2015-16 Catalog

This course examines film as an art and as an institution from 1895 through the present. Students will acquire the basic vocabulary and techniques of film analysis, focusing on questions of form (mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound) and narrative, as well as an understanding of the historical development of the medium with an emphasis on the American, European, and Asian contexts. Topics will include the early cinema of illusion, the actuality film, the transition to sound, the Hollywood star system, Italian neorealism, the French New Wave, Dogma 95, and Hong Kong action cinema. Not offered 2015-16.

An investigation into the variety of ways history has been and can be represented on the screen. Some terms the focus will be a specific historical period or nation; other terms the focus will be the nature of film as a medium for history and biography. The class will include weekly screenings of films as well as weekly discussion sections. Not offered 2015-16.

Based upon the premise that a great deal of the history and culture of a nation is inscribed in the dramatic features its film makers produce, the course will each term focus on a single nation and/or culture. Each week there will be a screening, supplemented by appropriate readings dealing with history, culture, and film analysis. During the two hour weekly seminar, students will be expected to discuss the film and the readings, while the instructor will provide additional background material and introduce them to the language of cinema. Possible topics include the United States, Japan, Russia, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy. On occasion the class may deal with particular periods in history (e.g. the Italian Renaissance, Imperial Rome) or with cultures that cross national boundaries, such as the Arab World or Latin America. Students will be expected to write short papers after most screenings and one formal term paper. Not offered 2015-16.

The course will focus each term on one kind of motion picture-either a film genre, or films made by an individual director, or from a single nation or region of the world or particular historical era. Included are weekly screenings, readings on film, a weekly discussion meeting, and a term paper. Not offered 2015-16.

This course will introduce students to some of the classic works of the science fiction film from the earliest days of cinema until the present. It will analyze aesthetic, historical, and social documents, and will show that such films, while describing alternative, hypothetical, and futurist worlds, also serve as a commentary upon and/or a critique of contemporary (to the film) historical, social, political, and ideological systems and attitudes. Not offered 2015-16.

In recent decades, directors from ethnic minorities that are often un- or misrepresented in mainstream Hollywood films have been making dramatic features depicting the history, problems, and prospects of their own communities. This course will feature a selection of such films by directors from African, Latino, Asian, Muslim, and European American ethnic groups, with an eye toward assessing the similarities and differences in the processes of immigration, acculturation, and Americanization. Not offered 2015-16.

This course introduces students to Hollywood films and filmmaking during the classical period, from the coming of sound through the '50s. It will cover basic techniques and vocabulary of film analysis, as we learn to think of films as texts with distinctive formal properties. Topics include the rise and collapse of the studio system, technical transformations (sound, color, deep focus), genre (the musical, the melodrama), cultural contexts (the Depression, World War II, the Cold War), audience responses, and the economic history of the film corporations. Terms may be taken independently. Part a covers the period 1927-1940. Part b covers 1941-1960. Not offered 2015-16.