Requirements
FILM 101 - Film History
Cross-listed: ENGL 091, ARTH 108
This course is an introduction to the history of cinema from 1895 to the present. In demonstrating how history energizes and complicates the movies, we will examine numerous film cultures and historical periods, including early short films from Europe and the US, Hollywood silent cinema, Italian neo-realism, the French New Wave, New German Cinema, recent Iranian and Taiwanese cinema, and a variety of other film movements from different historical epochs and cultures. Our aim is to establish a broad historical and global foundation for the understanding of film as a complex exchange between art, technology, politics, and economics. Screenings are mandatory.
TR 9:00 - 10:30
BECKMAN, Karen
FILM 102 - Film Analysis and Methods
Cross-listed: ENGL 092, ARTH 109
This course is an introduction to the analysis of film as both a textual practice and a cultural practice. We will examine a variety of films--from Fritz Lang's M (1931) to Julia Dash's Daughters of the Dust (1991)--in order to demonstrate the tools and skills of "close reading." We will concentrate on those specifically filmic features of the movies, such as mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing and sound strategies, as well as those larger organizational forms, such as narrative and non-narrative structures and movie genres. Because our responses to the movies always extend beyond the film frame, we will additionally do "close readings" of the complex business of film distribution, promotion, and exhibition to show how the less visible machinery of the movie business also shapes our understanding and enjoyment of particular films. Along the way, we will discuss some of the most influential and productive critical schools of thought informing film analysis today, including realism, auteurism, feminism, postmodernism, and others. Screenings are mandatory.
MW 3:30 - 5:00
CORRIGAN, Timothy
Primary Film Courses
FILM 118 - Iranian Cinema: Gender, Politics, Religion
Cross-listed: NELC 118
Post-Revolutionary Iranian cinema has gained exceptional international reception in the past two decades. In most major national and international festivals, Iranian films have taken numerous prizes for their outstanding representation of life and society, and their courage in defying censorship barriers. In this course, we will examine the distinct characteristics of the post-revolutionary Iranian cinema. Discussion will revolve around themes such as gender politics, family relationships and women's social, economic and political roles, as well as the levels of representation and criticism of modern Iran's political and religious structure within the current boundaries. There will be a total of 12 films shown and will include works by Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf, Beizai, Milani, Bani-Etemad and Panahi, among others.
MW 2:00 - 3:30
MINUCHEHR, Pardis
FILM 201 - TOPICS IN FILM HISTORY: Film and Social Change
Cross-listed: ENGL 291
We will explore the effect that the medium of film has had upon social, political and personal change-and vice-versa. There is a large body of films which have attempted to influence politics, social change, economics and the law. We will concentrate on three issues-war, trade unions and equal rights and see how they have been portrayed in films which try to "make a difference," Among the filmmakers we will study are Ken Loach, Gillo Pontecorvo, Dusan Makavejev, Jean-Luc Godard. Michael Moore and Herbert Biberman. Screenings are mandatory.
TR 12:00 - 1:30
KATZ, John
FILM 202.401 - TOPICS IN FILM PRACTICE: The Hollywood Film Industry
Cross-listed: ENGL 292.401
This course seeks to unravel Hollywood’s complex workings and explain how the business of the film industry translates into the art of film. This is a course in the history of Hollywood. We will trace the American film industry from Edison to the Internet, asking questions such as: What is the relationship between Hollywood and independent film? How has the global spread of Hollywood since the 1920s changed the film industry? How has Hollywood responded to crises in American politics (e.g. world wars, the cold war, terrorism)? And how have new technologies such as synchronized sound and color cinematography, television and the VCR, and new digital technologies changed film and the film industry? We will look closely at representative studios (Paramount, Disney, and others), representative filmmakers (Mary Pickford, Frank Capra, and George Lucas, among many, many others), and we will examine the impact of industrial changes on the screen through close film analysis and weekly screenings.
