Art and Documentary

"Art and Documentary" course combines and explores two fields of the humanities, which are in a constant dialogue between them: Art and Documentary.

In the first part of the course, the subject of study is art, with the main objectives:

The investigation of its narrative role in subjects such as visual testimony, historical imagination, the visualization of the idea, self-referentiality,
The approach to its visual vocabulary and its representational direction and
The familiarity with the various forms of modern art, whether it is a painting or sculptural illustration or an audiovisual installation or action.

In this direction, interpretative theories are utilized, with the combined use of methodological tools, for the analysis of works of art, with reference to:

Their visual testimony-narrative in terms of space, time, persons and action and
The adventure of creation, visual direction, construction techniques and materials.

In the second part, the course focuses on the history and theory of the documentary and examines it as a specialtype of audio-visualart. Key axes are the relationship of the documentary with fiction, communication, science, as well as with other forms of art. More specifically and in continuation of the frameworks and research approaches that have already been set, weask ourselves: Is the documentary necessarily an audio-visual documentation material? Is it a rhetorical practice that constructs and promotes its own truths in anattempt to convince us of a point?

Does it work educationally and pedagogically towards an education of the citizen; does it become a journalistic discourse with the aim of presenting alternative subjectivities? Or is it closer to art, to experimentation, to fiction? We examine these questions through exemplary schools and movements, such as the British Documentary School, Cinéma Vérité, Direct Cinema, while special mention is made of the contemporary trend of interactive documentaries.