Un-making the student short documentary in a production class

This article discusses the pedagogical strategies of my documentary film production course that encourages students to resist traditional expectations of documentary films and student films. Inspired by Jill Godmilow’s manifesto that outlines why we need to ‘kill the documentary’, I similarly consider how we might ‘kill the student film’ – meaning that rather than students making work solely for teachers/classmates, they aim to produce work for a public audience. Here, I use the case study of a course section that resulted in several ‘antidocs’ where students resisted tropes of the genre to create films that screened at festivals and won awards.