Spring

This course introduces basic concepts of film analysis, which are discussed through examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres. Along with questions of film technique and style, we consider the notion of the cinema as an institution that comprises an industrial system of production, social and aesthetic norms and codes, and particular modes of reception. Films discussed include works by Hitchcock, Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein, Lang, Renoir, Sternberg, and Welles.

This course examines Africa in film as well as films produced in Africa. It places cinema in Sub Saharan Africa in its social, cultural, and aesthetic contexts ranging from neocolonial to postcolonial, Western to Southern Africa, documentary to fiction, art cinema to TV, and includes films that reflect on the impact of global trends in Africa and local responses, as well as changing racial and gender identifications. We will begin with La Noire de... (1966), by the “father” of African cinema, Ousmane Sembene, contrasted w/ a South African film, African Jim (1960) that more closely resembles African American musical film, and anti-colonial and anti-apartheid films from Lionel Rogosin’s Come Back Africa (1959) to Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga, Sembene’s Camp de Thiaroye (1984), and Jean Marie Teno’s Afrique, Je te Plumerai (1995). The rest of the course will examine 20th and 21st century films such as I am a not a Witch and The wound (both 2017), which show tensions between urban and rural, traditional and modern life, and the implications of these tensions for women and men, Western and Southern Africa, in fiction, documentary and fiction film. (20th/21st)

This course proceeds from the ostensible contradiction that Hollywood cinema at its most "classical," roughly from the late teens through the fifties, was also perceived, all over the world, as an incarnation of "the modern." We will begin with accounts of cinematic classicality in film history and criticism (Brasillach/Bardeche, Bazin), psychoanalytic-semiotic film theory (Metz, Bellour, Heath, Mulvey), as well as neoformalist-cognitivist approaches (Bordwell,Thompson, Carroll). We will look at films that both meet and exceed their categorization as classical and might more productively be described as a form of "vernacular modernism"---as aesthetic expressions of, and responses to, the social, psychic, and cultural experience of modernity and modernization. Drawing on texts by Kracauer, Benjamin, Epstein, Dulac, Colette, Woolf et al., we will consider the formal, stylistic, and thematic ways in which these films articulate a material sense of the everyday, a new image world, a restructuration of sensory perception, subjectivity, and cultural reception. Intensive reading course, research paper optional.

Surrealism marked a watershed moment in modern intellectual history. In addition to its familiar aesthetic achievements, it also laid the intellectual groundwork for much of contemporary French, and by extension American, critical thought. From the French confrontation with Hegel in the 1930s, which set the stage for Breton's Hegelian understanding of Surrealism's project and Bataille's critique, to the cultentrate on analyzing Buñuel's characteristic visual, aural, and narrative strategies. Beyond that, we will situate his films in relevant aesthetic, cultural, political, and national contexts in an attempt to understand how a career that spans five decades and as many countries can both retain its own internal coherence and yet participate meaningfully in disparate and often incompatible arenas.

CMST 10100. This is the second part of the international survey history of film covering the sound era up to 1960. It is strongly recommended that students take the first section first. This course focuses on industrial practices and aesthetics during Hollywood s studio era (1927 to 1960) and alternatives to the Hollywood film, including French poetic realism, Italian neorealism, and Japanese cinema. We will also consider the important political, economic, social and cultural forces, which influenced Hollywood and other cinemas during this period, particularly the rise of fascism in the 1930s, WWII, Hollywood s postwar economic struggles, and various national new wave cinemas. Screenings will include films by Berkeley, Renoir, Huston, Welles, De Sica, Ozu, Hitchcock and Godard.

Robert Bresson's work will mainly be studied through its relationship with the literature, from his collaboration with Giraudoux and Cocteau until his more and more personal adaptations of novels by Bernanos or Dostoievski. We'll also try to set his career back in its historical context which made him after 1945 the prophet of a new classicism, and in the same time one of the most innovative pioneers of a modern cinema.

ARTV 23901 or consent of instructor This course focuses on the shaping and crafting of a nonfiction video. Sutdents are expected to write a treatment detailing their project. Production techniques concentrate on the handheld camera versus tripod, interviewing and microphone placement, and lighting for the interview. Post-production covers editing techniques and distribution strategies. Students then screen final projects in a public space.

Consent of Instructor

ARTV 10100 or 10200; or consent of instructor. Camera and light meter required. Using photographic materials, black & white or color, students focus on a set of issues and ideas that expand upon their experience and knowledge, and that have particular relevance to them. All course work is directed toward the production of a cohesive body of photographic work. An investigation of contemporary and historic art issues informs the students' exploration as does extensive darkroom work, gallery visits, critical readings, group and individual critiques, and presentations. Course can be taken several times as color and/or black and white, with series of projects developing and changing. Taught concurrently with Photography Workshop I.Lab fee $60.

COVA 101 or 102, and 240 or 241, or consent of instructor. Throughout the quarter, students concentrate on a set of issues and ideas that expand upon their experience and knowledge, and that have particular relevance to them. All course work is directed towards the production of a cohesive body of either color or black-and-white photographs. An investigation of contemporary and historic photographic issues informs the students' photographic practice and includes visits to local exhibitions, critical readings, darkroom techniques, and class and individual critiques. Lab fee $40.