MEDIAWORKS in Context:
Sustainability and Justice • Spring 2009
SPRING QUARTER FOCUS
Spring quarter is devoted to the development of short, individual or collaborative media projects, five to ten minutes (max) in length. Television productions can be individual or collaborative, producing up to 10 minutes each for the final screening. During the first part of the quarter, students will be engaged in conducting research and developing an annotated bibliography for a project exploring Mediaworks program themes and modes of representation. This means students are expected to draw upon fall and winter quarter readings, screenings, and study into experimental/documentary strategies of representation to inform their work. During the fall and winter we examined alternative experimental approaches to media production along with a variety of representational strategies including the following: European and American avant-gardes, underground and structuralist film, video art, the video essay, global cinema, intercultural cinema, autobiographical documentary, experimental ethnography, community access television production, audio experiments, and participatory, performative, or reflexive documentary. Projects are also expected to focus on some aspect of the broad thematic landscape of “sustainability and justice” and to utilize an experimental approach informed by the list of strategies above, even as students develop their own innovative forms. Students are also expected to build upon the skills they developed during the fall and winter media production workshops to create media projects at an intermediate to advanced level.