Documentary Storytelling, 13th, The Laramie Project – Flashcards

a. A piece related to some factual base b. Uses, wholly or in part, pre-existing material (newspaper, government reports, interviews, etc.) as source material. Ideally, without altering a word

a. Catalyst for social change b. A declared purpose and obvious factual base c. Four major functions d. Promote understanding/ Dialogue between people with different viewpoints e. Used in an informational,informative ways about a specific event through the process of an interview f. To present all slides of an event g. To allow dialogued and dialogue

1. Reassess history 2.Celebrate marginalized groups or individuals 3. Reinvestigate events and issues 4. Openly dyadic

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Information becomes the Protagonist

Presentation of fact (documents, stats, graphs,etc.)

Pre-existing documents are converted into text

Typically lacks realistic scenery

Acting is representative rather than impersonate

Events not acted out but, told from POV of interview

Equal weight given to each information source

The movie tracks the criminalization of African Americans from the end of the Civil War to the present day, assailing a broken prison system and other examples of institutionalized racial bias with a measured gaze. The film also discusses the thirteenth amendment's continuation of forced labor for convicted criminals,and the amendment's embolization an angry, resentful white society to imprison newly freed slaves on minor charges — and, with time, enhance the perception of black criminality that continues to reverberate today.

"The Laramie Project" is a play that addresses the brutal (beating) and later murder of openly gay teenager, Matthew Shepard, in the small town of Laramie, Wyoming, an incident that sparked national debate back in 1998. Matthew Shepard was a twenty-one-year-old student at the University of Wyoming. On a cold night in October, he was robbed, tied to a cattle fence and beaten savagely, then left to die. He was found eighteen hours later by a biker. Though he was taken to a hospital, he slipped into a coma and later died, never regaining consciousness. Two young men, both locals, were later charged with the crime. The play's author, Moisés Kaufman, began research for the play one month after the murder.