Spring

The seminar will discuss the workings of the face –as figure of subjectivity, as imprint of identity, as privileged object of representation, as mode and ethic of address – through film theory and practice. How has cinema responded to the mythic and iconic charge of the face, to the portrait’s exploration of model and likeness, identity and identification, the revelatory and masking play of expression, the symbolic and social registers informing the human countenance? At this intersection of archaic desires and contemporary anxieties, the face will serve as our medium by which to reconsider, in the cinematic arena, some of the oldest questions on the image. Among the filmmakers and writers who will inform our discussion are Balázs, Epstein, Kuleshov, Dreyer, Pasolini, Hitchcock, Warhol, Bresson, Bazin, Barthes, Doane, Aumont, Didi-Huberman, and others.
Course: W 10:30-1:20, C 310
Screening: M 3:30-6:30, LC 201

No single filmmaker has equaled Alfred Hitchcock’s combination of popular success, critical commentary and widespread influence on other filmmakers. Currently, his work is so familiar it threatens to be taken for granted. This course will reveal Hitchcock as the filmmaker who systematically used the stylistics of late silent film to forge a dialectical approach to the so-called Classical Style. Hitchcock devised a relation among narrative, spectator and character point of view, yielding a configuration of suspense, sensation and perception. Tracing Hitchcock’s career chronologically, we will follow his intertwining of sexual desire and gender politics, and his reshaping of melodrama according to Freudian concepts of repression, memory, interpretation and abreaction, as he navigates from silent film to sound and from Great Britain to Hollywood. Students must have taken Introduction to Film, and preferably Film History 1.
Course: TR 1:30-2:50, LC 201
Screening: T 3:30-6:30, LC 201

Many distinguished filmmakers have found inspiration in mystery novels written by women. In this course we shall read novels by Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley's Game), Ruth Rendell (Tree of Hands, The Bridesmaid, Live Flesh), and, time permitting, Laura by Vera Caspary, Bunny Lake is Missing by Evelyn Piper, and Mischief by Charlotte Armstrong, and we shall analyze the films based on these novels, directed by such luminaries as Hitchcock. Chabrol, Caviani, Clément, Wenders, Almodóvar, Preminger, and others. Among topics of particular interest are: techniques of film adaptation; transnational dislocations from page to screen; the problematics of gender; and the transformations of "voice" understood both literally and mediatically.Course: TR 1:30-2:50, C 310Screening: T 3:30-6:30, C 425

The aim of this course is to explore a variety of filmmaking practices in relation to historical and cultural trends in Japan from the 1910s to the end of the Second World War. While we will watch films of the great auteurs such as Mizoguchi, Ozu, and Naruse, the increasing number of subtitled films and DVDs of prewar Japanese cinema allows for unprecedented access to a wide variety of filmmaking practices. Hence, in addition to auteur films, we will watch old-school period films and adaptations from popular literature, high speed nihilistic action films, socialist “tendency” films, critical documentaries, melodramas, experimental film and animation, and wartime propaganda. Along with the films, we will read writings on film by a range of thinkers and artists to engage with a variety of issues, including gender, realism, modernism, propaganda, human/animal, violence, and mass culture. We will look at the ways cinema, as both a participant in and a unique reflection on modernity, fundamentally transformed the relationship of Japan to the world.
Course: TR 12:00-1:20, LC 201
Screening: W 7:00-10:00, LC 201

Cinema and videogames are two moving-image-based media, and, especially over the past two decades, each has been credited with influencing the other. But how deep do their similarities actually go? This course will investigate the raw materials and basic forms at the disposal of videogame developers and filmmakers, and analyze how these materials and forms shape viewer and player responses. In what way do the possibilities available to game developers differ from those available to filmmakers? How does each medium segment and present space, time, and action? What aesthetic effects are open to games that are not open to cinema, and vice versa? What have practitioners in each medium learned from those of the other, and have some of these lessons perhaps been misapplied? All of these questions and more will be fair game for the investigations ahead, which will consist of an examination of films alongside games—including entries from the Uncharted franchise, the Half-Life franchise, and with a special focus on horror games (especially the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series).Course: MW 1:30-2:50, LC 028Screening: M 7:00-10:00, LC 201

We will attempt to define Non-Fiction cinema by examining its major modes. These include the Documentary, Essay, Ethnographic, and Political/Agit-prop film, as well as personal/autobiographical and Experimental works that are less easily classifiable. We will explore some of the theoretical discourses that surround this most philosophical of film genres, such as the ethics and politics of representation, and the shifting lines between fact and fiction, truth and reality. The relationship between the Documentary and the State will be examined in light of the genre’s tendency to inform and instruct. We will consider the tensions of filmmaking and the performative aspects in front of the lens, as well as the performance of the camera itself. Finally, we will look at the ways in which distribution and television effect the production and content of Non-fiction film.
Course: MW 1:30-2:50, C 425
Screening: M 7:00-10:00, C 307

This course will explore post-World War II film from Poland – approaching the works both as examples of the cinematic art in the region, and as a lens through which to view developments and transformations in East European culture. We will view ten films by most renowned directors from Poland. The course will assess what the end of World War II, followed by joining the Eastern Bloc, the fall of communism, and finally by the entry into post-Soviet Europe have meant for the film culture and the Polish national film tradition. We will also consider how Eastern European cinematic discourse is undergoing – or should undergo – revision, viewing it as an increasingly transnational phenomenon, rather than the example of a national film industry. The films will be viewed in the original language with English subtitles.  class: TU/TH 10:30 - 11:50am, C425scr:  WE 3:30 - 6:30, C307

This course, taught by film professionals, is designed to move video projects that are already shot or in rough cut form, to completion, or to have made significant enough progress to earn a grade.  It will focus on the techniques of editing all genres of media.  Students will learn advanced editing techniques on Final Cut Pro 7, including media management, sound sweetening, color correction, and prepping for distribution.  Attention will be paid to integrating the theory and practice of montage.  Students should be prepared on the first day of class, to screen 10 minutes of footage and discuss their projects, in order to demonstrate their readiness to be in the class.  Students will be expected to have their own hard drives.  Prerequisites include junior, senior or graduate status, and a working knowledge of Final Cut Pro.  Cinema and Media Studies and Visual Arts students will be given priority for enrollment.Fridays 10am to 1:30pm

In the Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin wrote: “Couldn’t an exciting film be made from the map of Paris? From the unfolding of its various aspects in temporal succession? From the compression of a centuries-long movement of streets, boulevards, arcades, and squares into the space of half an hour?” In this course, we will undertake a study of modernity as both a philosophical concept and historical phenomenon by focusing on film style, cinema culture, film exhibition practices, and the visual culture and urban milieu of Paris—“the capital of the 19th century”—between 1890 and 1925. Knowledge of French is desirable, but not required.

This course will treat the style of a number of American Hollywood feature film directors during the two decades after World War II, including Nicholas Ray, Anthony Mann, Otto Preminger, and others. These directors were singled out at that time by the critics writing for the French journal Cahiers du Cinema as auteurs, directors with a consistent style. Critics in France, England, and the USA used the term mise en scene to discuss their use of framing, performance, editing, and camera movement and especially their use of new technologies such as wide screen and color. This course will explore the concept of directors’ style as well as the mode of close analysis criticism that grew out of this concept.
Prerequisite(s): PQ: CMST 10100 Introduction to Film or consent of instructor.