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2010 (All courses are 4 units unless otherwise noted.) |
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| The Craft of Writing: Deviant Dames: Queer Femininity in the First Half-Century of Film(Satisfies reading and composition requirement) | |
Film R1B.001 Class Times: In this course, we will investigate the many means (narrative, visual, aural, corporeal, extra-cinematic) films have used in order to suppress, encode, deploy, and decode representations of queer femininity. Film has a long history of molding women into icons worthy of desire, sympathy, distrust, disgust, etc.; we will focus our investigations on the ways film has both contained and elided representations of female masculinity and desire between women. We will consider how the term “lesbian” emerged in an historical context, and what other terms were available to filmmakers, authors, and audiences during this period. Structuring questions include: How does film render sexuality and sexual identities through visual codes? How have film narratives both shown and suppressed queer characters and queer desire? How has film borrowed from other spaces (literature, theater, historical events, etc.)? We will investigate these questions in films made between the 1910s and the 1960s, as well as classic “lesbian” novels and plays, such as The Well of Loneliness (1928) and The Children’s Hour (1934). Continuing from and expanding upon the foundations acquired in R1A, this course will advance students’ understanding of analytical writing, and will add a research component. In addition to several shorter essays, students will engage in a sustained semester-long original research project. Required Texts
Required Screenings
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| The Craft of Writing: Crime Scenes (Satisfies reading and composition requirement) | |
Film R1B.002 Class Times: American crime fiction is sui generis; some scholars have argued that ALL American fiction is about crime. Nevertheless, afficianados usually acknowledge a distinction between the classic American mystery, with its heroic detectives, and the mystery’s deviant cousin, the crime story. Crime fiction is typically centered on “criminality” and the grunt work of policing, rather than on a Romantic quest to ferret out social corruption. As a result, crime fiction tends to be ambivalent about “law and order”; as the lines between cop and criminal blur, the modern justice system is revealed to be an instrument of control and repression...a “cover-up.” Correspondingly, the criminal himself often becomes associated with qualities of “freedom” and “rebellion.” In this class, we will consider a variety of crime fictions, ranging from novels to video games. We will begin in the 1950s, when, for many reasons, crime fiction evolves in the direction of existentialist irony and pervasive cynicism; and we will conclude in the present, with the controversial video game, Grand Theft Auto. Like Grand Theft Auto, a number of the texts we’ll explore in this class have an aura of “criminality” that extends beyond their narratives. Many of them were censored or threatened with censorship. Thus, they bring into focus the “real world” stakes of their transgressive attitudes toward the themes of moral panic and social disorder. This course is designed as an immersive experience in writing successful college-level academic essays. Through close reading, critical thinking, and argumentative writing, as well as extensive peer commentary and revision, students will learn to make intellectual arguments about texts that are thoughtful and persuasive, thorough and concise. Our main focus this semester is on writing research papers. We will learn how to conduct research into primary and secondary materials at the library, and how to integrate our findings into well-written analytical essays. The course may include films like The Wrong Man (Hitchcock 1957), The Naked Kiss (Fuller 1964), Point Blank (Boorman 1967), A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick 1971), Menace II Society (Hughes Brothers 1993), and A History of Violence (Cronenberg 2005); television episodes from Dragnet (1951-1959) and CSI (2000-); and writings by Albert Camus, Richard Stark, Raymond Chandler, Sigmund Freud, and Michel Foucault. Required Book:
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| The Craft of Writing: Introduction to Gaming Thought and Culture(Satisfies reading and composition requirement) | |
Film R1B.003 Class Times: This writing class will teach its students to write at the college level. This means producing work that is focused and detailed, and that develops a thesis throughout the paper that responds to evidence in a thoughtful manner. We assume that writing is also about reading. And so, in this class, you will be engaging critically with visual and written texts, grappling with difficult ideas, and marshalling evidence to aid you in the development of your own thoughts in both writing and class discussions. The topic of this class is the “Introduction to Gaming Thought and
Culture,” which here means we will consider scholarly and critical work in
the field of game studies. This class will expose you to a range of gamer
theory and history, as well as works from related and overlapping fields:
film studies, narrative studies, ludology, and technology studies. The
difficulty of the readings will vary, but should be appropriate for an
introduction to the field. The class will explore a variety of media Our screenings will often involve playing a video game as a group—some
form of participation is absolutely required. You will be expected to
attend all class sessions—screenings included. I will be sure and provide
a fair, respectful and open environment for advanced gamers and total
novices alike. Playing games as a group will inevitably be fun—and
partaking in this pleasure is encouraged. It should be noted however,
that the topic of games and play will be treated with the utmost Books: None
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| The Craft of Writin: The Contemporary American Television Drama—Between Continuity and Seriality | |
