In this course we examine the documentary genre in film and its participation in the public sphere as filmmakers and their audiences demand or create justice in pursuit of participation in Latin America and among Latinx communities. We see how a range of documentarians and their subjects use film to not only hold their communities and governments accountable, but also surface buried stories, and serve as alternative public platforms to reframe memory. We see how, in some communities, through the use of small screens and phone cameras, people write themselves into a more plural and inclusive history. We will examine the theoretical frameworks and documentaries coming from Latin America and Latinx communities on the topic of documentary as justice, while analyzing key documentaries that have used the genre to reveal and remember buried stories. This course and the documentaries analyzed will be in Spanish and as such we recognize our privilege interacting with these materials as Spanish-speakers and students of Spanish as another level of engagement, activism, and community.  

As we examine the voices captured in these texts celebrating, narrating, criticizing, and challenging terms such as the limits of the documentary genre, democracy, nation, sovereignty, racism and gender, we too will continue to develop our own voices using the written word scaffolding our writing through a low-stakes and higher-stakes on-going practice. We will use writing throughout the course to think through texts, shape our own voices in Spanish as well as respond to each other to foster a supportive community of thinkers, writers, and Spanish-speakers.