University of Alabama at Birmingham professor Tony Bingham is taking a learn-by-doing approach to teaching African American film history to his students. Part of his "Black Image: Screen and Television" class for the spring 2007 semester will have students make their own documentaries using local history and personal interviews as a foundation.
To help his students get over the hump of first-time film production, Professor Bingham is seeking to acquire documentary films made by other black film students from around the world. He hopes the peer-to-peer approach will prove less daunting for his students than concentrating only on works by established filmmakers.
Bingham hopes to receive 20 to 30 student films for his students to consider. Although the class will focus on films that explore community history, a broad range of subjects is needed to explore all the technical and creative aspects of filmmaking.
"I like the idea of observing how visual ideas are being worked out all across the land by African American film students, " says Bingham. "This generation is the first to comfortably embrace video production and documentary production as a means of personal expression."
Comments
Tony's approach is laudible and intriguing. I hope you'll be doing a follow up in the future regarding the students' experience of P2P learning within a film/video context. I'll definitely be sending this story out to film professors, and community film teachers I know to ask them to circulate this call among their black students, but you didn't give direct contact information for Tony Bingham. As often occurs with new hires, he's not yet been listed in U of Alabama/Birmingham's on-line directory.
My contact info:
Professor Tony Bingham
University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB)
African American Studies
1055 Bldg Room 102
1530 3rd Ave S.
Birmingham, Alabama 35294-4480
205-939-3713 home
tonymbingham@yahoo.com
I thing Tony’s point "This generation is the first to comfortably embrace video production and documentary production as a means of personal expression." Is so critical to contemporary pedagogy. I’m very exited about the mixing of production and theory as a way to bring our paying students a critical analysis about the moving image. With this approach, when they see black film they will be able to feel it on and in their skin. I love it!! I know you have the goodies but check out the Skin of Film by Laura U Marks. The Daughters of the Dust article is great. Good luck!!!
Thanks for providing the info, Tony. What's this about a Julie Dash article?
Thanks for listing your contact info Tony. I look forward to hearing how students engaged with peer work, the kinds of questions raised, with regards to documentary practice, representation and respecting one's subject. Will you also be exposing them to documentary work by Marlon Riggs, Camille Billops, Marco Williams, Yvonne Welbon, William Greaves, etc.? Also, Carroll Parrott Blue (whose interactive book/DVD, The Dawn At My Back, (U Texas Press) is an inspiring and innovative introduction to the biographic and autobiographic storytelling possibilities afforded working in a digital format possibilities, plus it delves into questions of visual aesthetics and blackness. I also like to show students shorter experimental work, by younger artists like Natalia Almada, "All water has a perfect memory"; and all the young black women who have made short docs on hair (Hmph!). Have you seen "The mirror lied" by Jennifer Haskin-O'Reggio? I think this is the best of the recent bunch. It is distributed by Filmaker's Library, Inc., and Haskin-O'Reggio was a student at USC at the time of its making.