TR 10:30 - 12:00
DECHERNEY, Peter
FILM 202.402 - TOPICS IN FILM PRACTICE: American Independent Film
Cross-listed: ENGL 292.402
This course will introduce students to the aesthetics, subject matter, financing, production, distribution and exhibition of American independent film. We will explore films with subject matter and aesthetics Hollywood has traditionally been reluctant to embrace. The films we will consider might include the recent films "American Splendor" and "Elephant."We will examine the conditions under which independent films are made and discuss how audiences react to them. We will also question the social, political and economic realities that influenced these films. Among the filmmakers we will consider are David Lynch, the Coen brothers, Spike Lee, John Cassavetes, Jim Jarmusch, John Waters, John Sayles and Wayne Wang. Screenings are mandatory.
TR 3:00 - 4:30
KATZ, John
FILM 203 - Introduction Film Forms and Contexts
Cross-listed: COMM 140
Movies as a form of audio-visual communication: their formal "language," their relationship to other means of communication (music, stories, theater, pictures), their place in the media industry, their role in culture.
TR 3:00 - 4:30
MESSARIS, Paul
FILM 211 - TOPICS IN FILM THEORY: Media Theory
Cross-listed: ENGL 295
This course is a survey of theoretical approaches to understanding film and media and their effects on audiences. We will consider a variety of approaches stretching from structural theories of media domination to anthropological analyses of audiences and fan cultures. How does the media build communities and identities? How is media actually consumed by different audiences? To what extent does the medium (film, TV, the internet) control or shape the message? We will use theoretical readings to help understand a variety of texts from the Hollywood musical to CNN to Ebay.
TR 3:00 - 4:30
DECHERNEY, Peter
FILM 230.602 - SPANISH FILM CULTURE:
Introduction to Spanish Film
Cross-listed: SPAN 285
An introduction and overview of Spanish film from its roots in the late nineteenth century to its recent rise to international prominence. Special attention will be paid to the social and political movements that led to the growth and development of Spanish film. Screenings include works by Segundo de Chomón (The Golden Beatle and Hotel Electric ), Fernando Reyes ( The Cursed Village ) , Juan Antonio Bardem ( Death of a Cyclist ), Carlos Saura ( The Seventh Day ), Julio Medem ( Vacas ), Pedro Almódovar ( Bad Education ), and Alejandro Amenábar ( Tesis ). This course is taught in ENGLISH. All screened films will be subtitled or simultaneously translated.
T 5:30 - 8:30
SOLOMON, Michael
FILM 246 - Masterpieces of French Cinema (IN FRENCH)
Cross-listed: FREN 230
The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to the history and scope of French cinema all the way to the present time through the analysis of key works of the French film canon. Particular attention will be paid to the various period styles ("le réalisme poétique", "la qualité française", "la nouvelle vague", "le cinéma du look", …) and a variety of critical lenses will be used (psychoanalysis, socio-historical and cultural context, politics, aesthetics, gender…) in a effort to better understand the specificities and complexities of these films. Film directors considered may include Renoir, Duvivier, Carné, Clément, Clouzot, Bresson, Truffaut, Resnais, Godard, Chabrol, Tavernier, Beineix, Denis and others. Entirely conducted in French.
