Events › 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.

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