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| Summer
2009 (All courses are 4 units unless otherwise noted.) |
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Session D (July 6th - August 14th) |
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| A History of Sound Film (This course fulfills the film major lower division sound film history requirement.) | |
Film
25B As the second history requisite for film majors this course will focus on the years that cover the advent and arguable maturation of sound cinema. From the inauguration of sound around 1929 up to the present day—the course will cover film’s international, aesthetic, and technological benchmarks. Organized chronologically, its focus is threefold. We will note the interrelated national movements that emerge on the world stage, the aesthetic departures that constitute “breakthrough” instances, and the technological innovations that alter films’ very reception/experience. The course will ground students in the major filmmakers and moments that constitute its canon while simultaneously questioning the very ground of its chosen story. At once an overview of what is generally construed as the key points in film history, the course will no less interrogate the paradoxes at the heart of its own historical narrative—the debates and assumptions that underlie its own storied canonization. How does film as a mass cultural medium narrate its own history as both one of individual auteurist “vision” while simultaneously sustaining itself as a mass figuration of nationalistic will and technological advancement? How is film as a continuity narrative system (largely defined as Hollywood cinema) challenged by experimental “art” cinemas? What are the economic and stylistic determinations that foster this dichotomy’s oft mentioned distinction between “low” and “high” cinemas? How is film’s distinctly historical status as a singular cultural medium challenged by digital “medias” of real-time interactivity and hybridity? Objects/eras of study will include the “classical” Hollywood studio system of the 1930’s/1940’s, postwar Italian Neo-Realism, French New Wave cinema of the 50’s, as well as the specific genres and conventions that underlie each one’s emergence. |
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| History of Film Theory (This course fulfills the upper division film theory requirement.) | |
Film 100 Since films were first projected before audiences over a hundred years ago, many theorists have tried to make sense of their powerful effects. Moving chronologically, this course will provide a critical overview of some of the most important and compelling theoretical writings on film. We will begin with the earliest film theorists confronting a new medium, and move through the classical debate between formalism and realism, questions of modernity and mass-culture, and the 1970s theories borne of semiotics, structuralism and poststructuralism, and psychoanalysis. We will then turn to the rise of and challenges to auteur theory, star studies, and genre theory. Finally, we will examine the post-modern interventions and elaborations on film theory provoked by feminism, postcolonialism, critical race theory, queer theory, and new media theory. Throughout the course we will emphasize the historical and cultural contexts from Course requirements include attending both class meetings and screenings, reading the assigned essays and viewing the assigned films closely and critically, and coming to class prepared to fully engage them in discussion. Course assignments include extensive reading, summary-response papers, in-class reading quizzes, in-class mid-term and final exams, and a final paper. Required course texts:
Optional course texts:
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| War on Film (This course can be used to fullfill the film major upper division genre requirement.) | |
Film 108.002 This course takes up the genre of the combat film beginning with the World War II era film Bataan, released in June 1943 and offers a close examination of the conventions of the combat film as they developed to represent different military conflicts including American actions in Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, the Persian Gulf, and Somalia. Attention will be paid to codes of masculinity, representations of military technology and bureaucracy, ideologies of nation and race. Another important component will be an analysis of how fiction films partake in a larger economy of the representation of war that also includes iconic press photography and popular forms of non-fiction reportage. This genre study will also consider genre crossings including musicals and comedies that draw upon and elaborate certain conventions of representing war on film. Required Text:
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| P.T. Anderson and Altman(This course fulfills the film major upper division auteur requirement.) | |
Film 151 This course places the work of contemporary filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson alongside that of one of his oft-cited influences, Robert Altman. Points of interest include the filmmakers' mutual interest in the musical, television, ensemble casts, experiments of light and sound, the city of Los Angeles, and genre play, among others. We will also pay particular attention to the influence of Anderson's and Altman's respective historical and industrial contexts, especially as these relate to the notions of "America" and "independent cinema" to which their films contribute. Selected works include: MCCABE & MRS. MILLER (1971), THE LONG GOODBYE (1973), NASHVILLE (1975), THE PLAYER (1992), SHORT CUTS (1993), A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (2006), BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997), MAGNOLIA (1999), PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (2002), and THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007). |
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