The Documentary Lab

Areal view of 51 migrant bodies cover by a red blanket behind a truck in Southern Texas.
Spring 2022 Documentary Poetics over still from Ben Rivers' film Two Years at Sea. Contact eric.coombsesmail@colorado.edu.

The Documentary Lab - CMDP 5600 (3) Documentary Lab Seminar - is the cornerstone of the graduate certificate in Interdisciplinary Documentary Media Practices offered by the Department of Critical Media Practices in partnership with Mimesis. With each offering, the Lab brings artists and scholars together from any discipline who want to incorporate documentary methods in their research and creative work.

The Lab provides opportunities for workshopping projects, receiving feedback and critique from faculty and peers, networking and professional development, critical discussions of contemporary documentary practice and theory, technical training, and experimentation with new technologies. The Lab also features a guest speaker series bringing a wide range of acclaimed artists and scholars to engage with the ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ Boulder community. Sessions include individual study, screenings, one-on-one meetings, and group conversations.

Themes

Each semester, the Lab explores themes in contemporary documentary scholarship and practice.

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Fall 2022: Fiction as Method
Spring 2022: Documentary Poetics
Spring 2021: Documentary Resistance
Fall 2020: Ethics and Immediation

Friends of the Lab

Participants in the Lab are provided opportunities to have conversations with prominent figures in the field, engage with their work, and receive feedback and critique on their own projects. Friends of the Lab include:

Angela Aguayo, Documentary Scholar
Kirk Ambrose, Art Historian
Reece Auguiste, Artist and Scholar
Daniel Boord, Documentary Video Artist
Carmel Curtis (XFR Collective), Archivist
Myron Dewey (Digital Smoke Signals), Journalist
Nabil Echchaibi, Media Scholar
Shae Frydenlund, Geographer
Roberto (Bear) Guerra, Photographer
Christian Hammons, Filmmaker and Anthropologist
Steven Hoggard, Journalist
Ernst Karel, Sound Artist
Daniel Junge, Filmmaker
Patty Limerick, Scholar
Roddy MacInnes, Photographer
Louis Massiah (Scribe Video Center), Filmmaker
Timothy S Oakes, Geographer and Filmmaker
Joshua Oppenheimer, Filmmaker
Pooja Rangan, Documentary Scholar
Larissa Rhodes, Producer
Jen Shannon, Anthropologist
Thorsten Trimpop, Filmmaker
Luis Valdovino, Documentary Video Artist
Patricia Zimmerman, Scholar