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2007 (All courses are 4 units unless otherwise noted.) |
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| The Craft of Writing-The Ghosts of Film (Satisfies Reading and Composition Requirement) | |
Film 1A, Sec 1 (4 units) This course is designed to help students develop confidence and skill writing essays and academic papers. We will look carefully at works of photography and film in addition to various forms of film writing: creative nonfiction, criticism, historical research, and scholarly articles. Through weekly workshops and close readings of texts and visual media, we will practice the craft of critical thinking and revision. The course will focus on the following questions: Where did Required books: |
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| The Craft of Writing: Documentary Forms (Satisfies Reading and Composition Requirement) | |
Film 1A, Sec 2 (4 units) The focus of this course is to help students improve their writing skills, emphasizing clarity, precision, and organization. The course aims to prepare students for academic writing while helping them maintain a lively and individual style. The many assigned essays that structure the class will draw on documentary forms for their topic – mostly film and video, but also some written and photographic works. Weekly readings on the films and on elements of style are required, as is attendance at Wednesday evening screenings. Along with developing students’ writing abilities, we will also pursue broad questions about the nature of documentary work: What is documentary and what are its limits? What is the relation between “reality” and documentary? Is any one medium more capable of capturing “the real” than another? What are the ethical considerations of doing documentary work? |
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| The Craft of Writing - Film Focus (Satisfies Reading and Composition Requirement) | |
Film 1A, Sec 3 (4 units) Description Forthcoming |
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| The History of Film - Silent Era (This course fulfills the film major lower division history requirement) | |
| Film
25A (4 units) This course provides an advanced introduction the history of silent film from the late nineteenth century until the early sound era of the late 1920s and early 1930s. We will focus on the development and institutionalization of film aesthetics and industrial practices, the emergence of narrative forms, film genres and styles, and the implementation of various modes of production and forms of spectatorship in Europe and the United States. Topics will include: commercialized leisure in the nineteenth century; the cinema of attractions; nickelodeons and censorship; the emergence of narrative film; silent film comedy; sensation melodramas and serial films; racial politics and American film of the teens; silent documentary; Weimar cinema and German Expressionism; Soviet cinema; the rise of sound in Europe and the US. Throughout the semester we will place individual films within the socio-cultural contexts into which they emerged and were consumed. Required Text: David A. Cook, A History of Narrative Film 4th Edition (NY: W.W. Norton *The Silent Cinema Reader (Lee Grieveson & Peter Kramer, editors) (London: *Anton Kaes, M (London: BFI Classics, 1999) Film Analysis: A Norton Reader, (R.L. Rutsky and Geoffrey Geiger (WW |
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Film 26 The objective of this class is to provide a basic foundation for digital video film production with hands-on instruction in the use of digital cameras, tripods, sound recording/microphones, basic lighting techniques and digital editing. The course also emphasizes the techniques and languages of creative moving image media from traditional story genres to more contemporary experimental forms. The aesthetic focus will be on the basic elements of image making: composition, light, color, rhythm, and relationships between sound and image, working to understand what makes "strong" images that generate powerful thought and emotion. The course will consist of a weekly lecture, which includes screenings, discussions visiting artists and scholars; a weekly section/production workshop in which students produce a series of exercises and a final project. A weekly screening at the Pacific Film Archive is also required. The course will provide students the technical groundwork for other Film Studies courses that integrate production elements, and will serve as a prerequisite for the program's more advanced production course offerings. Priority will be given to continuing and new transfer Film Studies majors. Expect to spend a minimum of $100.00 on production expenses. Required texts: The Digital Filmmaking Handbook 3rd Ed. By Ben Long & Sonja Schenk. Charles River Media. Hingham , MA 2006 A Xeroxed Course Reader Recommended Texts: Final Cut Pro 5 for Mac OS X by Lisa Brennis. Peachpit Press, 2005. Placing Shadows: Lighting Techniques for Video Production by Chuck B. Gloman & Tom Letourneau Focal Press, 2000. |
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| The Avant-Garde Film (This course fulfills the film major lower division avant-garde requirement) | |
| Film
