The Writing Task
Answer the following:
Write summaries for each of the articles in the Week 4 module (will provide week 4 module once assigned). You can be brief here, but write in full sentences and make sure you are demonstrating that you understood the topic and articles major claims/conclusions.
Watch the short documentary, Among Giants (will provide link). Then summarize the film (do NOT just use the summary on the website. Seriously.) Once you have summarized it, break down the argument the film is making and how. Speak to both the rhetorical strategies and the specific film techniques you notice. I suggest you also use my lecture for this week.
Writer Anais Nin once said that “we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” To what extent do you agree with this statement? How does it complicate your previous notions about documentary as a genre?
Documentary is often thought of as a presentation of “reality.” But it is important for us, as critical thinkers and skeptical viewers, to remember that these films are art, and are therefore constructed things. Do you think documentary’s value lies in a striving for objectivity, or do you believe that the perspective and subjectivity of both the filmmaker and those they capture are teaching us something just as important?