T 1:30 - 4:30; R 1:30 - 3:00
MET, Philippe
Interdisciplinary Film Courses
FILM 050 - CINEMATIC NAMES: Looking for Lola
Cross-listed: GRMN 001
We all know about Eve and Mary, two names that readily designate opposite relations to masculinity and sexuality. But what about Lola? Beginning in the early twentieth century, the name of Lola has gripped the imagination of directors and screenwriters and launched a cinematic tradition. The name is certainly based on Lola Montez, a nineteenth-century British woman of humble origins who used her sexuality and prevaricating charm to rise to worldwide renown as an erotic dancer and the lover of composers (Lizst) and kings (Ludwig of Bavaria), leaving disaster in her wake. Ever since Marlene Dietrich's seductive role as Lola Lola, the risqué nightclub entertainer in Joseph Sternberg's scandalous Blue Angel (1930), the name Lola has specified the realm of the quintessential vamp. In this course we will explore the cinematic femininity, sexuality and gender associated with the name Lola (and its close cousins Lulu and Lolita). We will encounter Lolas of ambiguous, precocious, calculating, and irresistible sexuality: a Turkish-German transvestite, a sexual nymph, a schemer during Germany's economic miracle, and a man-killer eventually slain by Jack the Ripper. What is remarkable about the films associated with Lola is that each discovers her anew and contributes to a complex nexus of issues involving sexuality, pleasure, knowledge, and power, far more interesting, in the final analysis, than the alternatives of Mary and Eve.
MW 2:00 - 3:30
RICHTER, Simon
FILM 137 - Introduction to Music and Sound in Cinema
Cross-listed: MUSC 037
In this course we will investigate the relationship between the soundtrack and the image in a variety of films ranging from the "silent" era to the present. Our discussion of the soundtrack will emphasize the importance of music but also consider the role of voice and noise in the production of cinematic meaning. Prior to our discussion of cinema proper we will analyze Wagner's Tristan and Isolde and take on aspects of the composer's theory of music drama as a precursor to cinematic technique. Films: Chaplin, Modern Times; Coen Brothers, O Brother, Where art thou?; Donen/Kelly, Singin' in the Rain; Godard, Masculine/Feminine; Hitchcock, Vertigo; Leone, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly; Marker, La Jetee; Minnelli, A Star is Born; Suzuki, Tokyo Drifter; Vertov, Man with a Movie Camera; Welles, Touch of Evil.
MWF 1:00 - 2:00
COPENHAFER, David
FILM 324 - KOREAN FILM AND CULTURE: Screening Modern Korea
Cross-listed: EALC 186-586
The Jury Award for Best Feature Film at the 2005 Philadelphia Film Festival wasawarded to a South Korean film The Road directed by Pae Chang-ho. Hong Sang-soo's the Tale of Cinema was invited to compete in the 2005 Cannes Film Festival where Park Chan-wook's Old Boy won the Grand Prix a year ago. To date, the remake rights for over ten Korean films have been soldto US film companies. As this short list shows, Korean films have not only beengaining wide popularity amongst the general audience in Korea and its neighboring countries in Asia, but have also received critical acclaim from critics and scholars, in particular through international film festival circuits. Korean cinema, in fact, is experiencing a "renaissance" in the 21st century. We will take the recent surge of success behind Korean cinema as a wayto explore our object of study: Korea and the cinema. We will situate Korean cinema in broader (and at times narrow) cultural, social, and aesthetic contexts to investigate transnational media production and circulation, globalization, consumer culture, commercialization, Hollywoodization, and construction of national, ethnic, gender identities, etc. The course will focuson the works of prominent filmmakers of Korea's past and present, such as Shin Sang-ok, Im Kwon-taek, Kim Ki-duk, and Lee Chang-dong, as well as paying special attention to genres of Korean film such as the melodrama, slapstick comedy, and erotica. No prerequisites. All films with English subtitles.
R 1:30 - 4:30
KIM, Jina
FILM 329 - MODERN HEBREW LITERATURE AND FILM: Holocaust in Literature and Film
Cross-listed: NELC 159
The momentous Holocaust narrative, “The Diary of Anne Frank”, appeared in 1947, one year prior to the establishment of the Jewish State. The Israeli psyche and therefore Israeli art, however, “waited” until the 1961 public indictment of a Nazi war-criminal to hesitantly begin to face the Jewish catastrophe. The Zionist wish to forge a “New Jew” was in part responsible for this suppression. Aharon Appelfeld’s understated short stories were the first to enter the modernist literary scene in the 1960s, followed in 1970 by the cryptic verse of Dan Pagis, a fellow child survivor. Only in 1988 did the Second Generation of survivors reveal themselves. Indeed, two Israeli-born pop singers -- haunted children of survivors -- broke the continuous practice of concealing the past and its emotional aftermath in the watershed documentary “Because of That War." This course will follow and analyze the transformation of Israeli literature and cinema from instruments of suppression of the Holocaust into means for dealing with this historic national trauma. Although Israeli works constitute more than half of the course's material, other works of film and fiction will play comparative roles.
