DOCUMENTING HORROR

This seven-week course kicks off an entire Winter 2016 semester devoted to the horrors of the real. Seven instructors offer their unique scholarly approaches to the varied convergences of horror and documentary cinema. Topics include pseudo-documentary horror, fake found-footage horror, the French cinema of sensation, horror in experimental documentary and the essay film, archival horror, and horror film samples in industrial music. Screenings may include: THE ACT OF KILLING (2014), LEÇONS DES TÉNÈBRES (1999), and THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE (1971).

 

Week 1: From HAXAN to HELLSTROM and Beyond: The Critical Convergence of Horror and Documentary Cinemas

(Tuesday, 2 February)

• Screening: HAXAN: WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES (1922, Benjamin Christensen)
• Instructor, Kristopher Woofter

Week 2: Caravaggio’s Luminous Flesh: Sensation, Corporeality, and the Documentary: LEÇONS DES TÉNÈBRES

(Tuesday, 9 February)

• Screening: LEÇONS DES TÉNÈBRES (1999, Vincent Dieutre)
• Instructor, Mario DeGiglio-Bellemare

Week 3: The Monstrous Archive(s): The Redeployment of Horror Cinema by Found Footage Experimental Filmmakers

(Tuesday, 16 February)

• Screenings: OUTER SPACE (2009, Peter Tscheserkassky) and other shorts
• Instructor, Annaëlle Winand

Week 4: A Body Too Few—Horror Reenactment and THE ACT OF KILLING

(Tuesday, 23 February)

• Screening: THE ACT OF KILLING (2014, Joshua Oppenheimer)
• Instructor, Ned Schantz

Week 5: Horror Docudrama Cinema Meets the Avant-Garde

(Tuesday, 1 March)

• Screening: THE WAR GAME (1965, Peter Watkins)
• Instructor, Anne Golden

Week 6: “Jesus Wept”: Sampling, Sympathy, and the Animal in Industrial Music

(Tuesday, 8 March)

• Listening will include Skinny Puppy’s VIVIsectVI (1988) and RABIES (1989) and a possible screening
• Instructor, Shalon Noble

Week 7: “What if?”: The Metaphysical Horror of the Conditional Tense Documentary

(Tuesday, 15 March)

• Screening: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (OPÉRATION LUNE) (2002, William Karel)
• Instructor, Papagena Robbins