Università Roma Tre

Exploring archive sources and re-elaborating them through the editing process
Film archives, photographic archives, libraries, newspaper archives: from newsreels to magazines, from Super8 to photography… the theoretical and practical process of an archive-based documentary.

The objective is to make students aware of a highly creative approach to filmmaking, capable of connecting past and present in historical and anthropological terms.

Through the course students will view, analyse and discuss key films where archive is the most important if not the only component in terms of visual language. The lecturer will draw on his own experience with this genre as a filmmaker and explore the work of Italian and foreign directors: from Nicola Caracciolo to Alina Marazzi, from Peter Forgacs to Errol Morris… examining in detail the creative potential of working with archive materials.

In the final phase of the workshop the class will be divided into four groups. Each group will choose a subject together with the lecturer and embark on a research project, working online but also visiting specific archives, so as to prepare an outline of a narrative developed through the research process. For those students with an editing background we will also consider the post-production of selected archive materials (on their own personal Avid or Final Cut) to cut a sequence of 5’ maximum based on the written outline.