Film R1B.004 Class Times: As the first core class focused on critical reading and composition, students will formally develop the fundamental skills necessary for successful college level prose. Through close readings of both visual and critical texts and intensive editing and rewriting, students will work toward articulating and sustaining a cogently conceived and executed argument. In keeping with this desired outcome, the class itself is organized around a central theme, in this case the contemporary Television serial and its precedents. The class is structured as both historical and cultural in focus. Beginning with a brief study of the Hollywood silent adventure serial and the Hollywood “B pictures” of the 1940s and 1950s, the class will then briefly study the origin of network Television drama in the 1950s. Having situated the Television drama’s origins, the class will then primarily study dramatic structures in between the advent of cable Television in the 1980s to the more recent emergence of Web-based drama. With this foundation, the class will focus on how film as a discrete medium influenced dramatic televisual formats. The class will additionally focus on how specific genres and commercial/technological factors shape the “modern” drama. How does Hollywood continuity narrative carry over to the Television serials? How does real-time reception inflect the way we “watch”? Why is it that certain genres such as the Police Procedural, the Spy Thriller, and the Science Fiction adventure thrive? How is the actual format of the drama dictated by commercial broadcast systems? In what ways is its critical reception a cultural phenomena related to the omnipresence of media conglomerates? Most centrally, how does Television drama work to articulate and inflect the broader cultural and political terrain of our “media” present? Some works to be viewed are NYPD Blue, The Sopranos, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 24, and Lost. Required Books:
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| History and Theory of Sound Film (This course fulfills the film major lower division history requirement) | |
| Film 25B Class Times: Film 25B provides a survey of films that illustrate historically significant styles of sound films interspersed with discussions of theoretical articles that investigate the aesthetic, psychological and ideological implications of the interaction between sound and image in the cinema. To what extent and how does the addition of synchronized sound, in the form of speech, music and sound effects, increase our pleasure as well as our emotional and intellectual involvement in the film medium? After a review of the expressive imagery of silent films, and the debate between classical and modern film theorists, we begin by studying examples from the earliest sound films (Rene Clair’s Le Million and Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail), before the articulations between sound and image in the cinema became conventionalized. We then turn to a study of the conventions of the classical Hollywood film, films made in the context of the American studio system. We will be considering three Hollywood genres: the screwball comedy, the film noir, and the musical. As we shall see, the conventions of the Classical Hollywood film are not as monolithic as some film theorists have claimed, but they nevertheless provide a point of departure from which students can better appreciate aesthetic innovations in film form by directors who worked against or modified these conventions to open up new channels of expressiveness in film form. We study, for example, Orson Welles’s narrative, visual and sonic innovations in Citizen Kane, consider what was new (on the level of sound and image) about Italian neorealism through a close analysis of DeSica’s Bicycle Thief. We go on to examine how Truffaut and Godard broke even more radically from Hollywood conventions in groundbreaking films that ushered in the French New Wave (The 400 Blows and Vivre Sa Vie). We then study Fellini’s 8 1/2 and Ingmar Bergman’s Persona as exemplary of the European Art Film and Woody Allen Stardust Memoires and Francis Ford Copola’s The Conversation as examples of the American art film. We then turn to the subject of political cinema, and how Spike Lee in Do the Right Thing and Gillo Pontecorvo in The Battle of Algiers (both of whom drew on the revolutionary experiments of Sergei Eisenstein) use the film medium to challenge existing racial stereotypes in film and convey political messages. The study of Patricia Rozema’s I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing and Jane Campion’s The Piano addresses issues of the construction of gender in film and how representations of women (on the level of sound and image) might differ when a woman directs. The course concludes with an examination of Mike Figgis’s Time Code, in which Mike Figgis exploits the potential of digital video to tell a story on film in a radical new way on both the level of sound and image. Course Requirements
Required Books:
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| The Documentary Film | |
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Film 28A Class Times: This course surveys the history, theory and practice of the genre called Documentary Film. We will attempt to explore what this amorphous and vague term means and examine the ways its forms and ethics have changed since the beginning of cinema. We examine the major modes of documentary filmmaking including cinema verite, direct cinema, investigative documentary, ethnographic film, agit-prop and activist media, autobiography and the personal essay as well as recent post-modern forms that question relationships between fact and fiction such as the docudrama, the archival film, cine-recreations and "mockumentary." We will examine the "reality effects" of these works through formal analysis focusing on their narrative structures and the ways in which they make meaning. Through this, we explore some of the theoretical discourses and questions that constantly surround this most philosophical of film genres. We will ask: How do these films shape notions of truth, reality and personal experience? What are the ethics and politics of representation and who speaks for whom when we watch a documentary? What do documentaries make visible or conceal? What, if anything, constitutes objectivity? And by the way, just what is a document anyway? Course work will include short response papers, a midterm, and a final paper or project.
