True/False Film Fest sponsors class
Published Feb. 29, 2008
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Leaning over a workstation, graduate student Courtney Flatt videotapes professor Kirsteen Buchann as she examines the coat Maggie Robey designed as part of her senior class project at Stephens College. Flatt is filming a documentary for the True/False Film Fest-sponsored class, Documentary Film and History.
A few MU School of Journalism students are getting hands-on experience in the art, history and method of documentary film.
The class is sponsored in part by the True/False Film Fest, which will be held in Columbia this week from Thursday through Sunday. Directors and filmmakers participating in the festival will appear in the class to talk about their work.
Last semester, students graduating in the school’s convergence sequence said they wanted to create a documentary film class to be offered in the school, Convergence Journalism Chairman Mike McKean said.
This semester, McKean invited students who showed interest in the genre to take part in an experimental course in the history, theory and production of documentary film. The three-credit course will also challenge the students in groups of three or four to produce a mini-documentary as a final project for the class.
“There has been a growing desire on the part of students and faculty members to offer a class like this,” McKean said.
The directors of the True/False Film Fest were also eager to get involved.
“We’ve been talking to the J-school the last few years about doing a class like this and the timing was just really good this year,” festival Co-director Paul Sturtz said.
Sturtz and David Wilson have directed the festival for the last five years. The School of Journalism partly sponsored the festival for years, but before the class formed, the school had not cooperated with the festival in such a manner before, McKean said.
MU graduate Seth Ashley, who earned his masters from the School of Journalism, is the course’s instructor.
“We first started to talk about it early last semester,” he said. “Students were actually the first to contact me, and they were looking for help in putting together the course.”
Students who graduated in last year’s convergence sequence designed the course for their independent study capstone project. McKean said that was when the idea for the course really got going.
“What we’re actually doing with this course is to see if it can be an official course that the school would like to continue,” McKean said.
Photojournalism junior Ben Dillon is taking the class.
“I really like being exposed to a lot of documentaries that I don’t have a chance to see,” Dillon said. “It’s very independent, I think. We’re allowed to go outside the parameters of the J-school that, normally, we have to adhere to very strict journalistic rules and standards.”
So far, the students have pitched topics and have even begun to film their documentaries.
MU graduate Mindy Lonkausky, who is taking the class after graduation while she decides whether to attend graduate school, said she found out about the class from a flier last semester for an informational presentation.
“We get exposed to so many different documentaries that normally I would never have taken a look at,” she said.
In the class, students first create short films to acquaint themselves with the cameras, Ashley said. Then they started filming their documentaries.
“We’re not sure what the ultimate outlet will be, but I would like to have a screening at some point,” Ashley said.