28B (3 units) Film 28B will focus on works of artists who strive to expand the form and content of film and video beyond the constraints of the commercial mass entertainment product to explore more fully the potentials of the moving image form. While the course encompasses a wide variety of films and filmmakers who have made important contributions to experimental or avant-garde filmmaking (the first filmmakers, when all filmmaking was experimental; the abstract ìpure filmsî and the Dada/Surrealist films of the European avant-garde of the twenties; the films of Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Hollis Frampton, Peter Kubelka, Len Lye, Michael Snow, Ernie Gehr, Su Friedrich and Nathaniel Dorsky), we will pay special attention to the sub-genre of the found footage films of Bruce Conners, Craig Baldwin, Ken Jacobs, and others with the hope that these films will inspire students in 28B to experiment with the form. Students may present a short film in place of a final paper. Please Note: The course has been formulated in conjunction with Pacific Film Archive Programs on Tuesdays evening from 7:30-9:30. Please do not sign up for this course unless you are willing and able to attend the evening screenings listed on the course syllabus. Admission is free to those enrolled in Film 28B. Course Requirements A journal reflecting your responses to the films screened in class and at the PFA. An edited, condensed, type-written form of this journal, not to exceed ten pages, should be handed in on the last day of class. (20%) Mid Term Exam (20%) Film/video project or final paper presentation due the last week of class (25 %) Final Exam: Thursday 12/20/07 12:30-3:30 (25%) Regular class attendance and participation in class discussions (10%) Required Texts Nathaniel Dorsky, Devotional Cinema (revised second Edition), Tuumba Press, 2003. P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943-2000, Oxford University Press, 2000 Film 28B Reader, Replica Copy on Oxford St. (availability TBA) |
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| History of Film Theory (This course fulfills the theory requirement) | |
Film
100 (4 units) This course surveys the central concerns of film theory, tracing debates chronologically from the 1920s to the present day. Readings range from the classical theories of Eisenstein and Bazin, through 1970s "gaze" theories borne from Marxism, psychoanalysis, and feminism, to post-modern debates over new formations of mass culture and the representational variables of digital technologies. The questions raised by these theoretical histories are many: How do we explain cinema’s powerful psychological and physiological effects? What features or properties are specific to the cinematic medium? What does it mean to speak of cinema’s relation to reality, or of its compelling construction of the illusion of reality? How do differing cinematic forms, from the most popular of genres (horror, action, comedy) to avant-garde experiments, generate meaning? How do these meanings at once reflect and refract the social/economical/ideological conditions of cinematic production? It is the goal of the course not to provide conclusive answers to the above questions but to challenge and enhance our understanding of the complexity of images that move, as well as the ways in which those images move us in turn.
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| Science Fiction Cinema: Artificial Life (This course fulfills the film major upper division genre requirement) | |
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Film 108, Section 1 (4 units) This course will examine films that thematize artificial life and monstrous transformation. We will study the historical and cultural milieus in which these narratives of artificial life have evolved. The films we will study and their literary progenitors raise fundamental questions about technological creation, human responsibility, and the experiential and physical transformation of humanity through technology. Interdisciplinary readings from critical theory, literary theory and philosophy of technology will complement our interpretations of the films. As an interdisciplinary film and theory course with an emphasis on science and technology, the course seeks to provide a thorough grounding in the issues which surround the technological creation of 'life,' something that is no longer simply in the realm of science fiction. Thus, our supplemental readings will include material outside the usual canon of film theory. Students will be expected to complete a mid-term take home exam and a final research essay of at least 15 pages. The paper can be published in HTML on our web site. Topics are expected to be in the general area of science fiction films or other relevant subjects and specifically include critical material from our reader. Readings will be approximately 25 pages a week of supporting text from our reader, in addition to seeing all films. We will be showing each film the week before after class. Please Note: Attendance for all lectures is Mandatory students missing 3 or more classes will lose 2 grades (i.e. from an ‘A’ to a ‘C’, ‘C’ to ‘F’). If you don’t want to work hard and read a lot, you shouldn’t take this class. Freshman and sophomores are discouraged from taking the class. Films to be discussed: Frankenstein, Metropolis, Modern Times, Colossus the Forbin Project, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Fly (both the original by Kurt Neumann and Cronenberg's), 2001 a Space Odyssey: Clark/Kubrick, Blade Runner: Ridley Scott, Do Androids Dream Electric Sleep?: Philip K. Dick, RoboCop, The Terminator, Terminator II, The Matrix |
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| Animation (This course fulfills the film major upper division genre requirement) | |
