Eight Presentations by James Blue

A Museum of Modern Art “Looking at Film” Class

June 21 – August 10, 1977

James Blue will discuss formal, cultural, and moral issues involved in the documentary impulse and the various attempts to formulate rationales for the nonfiction film. Screenings and lectures will examine the history of the moving image as document from 1895 to the present—from early actuality recordings and newsreels through the social documentaries of the 1930’s and ‘40’s to current uses of Super 8mm film and videotape. Discussion will also touch on the documentary aspects of fiction films (such as on-location shooting) and of independent filmmaking (for example, the person film diary). The course will focus on the narrowing gap between filmmaker and subject during the last ten to fifteen years, due in part to technological advances, and the news and previously unconsidered problems that have resulted now that the filmmaker today has become the subject of his/her own documentation.

Course Lecture Summaries with Audio and Video Links

1. DOCUMENTARY BEGINNINGS: 1895-1929 — The Peripatetic Camera: Window on the World or Intelligence of a Machine?

2. THE DOCUMENTARY IDEA: 1930-1942 – Holding a Hammer Up to Nature

3. Continued: THE DOCUMENTARY IDEA: 1930-1942 

4. THE WAR YEARS: 1940-1946 – Dramatizing reality: Film as a call to arms or as grim witness

5. THE AFTERMATH: 1946-1959: A RE-EXAMINATION OF RECEIVED VALUES AND OF OURSELVES?

6. DIRECT CINEMA: 1959-PRESENT: EXPERIMENTS IN UN-CONTROLLED FILMMAKING

7. Continued DIRECT CINEMA: 1959-PRESENT

8. THE ERA OF ACCESS: The average citizen as filmmaker: 1969—Future

Course History

In 1976, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities Learning Museum Program, the Museum of Modern Art launched a three-year series of public film classes titled “Looking at Film.” As Scott Nygren, the original coordinator of the program wrote to James Blue, “The aim is to reach a general public audience, especially those who have not had the opportunity to study film in colleges and universities…this should be at best a broad cross section of the New York population. A nominal registration fee ($10) is being charged to encourage people to make a commitment to a series of evenings rather than dropping by casually.”

James Blue’s 8-week course on “The Documentary Impulse” was the fourth course in the series’ inaugural year, following courses taught by Frantisek Daniel, Peter Kubelka, and William Arrowsmith. The course ran for eight weeks, June 21 – August 10, 1977, with lectures and screenings on Wednesday nights and additional screenings on Tuesday nights. Significant historic events of the summer of 1977 (the New York City blackout, FALN bomb threats, and the release of Star Wars) came into play as the course progressed.

The links above lead to audio recordings of each week’s lecture. They are accompanied by detailed summaries of Blue’s remarks with embedded links to the films addressed and precise references to the times when those films are discussed, so that it is possible for viewers to take a virtual version of James Blue’s course on the history of the “documentary impulse.”

For Blue, the impulse transcends documentary film and extends to neo-realist and other narrative and experimental forms.  Blue sees a democratic vision underlying the documentary impulse, and champions filmmakers’ efforts to activate their audiences in drawing conclusions and finding meanings, culminating in participatory media programs (including Blue’s Rice Media Center and SWAMP in Houston) that turn the camera over to film subjects and audiences. It is evident as the lectures progress that Blue’s critical perspective in 1977 is shaped by the independent film movement he joined in the later ‘60s, when cinema verité and cheaper media equipment allowed filmmakers to work outside the institutions that had been Blue’s only choices earlier in his career (Madison Avenue, the USIA, and Hollywood).

Blue had a habit of launching film study programs, having been a founding faculty member in the AFI Film Conservatory in 1969, the founding director of the Rice Media Center in 1970, and a visiting and regular faculty member in the early years of UCLA Film School, SUNY Buffalo Department of Media Study, and the National Film School of Great Britain.  Blue primarily taught film production, but also film appreciation, and his vast knowledge of documentary film history and criticism is evident in the bulging bibliography and filmography shared with students (linked below). Blue prepared for the course by watching films and reading materials in MOMA’s Film Study Library, telling MOMA staff “I was there almost three days a week for fifteen weeks.”

This teaching role for MOMA’s inaugural “Looking at Film” was quite a challenge, as Blue faced a packed auditorium of students with a wide range of knowledge and backgrounds.  Blue strived to make the class informal and personable, relating many of the documentary classics to his own history as a viewer and filmmaker. He brought in three guest filmmakers– Willard Van Dyke, Leo Hurwitz and George Stoney.  Along the way, Blue talked about several of his own filmmaking experiences (Olive Trees of Justice, Kenya Boran, Who Killed Fourth Ward? and even his Madison Avenue TV commercials) and screened The March.  He took questions from the floor frequently, eliciting one student’s evaluation that “he did a good job of keeping his discussions at a level laymen and filmmakers could both relate to [although] I wish he had controlled audience questions a bit more.” This criticism was echoed by another: “Too many people used the class as a forum for personal hobby horses.” Overall, class evaluations were roughly evenly divided between positive, negative, and mixed responses.

The logistics for mounting the class were challenging, as the museum staff spent the early months of 1977 hunting for the extensive list of documentaries Blue requested, nearly all of which were in 35mm, including many original nitrate prints. About fifty were already in the museum’s collection, prompting an archivist there to write: “The following whopping list comprises the 35mm prints I’ll be ordering in for the James Blue course… I’ll keep in touch, God only knows.” Many others were either purchased or borrowed, and some (like Jean Rouch’s Chronicle of a Summer and Gunvor Nelson’s Trollstenen), could not be obtained.  Viewers of this online course have the distinct advantage of having nearly all the films available to them via YouTube or Vimeo, and the distinct disadvantage of having them in digital versions lacking the splendor of 35mm projection. The challenges of projecting clips on cue to accompany Blue’s comments should not be forgotten, having prompted Blue to write MOMA Film Department head Ted Perry: “In my seventeen years of film production and programming, I have not met projectionists who cared so much about their work or who were able to perform so well as these men.”