Full Frame finds way into classroom

Warmly lit with comfortably padded seats and a massive projection screen, the Nasher Museum of Art Auditorium is not your ordinary classroom-but then again, Documentary Studies 129 is not your ordinary class.

Cross-listed in the film/video/digital, political science and public policy studies programs, the lengthy-titled Contemporary Documentary Film: Filmmakers and the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival offers students a unique chance to explore documentary film through the perspectives of filmmakers themselves.

The course, now in its second semester of instruction, is taught by not one professor, but three. David Paletz, director of the Program in Film/Video/Digital, and Tom Rankin, Center for Documentary Studies director, are joined by Nancy Buirski-Full Frame's chief executive officer. Students have the rare opportunity to learn from two department directors in a single class.

Rankin said the purpose of the class is beyond learning how to analyze documentary film, learning how it is made and how directors explain their point-of-view.

"What is really important for this class is not only what you learn about the medium, but the issues these films confront-like high school sex education in rural Texas with The Education of Shelby Knox."

The documentaries studied in the class, which runs for four hours once-a-week, range from Academy Award-nominated war doc Iraq in Fragments to TV documentary The Last Days of Left Eye, which chronicles the death of TLC member Lisa Lopes.

Although the class encourages a heavy focus on the study of film, many of the students, like Rachel Saperstein, are not budding filmmakers.

The junior said she took the class as an interesting way to fill her Science, Technology and Society Mode of Inquiry requirement as a Trinity undergraduate, but initially had a few concerns.

"It is an enormously rich opportunity," Rankin said. "You could go to any major city in America and not have this opportunity."

Although the festival in past years has been well-attended by out-of-towners and Durhamites alike, it has been historically overlooked by many Duke students.

"I had not heard of the film festival before this year," Saperstein said. "Had I heard it existed, I might have gone to it."

Contemporary Documentary Film students are required to attend a panel and two screenings of the prize-winning films, held April 15. However, Buirski said she hopes students enrolled in the class will encourage other students to attend.

Beyond mandatory festival attendance, students spend the semester studying mostly Full Frame-screened documentaries and receive four guest lectures by filmmakers who have participated in the festival.

"The speakers really sperate the class from any normal film class. They offer a hands-on perspective on making their movies and the issues they deal with," Rankin said.

Guest lecturers for this semester include Kirby Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated) and MTV's Lauren Lazin (Tupac: Resurrection). The filmmakers offer what Buirski describes as "an incredible opportunity to discuss film in an intimate setting."

Although students like Saperstein may not start out as filmmakers, Buirski believes that the course may affect them profoundly.

"I think some of them may decide that they want to create documentaries or enter the film industry," she added.

If Buirski is right, Contemporary Documentary Film students today may find themselves in the warmly lit confines of Nasher auditorium discussing their films with future students.