Spring

The moving image has a long history that precedes by centuries the invention of celluloid and is likely to last beyond the disappearance of film. This seminar will take a theoretical and historical approach to the basic donnees of the projected moving image, its relation to light, imagery and movement in order to rethink a tradition that includes but is not limited to photographic film, that makes use , but not exclusively, of narrative, and that explores the issues of light and shadow, and color, form and movement. The seminar will include screening demonstrations that are essential to it, so don’t consider enrolling if you can’t make them. The assumption is that students will have a good knowledge of basic film theory and history. Limited to doctoral students. Reading will include Bazin, Metz, Baudry, Mannoni, and others.

Consent of instructor. Please register by faculty section.

The class explores the work of this seminal Soviet documentary filmmaker, his theory, its international impact, its cultural and political implications, various ways of how Vertov’s films and theories are viewed and interpreted nowadays. Note: All readings in English and all screenings with translations.

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 survey will deal with issues of film form, industry organization and film culture during three decades, focusing on the crystallization of the Classical Hollywood Film as a key issue. But international alternatives to Hollywood will also be discussed, from the unique forms of Japanese cinema to movements like Italian Neo-realism and the beginnings of the New Wave in France. Film style, from the classical scene break down to the introduction of deep focus, stylistic experimentation and technical innovation (sound, wide screen, location shooting) will form the center of the course, while attention will also be paid to the development of a film culture. Texts will include Bordwell and Thompson, Film History: An Introduction, and works by Bazin, Belton, Sitney, Godard and others. Screenings will include films by Hitchcock, Welles, Rossellini, Bresson, Ozu, Antonioni, and Renoir.

With the exception of the Hong Kong martial arts comedies that have gained worldwide popularity in recent decades, comedy has not been a genre generally associated with Chinese-language cinemas. Yet precisely because of the "seriousness" of China’s long 20th century laden with suffering and crisis, Chinese-language comedies provide a concentrated site for the investigation of national cinema on the one hand and the generic conventions of comedy on the other. Various modes of production and style will be explored in this course, including slapstick comedy and costume drama in the silent era; left-wing romantic comedy in the 1930s; post-WWII screwball comedy; the post-1949 tripartite development of comedy in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan; Chinese-American "comedy of immigration"; as well as post-modern pastiche and dark comedy from the post-new-era to the 21st century. No knowledge of Chinese is required.

This course will focus on the history of acting styles in silent film (1895-1930) mapping "national" styles of acting that emerged during the 1910s (American, Danish, Italian, Russian) and various "acting schools" that proliferated during the 1920s ("Expressionist acting," "Kuleshov's Workshop," et al.). We will discuss film acting in the context of various systems of stage acting (Delsarte, Stanislavsky, Meyerhold) and the visual arts.

This seminar explores the history of cinema as a new medium for "propaganda and agitation" in the context of Japan's wars in Asia and the Pacific, 1937-1945. The emphasis is less on policy decisions than on their cultural consequences: how did the Tripartite Alliance, the Film Law, and the military situation affect the production, distribution, and reception of cinema in Japan and the occupied territories? What are the connections between cinema and other media and is there such a thing as a wartime style? In brief, the argument of the course is that propaganda in Japan, as elsewhere, was part of a broader project of agitation. Cinema was treated as a new medium, specially tasked not only to convey "information" but to elicit intense emotions from subjects of the nation, the Empire, and local military power that justified their suffering. That project often relied to a surprising extent on medium-specific, even modernist, modes of representation. We will study Japanese films in the context of a global 1930s "reactionary modernism" while simultaneously exploring more local sources of wartime cinema, in the prewar leftist film movement, the documentary film movement, the narrative avant-garde, and the broader image culture of wartime Japan. We will also explore how the medium was deployed in Japan's colonies (Taiwan and Korea), client states (Manchuria), and occupied territories (Eastern China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, etc). This history of cinema highlights concepts that are essential to broader histories of the period: for example: identity, complicity, nationality, and collaboration. English will be the lingua-franca for the course but we will also read primary and secondary Japanese documents, and material in other languages.

This course will explore the role of film music from its origins in silent film, its significance in the classical Hollywood film, to its increasingly self-reflexive use in recent cinema (both avant-garde and commercial, Western and non-Western). We will look at the ways music plays a central role both as part of the narrative and as non-diegetic music, how its stylistic diversity contributes another semiotic universe to the screen, and how it becomes a central qualifying agent in twentieth-century visual culture. Readings will include selections from Prendergast's, Film Music: A Neglected Art, Gorbman's Unheard Melodies, Kalinak's Settling the Score, Chion's Audio-Vision, Brown's Overtones and Undertones, Marks's Music and the Silent Film, as well as a number of theoretical texts by authors such as Eisler/Adorno, Eisenstein and Kracauer. Since the course will partly focus on technical, compositional, and stylistic aspects of film music, some reading knowledge of music will be helpful, but is not a prerequisite.

PQ: Consent of instructor. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Form. This course may not be counted toward distribution requirements for the concentration, but may be counted as a free-elective credit.

COVA 101, 102, 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.