- This event has passed.
Delphian Study Club Lecture Series: A Study in Documentary Film
A lecture series presented by the Delphian Study Club – providing the opportunity for lifelong learning and friendship via lectures and events.
The current series is an in-depth study of Documentary Films by Steve Longstreth. This series of lectures, film excerpts and personal reflections will be a study of many important aspects of documentary film. There will be a discussion of history, individual filmmakers and their contributions to the genre and questions that their work may raise.
Steve Longstreth has a BA in Mathematics from Antioch College and an MA in Communications/Film from Stanford University. Following graduate school, he formed a film production company in Palo Alto. For almost four decades, working with two partners, Steve Longstreth produced, directed, wrote, and edited a wide variety of documentary, educational and informational films.
Specific Lecture Topics will be:
- September 19, 2025 – Overview of the study. Logistics of sources for films to watch. Documentary film production basics: production and postproduction process, roles within the crew and film clips.
- October 3, 2025 – Early history of film
- October 17, 2025 – Defining the Documentary. The modes of documentary film.
- November 7, 2025 – The use of film by institutions and government for information and propaganda
- November 21, 2025 – The documentary voice. The filmmaker as participant. Ethnographic film as a precursor to cinema verite.
- December 12, 2025 – The technology and social conditions that begat cinema verite. A short history of documentary film technology (with special emphasis on sound) from Flaherty to 1965.
- January 16, 2026 – The Editor – the most important voice in a documentary? Editing basics, history and technology.
- February 6, 2026 – Documentary as a tool for social change.
- February 20, 2026 – The observational mode. Using documentary structure to create a dramatic arc.
- March 6, 2026 – Documenting eccentricity in pursuit of understanding human nature.
- April 3, 2026 – Obsession. Ethical questions: the choice of subject matter and the treatment of participants in documentaries.
- April 17, 2026 – The strange, wonderful, and maddening process of producing a major documentary film – Personal reflections.
- May 1, 2026 – Jon Else on Jon Else.
- May 15, 2026 – Is higher education the proper setting for the teaching of the documentary craft? Now that it’s so much easier to make a documentary, are we doing it any better?
Guests are always welcome and encouraged.
Free. No registration required.