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Film 108, Section 2 (4 units) From the silent pioneering work of Emile Cohl, Winsor McCay, and Otto Messmer, through the stop motion animation of Reiniger, Starevich, and Len Lye, and on to the feature narratives of Japanese animé, we will study the major currents in international animation. The course revisits the best-known animation studios -- Disney, the Fleischer Brothers, Warners, George Pal, and UPA -- as the producers who helped redefine and Americanize narrative fantasy. We then examine Canadian, European, Eastern European, Russian, Chinese, and Japanese studios for the experimental alternatives to the American juggernaut, and study how new forms of animation – including early digital -- respond to both political and artistic demands of avant garde movements. Along with the films, we trace the shifts and changes of animation theory as it illustrates and challenges animation practice. Required readings: A course reader; Donald Crafton, Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898-1928; C[arlo]. Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio. |
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| The Action Film (This course fulfills the film major upper division genre requirement) (Cross-Listed with Rhetoric 119, Section 1) | |
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Film 108, Section 3 (4 units) In this course, we will examine the action film genre, from its beginnings in the silent era up to the present day. Drawing primarily from books and articles on the genre by such scholars as Steve Neale, Yvonne Tasker, David Bordwell, Susan Jeffords, and Richard Dyer, we will be discussing the way certain landmark Hollywood action films reflect historical, technological, narrative, and other stylistic characteristics of the genre as a whole. We will also discuss the influence of other nations’ action film traditions such as Hong Kong, Japan, Italy, and Britain, as well as the often overlapping relationship of action film to melodrama, adventure film, film noir, war film, science fiction, and the Western. Required Textbook(s):Yvonne Tasker. Action and Adventure Cinema. Class reader (Additional readings will be handed out in class, in class reader or available only on the website.) Requirements: Reading and Screenings: There is a substantial amount of reading in this course. There are also weekly screenings. Attendance at the weekly screenings is required. Written Assignments: There will be a midterm and a final. Both will have take-home and in-class components. There will also be required short postings to the class website. Class attendance: Class attendance is required. I will be taking attendance. Arriving late for class will be considered as an absence. Absences can affect your grade significantly. |
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Melodrama! (Cross listed with Rhetoric 119, Section 2) (This course fulfills the film major upper division genre requirement) |
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Film 108, Section 4 (4 units) In this class we will develpo a historical and theoretical framework for studying melodrama as a pervasive and global cultural form, looking primarily, though not only, at movies. We will start from the evolution of early film melodram and the development out of popular theaer, opera and painting and trace the generic conventions of the mode as they change throughout the nineteenth, twentieth and early twenty-first century. The class will have three main areas: silent film melodrama; popular Hollywood melodramas, including "women's films;" and contemporary melodramas across several different cultures. Since melodrama appears in many media and forms, our focus will be on developing a set of fundamental theoretical principles that we can then tet historically and in diverse cultural contexts. We will watch and discuss at least one feature-length film each week, along the shorter visual and audio materials and a variety of readings in film and theater criticism. Required Books: Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imaginations: Balzac, Henry James Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (Yale U.P. Paperback 1995) Chrisinte Gledhill (ed.), Home is Where the Heart Is (BFI, 1988) Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson (Princeton UP, 2001) Coursebook available at Replica Copy Recommended Books: (also in bookstore) Gayatri Chatterjee, mother India (BFI, 2002) |
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The Art House Directors: 1946-1966 (This
course fulfills the film major upper division auteur requirement) |
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Film 151, Section 2 (4 units) It ranks among the greatest onslaughts on American culture in the twentieth century – a sustained twenty-year blitzkrieg of foreign films that radically transformed conceptions of what narrative film could do, how filmmaking could be described, and how film could be discussed. Building on models created in the silent film era and in the skin flick trade, the art house cinema was cast not only as an alternative to Hollywood and the avant-garde, but also as a distinct kind of modernism. We will study fourteen art house blockbusters and their directors– among them Kurosawa, Fellini, Godard, Antonioni, Bergman, Polanski, and Satyajit Ray – and learn how their films were absorbed into American culture. In the process we will analyze how auteurism emerged as a response to genre and the star system. Screenings:
Required Readings:
