Thorsten Trimpop is a filmmaker and visual artist whose work examines the impact of history, politics and the changing natural world on private lives. His latest film, Furusato 古里, a human-scale portrait of a small town in Japan’s nuclear exclusion zone, was shown at dozens of festivals and won the grand prize at DOK Leipzig. It had a cinematic realease in over 80 cities in Germany and Austria and was internationally broadcast on Arte. His first feature film, The Irrational Remains, a nonfiction tale of love and betrayal set against the fall of the Berlin wall, premiered at the Berlin Film Festival and won numerous international awards, including the Prize of the International Federation of Film Societies at the Berlinale. Before joining the Department of Critical Media Practices at the University of Colorado Boulder, Thorsten taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Teaching
courses taught
CMDP 3800 - Documentary Media Poetics
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2020 / Fall 2023 / Fall 2024
This course serves as the gateway to the Documentary Media concentration. Investigates documentary cinema and media practices through class discussions, research papers, hands on exercises and screenings. Cross-references documentary photography and moving-image documentary in the production of short digital projects. Explores the distinctive contributions of digital technologies to documentary image making.
CMDP 3810 - Engaged Documentary Media Practices
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2023
Combining research, scripting methods and field trips, students produce short media non-fiction storytelling projects emerging from an engagement with historical events, contemporary issues and the world around us.
CMDP 4810 - Advanced Documentary Practices
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2024 / Fall 2024
Combine research and production to produce short documentary media projects, which explore the world we live in. Focusing on practice, this course explores stylistic options employed on documentaries that give voice to different perspectives on the world. Students will be able to identify the tactics and strategies of documentaries in a variety of media, and will include visits with professional documentary makers. Students will complete a final documentary project.
CMDP 4900 - Media Practices Capstone
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2021 / Fall 2021 / Spring 2022 / Fall 2022
This Media Production capstone course explores the application of new media technologies in depth and engages students in an ongoing dialogue about the cultural context of new media technologies and their own work. Students will produce a major media project that synthesizes methods of media making into modes of communication and expression. Students are encouraged to take this course during their final semester.
CMDP 5600 - Documentary Lab Seminar
Primary Instructor
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Fall 2023
Explores and workshops documentary media projects and ideas from a variety of disciplines. A team-taught course, with affiliated faculty working in design groups within the documentary lab in one or more areas, such as Art and Art History, Anthropology or Geography. A total of 12 hours is required for IDMP MFA candidates.
CMDP 7500 - Production Methods I
Primary Instructor
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Spring 2021 / Fall 2021 / Spring 2022 / Fall 2022 / Spring 2023 / Spring 2024
Provides technical resources for students to work with emergent technologies in a media arts context. This is a team-taught, practice-based course addressing various production methods, from moving image and video to web and network media to computational media.
