening: Direct Cinema, the Observational Mode, and the Myth of Neutrality How filmmakers create the appearance of unobtrusive observation, and how the camera’s presence inevitably shapes what we see.	Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska & Ljubomir Stefanov, 2019, 89 min.)
8	Midterm Assessment	One Place, One Voice: Individual Written Reflection
9	Cinema Vérité: Presence, Encounter, Spontaneity, and Uncertainty Cinema vérité and the filmmaker’s encounter with reality, focusing on presence, interaction, spontaneity, and the unpredictable relationship between filmmaker and subject.	Minding the Gap (Bing Liu, 2018, 93 min.)
10	The Participatory Mode: The Filmmaker as Presence How interaction with subjects shapes documentary voice, perspective, and storytelling.	Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley, 2012, 108 min)
11	Access, Trust, and Intimacy in Documentary How documentary relationships develop over time, and how access, trust, intimacy, and the filmmaker’s position shape the representation of subjects. In-class viewing and discussion: The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle, 2015, 90 min.)	The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle, 2015, 90 min.)
12	Reconstructing Reality: Evidence, Reenactment, and the Documentary Image Reenactment as a documentary strategy; how reconstruction, interviews, music, and visual style can transform evidence into an argument.	The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988, 102 min.)
13	The Ethics and Limits of Representation: Documentary and Trauma How documentary approaches traumatic events, and the questions of memory, evidence, ethics, and representation.	The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012, 117 min.)
14	Animation and the Documentary Imagination How animation can represent memory, testimony, experience, and events that cannot be directly filmed.	Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, 2021, 89 min.)
15	The Transcendental Narrative vs. the Classical Narrative Moving beyond conventional documentary storytelling to explore how open-ended encounters, duration, repetition, and everyday moments can create meaning without a conventional narrative arc. In-class viewing and discussion: Anything Can Happen (Marcel Łoziński, 1995, 39 min.)	Anything Can Happen (Marcel Łoziński, 1995, 39 min.)
16	Final Exam

Course Notes/Textbooks

Suggested Readings/Materials

Bill Nichols (2017). Introduction to Documentary, 3rd Edition (Indiana University Press)

Wilma de Jong, Erik Knudsen, and Jerry Rothwell (2012). Creative Documentary: Theory and Practice (Routledge)

Semester Activities	Number	Weigthing
Participation	1	10
Laboratory / Application
Field Work
Quizzes / Studio Critiques
Portfolio
Homework / Assignments	1	25
Presentation / Jury
Project	1	15
Seminar / Workshop
Oral Exams
Midterm	1	15
Final Exam	1	35
Total

Weighting of Semester Activities on the Final Grade	4	65
Weighting of End-of-Semester Activities on the Final Grade	1	35
Total

Semester Activities	Number	Duration (Hours)	Workload
Theoretical Course Hours (Including exam week: 16 x total hours)	16	3	48
Laboratory / Application Hours	16		0
Study Hours Out of Class	9	2	18
Field Work			0
Quizzes / Studio Critiques			0
Portfolio			0
Homework / Assignments	5	3	15
Presentation / Jury			0
Project	1	14	14
Seminar / Workshop			0
Oral Exam			0
Midterms	1	8	8
Final Exam	1	17	17
		Total	120

#	Program Competencies/Outcomes	* Contribution Level
#	Program Competencies/Outcomes	1	2	3	4	5
1	To be able to have fundamental knowledge about narrative forms in cinema, digital and interactive media, and the foundational concepts relevant to these forms.	-	-	-	X	-
2	To be able to create narratives based on creative and critical thinking skills, by using the forms and tools of expression specific to cinema and digital media arts.	-	-	-	-	-
3	To be able to use the technical equipment and software required for becoming a specialist/expert in cinema and digital media.	-	-	-	-	-
4	To be able to perform skills such as scriptwriting, production planning, use of the camera, sound recording, lighting and editing, at the basic level necessary for pre-production, production and post-production phases of an audio-visual work; and to perform at least one of them at an advanced level.	-	-	-	-	-
5	To be able to discuss how meaning is made in cinema and digital media; how economy, politics and culture affect regimes of representation; and how processes of production, consumption, distribution and meaning-making shape narratives.	-	-	-	-	-
6	To be able to perform the special technical and aesthetic skills at the basic level necessary to create digital media narratives in the fields of interactive film, video installation, experimental cinema and virtual reality.	-	-	-	X	-
7	To be able to critically analyze a film or digital media artwork from technical, intellectual and artistic perspectives.	-	-	-	-	-
8	To be able to participate in the production of a film or digital media artwork as a member or leader of a team, following the principles of work safety and norms of ethical behavior.	-	-	-	X	-
9	To be able to stay informed about global scientific, social, economic, cultural, political, institutional and industrial developments.	-	-	-	-	-
10	To be able to develop solutions to legal, scientific and professional problems surrounding the field of cinema and digital media.	-	-	-	-	-
11	To be able to use a foreign language to communicate with colleagues and collect data in the field of cinema and digital media. ("European Language Portfolio Global Scale", Level B1).	-	-	-	X	-
12	To be able to use a second foreign language at the medium level.	-	-	-	-	-
13	To be able to connect the knowledge accumulated throughout human history to the field of expertise.	-	-	-	-	-