TR 1:30 - 3:00
GOLD, Nili
FILM 342 - History and Film in South Asia
Cross-listed: HIST 188; SAST 188
This course explores the representation of history in film. It includes a film showing each week, about 150 pages per week, class discussion, and writing assignments that explore various film genres as historical texts: popular films, documentaries, educational films, and art films. We also read books that generated films, particularly novels. Students write two short papers on specific films and one longer essay on a topic of their choice. In addition to its enrolled students, this course will serve as a resource for other courses in History, Film Studies, and South Asian Studies.
W 4:30 - 7:30
LUDDEN, David
FILM 370 - Blacks in American Film/TV
Cross-listed: AFAM 400
Description...
M 4:30 - 7:10 Lecture
BOGLE, D.
FILM 426 - Chekhov on Stage and Screen
Cross-listed: RUSS 426
"What's so funny, Mr. Chekhov?" This question is often asked by critics and directors who still are puzzled with Chekhov's definition of his four major plays as comedies. Traditionally, all of them are staged and directed as dramas, melodramas, or tragedies. Should we cry or should we laugh at Chekhovian characters who commit suicide, or are killed, or simply cannot move to a better place of living? Is the laughable synonymous to comedy and the comic? Should any fatal outcome be considered tragic? All these and other questions will be discussed during the course.
T 5:30 - 8:30 Lecture
ZUBAREV, Vera
Production Film Courses
FILM 009 - WRITING SEMINAR IN FILM: Race & Popular Cinema
Cross-listed: ASAM 009, AFAM 009
From the mainstreaming of performers such as Eddie Murphy and Ice Cube to the recent fixation on Japan, American cinema would seem to have become truly multicultural. By examining films across a spectrum of genres and from a range of time periods, we will explore film as a medium for reflecting and constructing attitudes about racial difference and related social issues such as the value of tradition, the defining of national character, and anxieties about sex and sexuality. Students will address such issues as a means for engaging in a variety of writing exercises and activities. Please note: this course is an Academically Based Community Service Course. In the past, "community service" has entailed activities as diverse as partnering with a class of middle school students an coordinating a local film series. The specifics of the community service component will be discussed on the first day of class.
TR 1:30 - 3:00
SADASHIGE, Jacqui
FILM 061 - Film Video I
Cross-listed: FNAR 061/661
This class offers film and video production as a means of personal expression. Students will be assisted in translating ideas into movies. Super-8 and/or digital video equipment will be provided; students must provide film stock, processing and/or video tapes.
Several sections and times, please check registrar.
FILM 062 - Film Video II
Cross-listed: FNAR 062/662
Film/Video II is a hands-on course in super 8mm and/or digital video movie making in which each student plans and creates three short productions. Techniques learned in FNAR 061 will be refined while exploring the role of sound and aesthetics in the flimmaking/video process. Auditors not permitted.
W 4:30 - 7:30
HIRONAKA, Nadia
FILM 063 - Documentary Video
Cross-listed: FNAR 063/663
A digital video course stressing concept development and the exploration of contemporary aesthetics of the digital realm, specifically in relation to the documentary form. Building on camera, sound and editing skills acquired in Film/Video I and II, students will produce a portfolio of short videos and one longer project over the course of the semester. Set assignments continue to investigate the formal qualities of image-making, the grammar of the moving image and advanced sound production issues within the documentary context.
M 5:00 - 8:00
HERIZA, A.