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Auteur Theory: Traveling Directors (Crosslisted with German 186) (This course fulfills the film major upper division auteur requirement) |
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Film 151, Section 2 (4 units) This course will raise questions about authorship and originality in relation to cinema. A primary focus will be on the films of Werner Herzog. Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888-1931), another traveling director with a transnational career, will be included in comparative perspective. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1921), the first and classic vampire movie, was remade by Herzog in 1979, and a comparison of these two films will open up a range of connections. In both directors’ work we will find corresponding interests, in myth and cinematic experimentation as well as in documentary and challenging locations. We shall analyze formal characteristics of films while pursuing theoretical questions of aesthetic production and reception. Who is an author, specifically in film making, where teamwork is everything? How does an auteur become a trademark of a national cinema? In what ways can travel, dislocation, and exposure to different places and people become formative forces for cinematic production? How do different contexts and conditions of production change and shape the work of filmmakers? How do digital media change our conception of authorship? Our discussion of these questions will also draw on works by other directors, and students will be encouraged to pursue their own interests in project work. Text: Course Reader |
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Controversy & Shock in Italian Cinema (Taught in ENGLISH) (This course can be used for an elective for the film major) |
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Film 160 (4 units) (Crosslisted with Italian 170) http://art.berkeley.edu/coursework/moses/courses/IS170FS160F07/ MW 2-3:30P, 188 DWINELLE The first thing Italian friends ask you as you come off the plane is usually about so-and-so's latest film. More than many other nations, Italians have a passionate involvement with the movies. One can in fact trace the vicissitudes of Italian culture and history after WWII, as with no other community, along the thread of its cinema. The conflicts, the victories, the defeats of Italian society in all its aspects are mirrored in its cinema in ways that Hollywood does not for Americans. Outsiders (and usually not the average spectator at that) have, over the years, experienced a narrow and selective stream of Italian films as pleasant, entertaining, at time innovative and challenging, but on the whole as less than controversial or shocking. Italians of all classes and backgrounds, on the other hand, have engaged with the full range of Italian cinema in a spirit of controversy and with reactions of shock that tell us a lot about the lesser known aspects of Italian culture. One discovers, for instance, that film makers hugely admired abroad (Fellini, Antonioni) are barely watched by Italians, and that genres (Neorealism) we value for the honest and direct access they give us to what delights us about Italy are regarded by Italians as demeaning. Films we would expect repressive Italian political figures (Mussolini) to admire are not, directors we regard as liberal lights (Rossellini) are in fact much more ambiguous. Even genres we perceive as escapist (commedia all'Italiana) and actors we regard as popular film stars (Alberto Sordi, Marcello Mastroianni) turn out to be the true locus of radical social critique. Not to speak of the bluntness with which recent phenomena such as terrorism have been addressed by Italian Cinema. This course will address an alternative reading of Italian Cinema (mostly post-war and much of it quite new to spectators outside Italy) designed to reveal the challenging, animated, often controversial and shocking nature of Italy's version of this form of expression and its place in Italian cultural discourse |
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| Screenwriting: Writing Workshop | |
| Film
180A (4 units) Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. This class is open to juniors and seniors; will accommodate students who are not Film Studies majors. Interested students should attend the first class session. Explores the art and craft of writing a feature length, narrative screenplay. Participants present three story ideas to the class, develop one concept into a detailed treatment and write the first act of the script in professional screenplay form. Focus is on rewriting, with regular presentations of outlines and scripts to fellow writers. Emphasis on story structure, character development and screenplay form. Includes in-class writing exercises. Required Texts Richard Walter, Screenwriting: The Art Craft and Business of Film and Television Writing; The Complete Guide to Standard Script Formats, Part I: The Screenplay (CMC Publishing); Syd Field, Four Screenplays: Studies in the American Screenplay |
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| Advanced Screenwriting: Writing Workshop | |
| Film
