About

crowd of people

Still from Revolution from Afar by Bentley Brown

Located in the Department of Critical Media Practices adjacent to the Studio 7 gallery and screening room on the Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ campus, the Center for Documentary Media brings people together to engage with the world through documentary. The Center was founded in 2016 by a group of faculty, including Critical Media Practices professors Reece Auguiste and Daniel Boord, documentary scholar Bill Nichols, and cultural anthropologist Paul Shankman.

At the Center, new projects push the boundaries of documentary to expand the social impact of media and technology. Committed to working with people across disciplines and experiences, the Center offers a collection of resources for artists and scholars to transform and extend their research and creative work through media production. These include courses, events, project support, fundraising tools, technical resources, and access to a growing regional, national, and international network of scholars and producers.

Mission

The Center for Documentary and Ethnographic Media fosters the documentary impulse to build community and unlock the transformational power of media following four strategic imperatives:

  1. The Center inspires a regional, national, and international forum for documentary art and scholarship accessible to all.
  2. The Center provides impactful experiences in documentary teaching, learning, and professional development for emerging and established artists and scholars from diverse backgrounds.
  3. The Center showcases works of contemporary documentary art that promote and advance a multiplicity of perspectives and challenge dominant narratives.
  4. The Center supports documentary artists producing works that focus on personal, underrepresented, and culturally specific subjects that offer the most profound experiences of art made from life.Ìý

The Center is part of the College of Media, Communication, and Information at the Â鶹Ãâ·Ñ°æÏÂÔØ.

For more information, please visit our programs page for educational and professional development opportunities, our projects page for the documentary work we support, the Mimesis Micro Grant program, and our technical resources.

Contact us for more details, questions, or to schedule a consult at cdem@colorado.edu.

Support

The Center for Documentary and Ethnographic Media is generously supported byÌýthe College of Media, Communication, and Information and by individual contributions.