FILM 065 - Cinema Production
Cross-listed: FNAR 065/665
This course focuses on the practice and theory of producing narrative based cinema. Members of the course will become the film crew and produce a short digital film. Workshops on producing, directing, lighting, camera, sound and editing will build skills necessary for the hands-on production shoots. Visiting lecturers will critically discuss the individual roles of production in the context of the history of film.
W 1:00 - 4:00
MOSLEY, Joshua
FILM 067 - Computer Animation
Cross-listed: FNAR 267/567
Through a series of studio projects, this course will focus on 2D and 3D computer animation. Emphasis is placed on time-based design and storytelling by developing new sensitivities to movement, cinematography, editing, sound, color, and lighting. Compositing software covered in the course will be used to combine 2D graphics, 3D animation, and sound.
TR 9:00 - 12:00
MOSLEY, Joshua
FILM 116 - Screenwriting Workshop
Cross-listed: ENGL 116
This course will look at the screenplay as both a literary text and a blue print for production. Several classic screenplay texts will be critically analyzed (REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, PSYCHO, etc.) Students will then embark on writing their own scripts. We will intensively focus on: character enhancement, creating "believable" cinematic dialogue, plot development and story structure, conflict, pacing, dramatic foreshadowing, the element of surprise, text and subtext and visual story-telling. Class attendance is mandatory. Students will submit their works-in-progress to the workshop for discussion.
M 2:00 - 5:00
LAPADULA, Marc
FILM 120 - The Role of the Producer
Have you ever wondered why the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presents the Oscar for Best Picture to a film's producer and not its director, writer, or production company? What, exactly, do producers do to deserve the Academy's highest honor? This course examines the multiple facets of film production through the lens of the producer, demystifying their role by revealing the day-to-day management and operation of a feature film. Accompanying weekly class discussions will be autobiographical readings, screenings of non-fiction television & documentary film, as well as guest lectures from working entertainment professionals providing innumerable examples of the challenges producers face in all stages of filmmaking.
W 6:00 - 9:00
FRANK, Stefan
FILM 130 - Advanced Screenwriting
Cross-listed: ENGL 130
An intensive workshop focusing on methodology: enhancing original characterization, plot development, conflict, story, pacing, dramatic foreshadowing, the element of surprise, text and subtext, act structure and visual storytelling. Each student is expected to present sections of his/her "screenplay-in-progress" to the class for discussion. The screenplay Chinatown will be used as a basic text.
M 5:00 - 8:00
LAPADULA, Marc
Graduate Film Courses
FILM 513 - MLA: House of Mirrors
Cross-listed: COML 513
The mirror is a pervasive trope in Western cultural history. It seems to be a reliable metaphor for the way human consciousness relates to itself and the world. It is an image of the duplication that is characteristic of almost all systems of representation: the mimetic doubling that takes place in language, in art, in thought. What makes the mirror such a compelling image of human knowledge and understanding is its seductive ability to conceal and deny difference and to offer an illusion of wholeness and self-identity. But as everyone who has stood in front of the mirror knows, there are times when the encounter between the self and its reflection results in the troubling intuition that the person in the mirror is in some sense a stranger. The mirror is an image of identity and non-identity, of understanding and misunderstanding both the self and the other. As such, the image of the mirror captures a fundamental paradox of human experience -- how can the mirrored object be both the same and different with respect to its reflection? And if this is true for the primary experience of the mirror, then it follows that the same paradox will trouble every model of representation (language, art, knowledge, etc.) that depends on the structure of mirroring. The distance measured between the subject or object and its reflection is the space opened up for thought, a space at once filled with anxiety and desire. Texts for the course may include: Plato, Ovid, Hegel, Freud, Gide, Lacan, Fanon, Dallenbach, Elam. We will bring our powers of analysis to bear on works of literature, art and cinema.
