UMaine Class on Camden Film Festival Documentaries Begins
Contact: George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO — The University of Maine’s Department of Continuing and Distance Education (DCDE) through the UMaine Division of Lifelong Learning this weekend begins its second annual three-credit-hour class designed around the 2006 Camden International Film Festival, a class that analyzes the making and meaning of documentary films.
The course will teach students to critically assess documentary films, so they can attend and participate in the 2006 Camden Film Festival Sept. 28-Oct. 1. The UMaine classes begin Saturday, Sept. 16, and consist of three all-day Saturday sessions continuing Sept. 23 and Oct. 14. Prospective students who have not registered for the class and would like to are welcome to attend the first Saturday session on Sept. 16, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Hill Auditorium in Barrows Hall, and register Monday at DCDE in Chadbourne Hall.
The film festival companion classes typically engage students in the critical language, history and potentials of documentary filmmaking, a rapidly growing method of shedding light on situations or events not covered by more mainstream media. Besides attending documentary screenings at the festival, students will have opportunities to discuss the films in public forums, and meet some of the filmmakers in seminar conferences, according to art professor Michael Grillo, who will co-teach the class.
Grillo will be joined by English professor Tony Brinkley and Mike Scott, lecturer in new media at UMaine. Grillo and Brinkley have taught courses based on documentaries; Scott studies them to see how evolving new media technologies can redefine and reshape documentaries.
“In many ways, the program, again, looks at how documentary films can work to reveal parts of the world that people just don’t know about,” Grillo says. The class will explore what makes a documentary work and what it takes to be a documentarian, and “just what do we mean by documentary?” Grillo says.
Students may choose from six different academic disciplines in which to earn credit. Disciplines are art, art history, new media, peace studies and university studies, a program developed for non-traditional and part-time students.
Documentaries are no longer confined to the Discovery or Disney channels. They are being used for humanitarian, environmental, scientific and political purposes, and some documentaries are being viewed in major theaters along with giant commercial pictures.
The two-year-old Camden International Film Festival is dedicated to examining the world, the global family and people through the lenses and minds of the finest non-fiction visual storytellers. In its first season, the festival highlighted the world’s “lesser-known evils,” focusing on some of the most unjust social situations.
This year, it is open to, and will screen all forms of the documentary, striving to highlight the cinematic form’s artistic value. The Camden International Film Festival’s program will consist of selected films that exemplify today’s finest documentary filmmaking examining the artistic and cultural relevance of the cinematic form. The film festival also will explore independent documentary film through question and answer sessions with directors and filmmakers, panels, lectures and special events.