This course is designed as both a colloquium on the many issues involved in conceptualizing and filming a documentary and a hands-on technical workshop. Through discussion, the students will be encouraged to focus on a subject and establish their own line of communication with it. Students will have to create short documentary videos shot on location in Rome, based on their research of fiction and non-fiction video ideas, learning how to direct a small crew and maintain creative control during filming and the evolutionary process of postproduction. They will be taught basic camera and editing techniques. The course will be complemented with occasional screenings of non-fictional material, whose distinctive features, merits and flaws, students will be invited to identify and discuss.

*Course content subject to change