M 6:00 - 8:40 Lecture
RICHTER, Simon
FILM 591 - FILM THEORY: The Essay Film
Cross-listed: ENGL 592
At least through much of the nineteenth century, the essay was perceived by many as a secondary, less creative genre of writing, suspected for its incidental, public, and parasitic nature. Others, such as Walter Pater, T. W. Adorno, and Roland Barthes, have been considerably more appreciative, often, like Pater, seeing the essay as the "strictly appropriate form of our modern philosophical literature." The first part of this seminar will examine the different possibilities and debates that have described this particular form of writing from its sixteenth-century beginnings in the works of Montaigne (when, in Foucault's words, "commentary yields to criticism") through twentieth-century theories and practices of the essay from Lukacs and Adorno through Umberto Eco, Roland Barthes, and Christa Wolf. The majority of the course, however, will concentrate on the reincarnation of this literary form as the essay film, and in this context we will investigate the work of Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Erroll Morris, Derek Jarman and others. Rather than assuming experience with film scholarship and film history, we will use this course as at least a partial introduction to both. Students will be encouraged to develop their own positions and arguments (most notably in a final research project). My own emphasis, however, will be on 1) the historical and cultural conditions that encouraged essayistic writing, 2) the formal and expressive possibilities made exclusively available by the essay, and 3) the larger issues raised by the essay about the relation of writing to creativity or originality, to the politics and industry of a public domain, and to aesthetic categories such as romanticism, modernism, and postmodernism. Besides the primary research project, students will submit one shorter essay and, at some point in the semester, lead the seminar in a short discussion of their project.
T 9:00 - 12:00
CORRIGAN, Timothy
FILM 694 - Mexican Cinema
Cross-listed: SPAN 694
This graduate seminar offers an introduction to history of Mexican film from its late nineteenth century roots to the Cine de Oro (1934- 1960), through the Nuevo Cine of the sixties and seventies, and on to the present. Special attention will be paid to the social and political movements surrounding the growth of the Mexican film industry including its relation to the United States, Europe, and Latin America. The seminar will also explore the works of individual filmmakers such as Emilio Fernández, Luis Buñuel, Felipe Cazal, Jaime Hermosillo, Arturo Ripstein and Diana Bracho.
M 2:00 - 5:00
SOLOMON, Michael
FILM 793 - TOPICS IN FILM STUDIES: Cinema and Photography
Cross-listed: ARTH 793
This course will focus on the complex relationship between film and photography. As we consider these two hybrid mediums of modernity in relation to each other, we will focus on questions of temporality, indexicality, truth, narrative and movement. We will read histories and theories of the two mediums from the 19th century through to the present day in the context of specific photographic images, artists' film and video work, and weekly film screenings, including Chris Marker's La Jetée, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up, Michael Snow's Wavelength, Hou Hsiao-hsien's City of Sadness. Requirements: attendance at screenings, student presentations, class participation, and 20-25 page research paper.
R 1:30 - 4:30
BECKMAN, Karen
Related Film Courses
THAR 275 - Transgressive Performance
Cross-listed: ENGL 256
From the shocking frankness of Mae West's SEX to the "love that dare not speak its name" of Lillian Hellman's THE CHILDREN'S HOUR; from the joyless partying of Mart Crowley's THE BOYS IN THE BAND to the joyous self-invention of Charles Busch's THEODORA: SHE-BITCH OF BYZANTIUM - theatre has explored and altered our notions of gender, sexual identity and sexuality. In this course, we will look at 20th Century plays, films, entertainments, and performers that have broken the rules. Queer, drag and camp theatre will be prominent topics, and we will include plays by Tony Kushner and Charles Ludlam; performance art by Lypsinka, Split Britches and Dame Edna Everage; cabaret and musical performances (Callas to Merman); bizarre paratheatrical phenomena (Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl); and more. We will also study material that breaks taboos of heterosexual behavior (FIGHT CLUB, SEX AND THE CITY).
M W 5:00 - 6:30 Lecture
FOX, David
