COVERING CONTEMPORARY UK FILM, FRENCH NEW WAVE, POST-REVOLUTION IRANIAN CINEMA, AND MORE, THIS SHORT COURSE EXPLORES THE INTERSTICES BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION, QUESTIONING TRUTH AND OUR POSITIONING TOWARDS IT.

Course Description

By blending fact and fiction, some films draw on the stylistic traditions of both documentary and fiction films in various ways, at one time distancing its spectators from objective truth while on the other shedding a light on a kind of intensified reality. If the history of documentaries as a film genre is a history of addressing the question of what constitutes the representation of social reality and the fictional narrative film is an attempt to create an imaginative conception of what is called reality, recent contemporary examples have been challenging this divide in multiple ways, pushing the boundaries of the two genres to the extreme and merging one into the other. Nevertheless, far from being just a contemporary phenomenon, the blurring of these forms—documentary and fictional narrative—is a creative and interpretive challenge that filmmakers have been concerned with since the early days of cinema.

According to classic works like Walton’s Mimesis as Make-Believe (1990) and Currie’s The Nature of Fiction (1990), fiction essentially involves imagining whereas nonfiction essentially involves believing. However, more recent works like Friend’s Fiction as a Genre (2012) and Matravers’ Fiction and Narrative (2014) have challenged this conception of the fiction/nonfiction divide, opening a debate both in the community of academics and practitioners. This course would like to explore the interstices between the two, exploring a metaphorical truth, one that resonates without relying solely on empirical representation, opening serious questions about truth and our positioning towards it.

 

7 weeks, Wednesday evenings, 7 pm – 9 pm. 9^th April – 21^st May 2025.

 

Course Costs:

For each course, we offer three rates: General, Students/Concessions, and UCL Students. 

For a full breakdown of our costs/concessions, please reach our Terms and Conditions:

https://opencitylondon.com/school/terms-and-conditions/