Flaherty and Grierson

Ok, here's a quote from Barnouw; I always like reading it--it is 'a helpful antidote' to some other readings...

"A Flaherty documentary had been a feature-length, close-up portrait of a group of people, remotely located but familiar in their humanity. The characteristic Grierson documentary dealt with impersonal social processes; it was usually a short film fused by a 'commentary' that articulated a point of view..." (99). Rothman (and Ebert) both talk about how Flaherty created Nanook (the character, although the man was a real Inuit hunter) and the familiar family structure (although the extended family of the Inuit was likely much different) and for that matter the family, just as he does in the film Man of Aran. We'll watch a few Grierson documentaries (or clips from a few, anyhow) tomorrow, and see what comparisons we can draw.

Passwords for the ERES Streaming + other sources for film viewing

Apparently I lied. The passwords for the films on the electronic reserve were in my possesssion and that document has now been added to the wonderful list of course materials over there --->
Sorry about that.

If you are like me and prefer your films downloaded in less windows-based formats so you can watch it on a bunch of other devices, then I would suggest finding the films in the Internet Archive.If you are not familiar with this website, it is about time. It is an academic database which provides us with books, images, films et cetera, which are in the public domain. In the books section you can download most books in most e-reader formats, and the films usually have several different formats to pick from.

(Some films are also available for streaming on Netflix, if you already have parttaken in that batch of koolaid)