Chronicle of a Season

This course takes as a source of inspiration, Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch’s well-known non-fiction film, Chronicle of a Summer (1960, France), which, by posing the deceptively simple question, “Are you happy?,” reveals a Paris filled with people grappling with how colonialism, war, capital, race and gender shape their personal and social experiences. The goal of our course is to create a cinematic chronicle of each participating locality (Bishkek, Berlin, Bogotá, Dhaka, Johannesburg, New York, and the West Bank) by tapping into the zeitgeist of the present moment. Through our filmmaking, we seek to show the complexities of contemporary life in our respective places and spaces. Our joint-taught media production course will be structured around initial viewings of Chronicle of a Summer, as well as other films that take up the style of cinema verité, direct cinema, observational cinema and their related incarnations. We will participate in shared conversations about the tools and techniques of these cinematic modes, and will make films, in parallel, derived by some version of the question, “Are you happy?” Through a series of short image and sound-making assignments, we will ultimately produce an omnibus film that will, ideally, reveal points of connection for course participants and provide opportunities to learn about the subtleties of contemporary life in each locality.