Documentary Storytelling (Online)
Dates
Jun 15 — Jul 20
Duration
Wednesday evenings across 6 weeks 6:30-9pm BST
Price
£150
A popular practice-led course suited to documentary filmmakers, film academics and non-fiction enthusiasts looking to further their approach and understanding of non-fiction cinema and its theoretical applications.
Documentary Storytelling is led by Dr. Catalin Brylla, a practice-led film scholar and a Lecturer in Film and Television at Bournemouth University.
The following topics are only indicative:
Session 1
- Documentary elements
- Soviet montage and conceptual watching
- The Poetic Documentary
Session 2
- Spatial and emotional impact of shot sizes
- The immersive actuality of continuity
- The Observational Documentary
Session 3
- Character profiling through interviews
- The function of cutaways
- The Participatory Documentary
- Other types of participation
Session 4
- Brecht and defamiliarising the audience
- The Reflexive Documentary
- The Hybrid Documentary
Session 5
- The Expository Documentary
- Narrative structure: story and plot
- Narrative point-of-view and subjectivity
Session 6
- Documentary comedy and distantiation
- Parody and reflexivity
- The Mockumentary
- The Investigative Documentary Comedy
Wednesday Evenings (6.30pm to 9pm)
If you’ve already attended Documentary Storytelling, check out our follow-up course, Documentary Storyelling: Reloaded.
This course will be delivered via online distance learning, and students will require a computer or other internet connected device.
If you have any enquiries regarding this course please contact shortcourses@opencitylondon.com or call +442031084774.
(Image: Still from The Gleaners and I, Agnès Varda, France, 2000)
Tutors

Catalin Brylla
Course Tutor
Principal Lecturer in Film and Television at Bournemouth University, and holder of a doctorate in Media and Communications from Goldsmiths, University of London, his research aims for a pragmatic understanding of documentary spectatorship with regards to experience, empathy and narrative comprehension. In a larger context this work also advocates for the filmmaker’s understanding of how audio-visual and narrative representation impacts on society’s understanding of stereotyped groups, such as disabled people, women and African cultures. He is currently editing two books, “Documentary and Dis/ability” (with Helen Hughes) and “Cognitive Theory in Documentary Film Studies” (with Mette Kramer). As a practice-led researcher, he has just completed two feature documentaries about blindness and the everyday, and another feature documentary, “Zanzibar Soccer Dreams” (with Florence Ayisi), about Muslim women playing football.