Fall 2009
(All courses are 4 units unless otherwise noted.)
 
 
  The History of Film Theory
 

Film 200
Instructor: Anne Nesbet
W: 10am - 1pm, 226 Dwinelle (Seminar)
W: 9am - 10am, 226 Dwinelle (Screening)

In this course, designed as an introduction to film theory, we will survey some of the philosophical, theoretical, and critical literature inspired in this century by the cinema. Our approach will be both "diachronic," in the sense that we will be following changes in film-thought over time, and "synchronic," since we will be pausing to consider selected thematic and methodological clusters whose parameters are not exclusively determined by chronology. Requirements include short written/oral responses to the readings, a "film journal report," and a longer paper due at the end of the semester.

We meet in 226 Dwinelle from 10am - 1pm on Wednesdays, with 9am - 10am reserved as a screening time. Our first meeting will be on Wednesday, September 26, at 10am.

Required Books:

  • Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, by Philip Rosen, ISBN-10: 0231058810,
    ISBN-13: 978-0231058810
  • The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan, SBN-10: 0393317757, ISBN-13: 978-0393317756
   
  The Promise of Cinema: Silent Film and Modernity
 

Film 240.001
Instructor: Tony Kaes
M: 3pm - 6pm, 226 Dwinelle (Lecture)
M: 1pm - 3pm, 226 Dwinelle (Screening)

This seminar seeks to unearth some of the discourses that have accompanied and shaped the emergence of film as an artistic medium of its own. What was the promise of cinema? How did movies relate to industrial modernity? What was their relationship to the changing public sphere? How did a modernist film language develop? We will analyze selected films as “events” that are embedded in a historical moment but still resonate for us today. Although the examples are for the most part recently restored German films from 1910 to 1930 (with English inter-titles), the theoretical issues they embody (modernity, perception, phantasmagoria, mass psychology, and gender and the body, among others) open up questions that are still with us. The seminar will build on most recent silent film scholarship and contribute to it with original research. A mini-symposium on silent film will conclude the seminar. A substantial research paper is required.
   
  Japanese Film and Visual Culture (Cross-listed as Comp Lit 240)
 

Film 240.002
Instructor: Miryam Sas
W: 3pm - 6pm, 226 Dwinelle (Lecture)
W: 1pm - 3pm, 226 Dwinelle (Screening)

This course focuses on prominent and controversial works of Japanese cinema and visual culture, from female impersonators in early cinema to action art and photography, and from genre films of the 60s-70s to the most contemporary theories of sexuality and anime. Key topics include the intersections of documentary and experimental film (Matsumoto Toshio, Hara Kazuo), Japanese “noir” and genre experiments (Suzuki Seijun, Teshigahara Hiroshi), pink film, postwar art and photography (Akasegawa Genpei, Nakahira Takuma), gender crossings (from early cinema to Utena), and will include trips to local archives to view art works and visits by contemporary critic Tatsumi Takayuki and others. (Translations/subtitles will be provided as needed.)
   
  Cinema and the Digital
 

Film 240.003
Instructor: Kristen Whissel
Th: 12pm - 3pm, 226 Dwinelle (Lecture)
Th: 10am - 12pm, 226 Dwinelle (Screening)

This course will focus on the impact that digital technologies and
computer-based forms of production and post-production have had on the
cinema in general and on Films Studies as a field of humanistic inquiry in
particular. We will address questions of rapid technological change, the
photographic ontology of film, the aesthetic and economic impact of
digital technologies, as well as changing forms of spectatorship and modes
of representation. In the process we will focus on the intersection of
theories and histories of the cinema and scholarship on new media with an
eye towards discerning the most productive junctures between the two for
film scholars.

Required Texts:

D.N. Rodowick, The Virtual Life of Film (Harvard UP, 2007)

D.N. Rodowick, Reading the Figural, Or, Philosophy after the New Media
(Duke UP, 2001)

Vivian Sobchak, Ed., Meta-Morphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture
of Quick Change (Univ. of Minnestoa Press, 1999)

Paolo Cherchi Usai, The Death of Cinema: History, Cultural Memory and the
Digital Dark Age (BFI, 2001)

Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (MIT Press, 2002)

Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window from Alberti to Microsoft (MIT Press,
2006)