A MAGNIFIED WORLD: EXPERIMENTAL DOCUMENTARY
Ages 16-29
Summer 2020, Online
In this distance learning, experimental video workshop, each student fellow will shoot and edit a short documentary entirely constructed with close-up shots. Jean Epstein, a French filmmaker and theorist, wrote that the close-up is “the soul of cinema.” He suggested that close-ups create and reveal a world through a camera lens. Experimental documentaries differ from mainstream documentaries in many ways. While mainstream documentaries strive to be objective, to report about something, experimental documentaries are reports from and about the documentary maker. Experimental documentary makers create projects revealing how they see a world and how that world feels. Through their own documentaries fellows will discover and share their unique, personal worlds. They'll learn the basics of videography, including audio recording and editing. Their work will be shared at a virtual screening and on the program website. Limited to 8 student fellows.
John Mann is a documentary filmmaker and Senior Lecturer in the Film and Media Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. Works include the documentaries Shelter: Conversations with Homeless Men, Nicodemus, and Locust Point; the dance for the camera shorts Breathe In…Breathe Out and It Goes Without Saying; and the recent autobiographical short "if...then...”
Amelia Voos is a filmmaker and multimedia installation artist based in Baltimore. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Intermedia & Digital Arts at UMBC.
Emmet Sheehan is a Baltimore City native with a background in stage and film. He was part of the pilot program that helped launch the film department at Baltimore School for the Arts, and trained at North Carolina School of the Arts Summer Intensive. He is currently working on several short film projects.
