Film Studies 3

Between Fiction and Documentary
*Syllabus and bibliography to be distributed during the first session
Most films involve elements of both fiction and documentary, and this course will explore those that explore the 
boundaries between these two “genres”. We will focus particularly on fictions that capture what Éric Rohmer 
called “la liberté du réel pris sur le vif”. Our starting point will be Italian neo-realism as theorized by André Bazin, 
and we will traverse different moments throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in a cross-cultural 
study (Rouch, Varda, Kiarostami…). These films resonate with the French double meaning of histoire, and our aim 
is to explore how these fictions become both documents of historical significance and clichés of everyday life. We 
will pay particular attention to the technical and formal importance of these films, as well as their relation with 
what has been labelled the “essay film”.