I have gotten so much from this course! Starting out, I knew pretty much nothing about documentary filmmaking. I’m not a political person, I didn’t know a lot about the things brought up in class, I found the readings really challenging and I started to worry I was just way in over my head. I wanted to do this studio because I was interested in getting to make films, but knowing I would have to do so poetically and that the rules of documentary form were to be broken was a concern. What if I couldn’t do it? What if I didn’t have the mind for political documentary? But everything about the course has been great. The people in my class were so nice, and I loved the format of getting in front of the class each lesson and sharing work, pitching ideas and getting feedback. That is really what taught me what documentary is about, more so than doing readings or watching existing films. Discussing each others work in relation to documentary filmmaking and poetics definitely led to me not only understanding the topics better, but also making some films I’m quite proud of and feel confident about the messages they’re conveying.
Links to previous reflections/blog posts:
How do we make documentary that is both political and poetic?