180B (4 units) Prerequisites: Consent of instructor. This class is open to juniors and seniors; will accommodate students who are not Film Studies majors. Interested students should attend the first class session. Explores the art and craft of writing a feature length narrative screenplay. Participants present a detailed outline of a narrative script and then develop the material into a completed screenplay. Focus is on rewriting, with regular presentations of scenes to fellow writers. Participants also write short film scripts and explore alternative story structure. Emphasis on characterization, scene structure, visual story telling, and creating a unified script. Class culminates with reading of scripts. Required Texts Linda Segar, Making A Good Script Great; The Complete Guide to Standard Script Formats, Part I: The Screenplay; Linda Aronson, Scriptwriting Updated: New (and Conventional) Ways of Writing for the Screen |
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| Digital Video: The Architecture of Time (This course may be used as an elective for the film major) | |
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Film C185 (4 units) http://art.berkeley.edu/coursework/moses/courses/film185/ Objectives: This hands-on studio course is designed to present students with a foundation-level introduction to the skills, theories, and concepts used in digital video production. † As digital technologies continue to expand our notion of time and space, of value and meaning, new means of image and sound acquisition as well as nonlinear and nondestructive editing methods used in digital video are re-defining the architectures of time and the geographies of space. † Cinematic creation and experience have been (and continue to be) changed, and offer new and innovative possibilities for articulating new forms of the moving image. Through direct experimentation and through reading-based conceptual discussions, this course will expose students to a broad range of industry-standard equipment, film and video history, theory, terminology, field, and post-production skills. Students will be required to master the digital media tools introduced in the course, to develop a conceptual understanding of their implications, and to give personal voice to the new possibilities that digital video brings to time-based art forms. Methodology: There will be a mix of Colloquia, Lab Sessions, and Tech Demonstrations, which will culminate in the production of a final short narrative by each of the students. † Students must assume that, throughout the semester, a great deal of extra time will be required in the field and in the lab to complete all assignments. Assignments: Readings, Discussions, Lab Exercises & Field Assignments. † The latter will involve a progression of short films (Found Story-Images / Story-Places / Montage vs Longtake / In-Camera Editing, etc.) culminating in a complete short film. Attendance & Grading: Attendance at classes, labs, as well as additional lab time is not optional. † Grading will be based upon attendance and performance (conceptual as well as technical) during classes and labs and upon timely completion and evaluation of the short by-weekly assignments as well as the final project. Films: Selected shorts and sequences, as well as a few feature films, will be shown and discussed. † In doing so, we will learn to add to the articulate discussion-practice of Berkeley film majors, the perspectives and concerns of practicing film-makers. Student projects will be shown and discussed as well. Short projects as well as final one are expected to be ready on time and be posted on the class webpage portfolio. Required Texts: Course Reader
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| Field Study at the Pacific Film Archive (This class may only be taken once by film majors with the units counting toward the major) | |
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Film 197A (2 units) Wednesdays, 10 - 11 am mandatory group meetings at PFA. Students must schedule three hours of fieldwork per week in addition to group meetings. Prerequisites: Declared film majors with at least 60 semester units completed. Interning at the Pacific Film Archive. Interns will learn about film bibliography and research materials by attending weekly lectures and by working in the PFA Library. Interns will get a thorough orientation to the PFA Library through introductory lectures and training sessions. Then, for 3 hours per week throughout the semester, they will help organize materials for inclusion in the PFA Library's clippings files. Interns will gain experience in library organization and film bibliography, as well as a broad knowledge of the kinds of film reviews and criticism found in a variety of sources. For more information, please call Nancy Goldman at 642-0366. |
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| Independent Studies/Field Study for Majors | |
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Film 197B (3 units) Outsite course: Film Majors Only. See Undergraduate Advisor for details. |
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| Film Curating Internship | |
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Film 197C (2 units) Prerequisites: Declared art or film majors with at least 60 semester units completed. Professor approval required; enrollment limited. Experience "behind-the-scenes" at PFA! Interns will learn about film curating through creating a program of works by UCB students to present at PFA the following Spring semester. Students will solicit films and videos, preview, and make a final selection as a group. Students will write short anlayses of local film exhibition programs and will do projects related to PFA's ongoing exhibition program. |
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| Directed Study Group | |
Film 198 (2 units) Description Forthcoming |
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