230266 Music Documentary: "From 'Searching for Sugarman' to 'Twenty Feet from Stardom" (S) (WiSe 2018/2019)

Contemporary media culture has rediscovered the documentary as a mode to narrate history (ies) and draw a large audience at the same time. Music documentaries like Wim Wender’s Buena Vista Social Club and Martin Scorcese’s Shine a Light have established a new genre at the intersection of music and film, sound and image. They stand out as box office success and documentation of music history. Special sections on music documentaries in film festivals underscore that music documentary has become a new force in narrating music history and reflecting the relationship between the social and music from our contemporary perspective. This seminar will explore theories of documentary and work toward a typology of music documentary by analyzing films from a North American context like Searching for Sugarman, Twenty Feet from Stardom, Before There Was Punk There Was Death, Under African Skies and others. The seminar will include a mix of presentation and workshop style. The goal is to create a form of typological knowledge through content and film analysis embedded within a larger framework of theories about documentary.