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| Introduction to Film for Nonmajors | |
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Film 50 Class Times: Film 50 is an introductory course designed for non majors, members of the Berkeley community, and students considering the film major at Berkeley who want to explore the history and aesthetics of the film medium. The films chosen for screening illustrate distinctive directorial styles, film genres and/or national cinema styles. By concentrating on the historical development of filmic mise-en-scene, the photographic image, editing, cinematography, and the relation of sound to the image, students learn to view film as a complex picture language and to understand how the combination of sound and image articulate film’s narrative, psychological, social and ideological purposes. This year’s structuring theme will be Film and Memory. Required Books:
Assignments:
Additional assignments such as journals or response papers, shot analysis exercises, class presentations, and quizzes will be given by section leaders.
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| Science Fiction | |
Film 108.001 Class Times: In this class we will examine science-fiction film from several different perspectives: as a (possibly troubled) generic category, as an important part of film history, as a traditional stimulus of theoretical and philosophical speculation. We will study films from the silent era and from the anxious middle of the twentieth century, as well as more recent examples. Expect fairly heavy reading assignments (in a Reader), a few short papers, a midterm and a final exam.
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| Anime: Critical Readings in Visual Culture (Cross-Listed as Comp Lit 190) | |
Film 108.002 Class Times: This course is a senior seminar focusing on theoretical readings of Japanese animation, or anime, from its earliest forms to contemporary works. We will think through the impetus and methods for the critical study of popular cultural forms such as anime. The seminar addresses issues such as the depiction of memory and temporality, imaginations of childhood, cultural disaster and the post-war; corporeality, shôjo, and yaoi and otaku culture, as well as the placement of anime within contemporary media theory. We will view works by Miyazaki Hayao, Satoshi Kon, Anno Hideaki, Oshii Mamoru, and many others. Required Books:
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| Physical Comedy (Cross-Listed as Rhetoric 119.002) | |
Film 108.003 Class Times: In her essay Film Bodies: Gender, Genre and Excess, Linda Williams argues that “Physical clown comedy is another ‘body’ genre concerned with all manner of gross activities and body functions—eating shoes, slipping on banana peels. Nonetheless, it has not been deemed gratuitously excessive, probably because the reaction of the audience does not mimic the sensations experienced by the central clown. Indeed, it is almost a rule that the audience’s physical reaction of laughter does not coincide with the often dead-pan reaction of the clown.” While physical comedy is perhaps not deemed as excessive as the “body genres” that are her chief concern (pornography, horror, melodrama), physical comedy is frequently identified as a “low” genre, reliant on “gags” that disrupt classical narrative filmmaking structures, and designed to produce a mysterious physical response—laughter—which is generally considered to be a release from emotional tension. In part because of its visceral impact, physical comedy has been culturally underappreciated, with individual artists frequently receiving grudging or belated critical study. In this course we will draw on the scholarship of Henri Bergson, Simon Critchley, Tom Gunning, Henry Jenkins, Kristine Brunovska Karnick, Noell Carroll, and Andrew Klevan in order to examine the work of a variety of film directors and performers specializing in physical comedy, including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, The Marx Brothers, Jacques Tati, Frank Tashlin, Preston Sturges, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, Cary Grant, Jerry Lewis, Peter Sellers, Blake Edwards, Steve Martin, Monty Python, Ben Stiller, Jackie Chan, and Stephen Chow. Required Textbook(s):
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| Serial Television: The Wire (Cross-Listed as Rhetoric 119.001) | |
Film 108.004 Class Times: Discerning critics and avid fans have agreed that the five-season run of Ed Burns and David Simon’s The Wire was “the best TV show ever broadcast in America”--not the most popular but the best. But what exactly is this portrait of Baltimore as seen through six distinct but interrelated institutions: police, drugs, the docks, city government, public schools and newspaper--the media that reports, or fails to report, on all the others? The 60 hours that comprise this episodic series have been compared to Dickens, Balzac, Dreiser and Greek Tragedy. Such comparisons attempt to get at the social complexity of the series, its depth, its bleak tapestry of a decaying American city, its diverse social and racial stratifications and its sense of “fate.” Though valuable, none of these comparisons quite nails what it is that made this the most compelling “show” on TV and better than many of the best movies. This class will attempt to understand what is special about this series that grapples with the institutional totality of what ails contemporary America, most importantly a failure of justice that transcends a “law and order” or “CSI” context. Looking especially at the first, third, fourth and fifth seasons, and at their journalistic, novelistic, dramatic and televisual roots, this class will dig deep into the question: What’s so great about The Wire? Required Reading:
All books are on reserve in Moffit Library.
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| Special Topics in Film | |
Film 140 Class Time: This course will explore the nature, evolution, use, and abuse of sound in cinema. From the first silent films, which weren’t presented in silence at all, to current ride films, the relation between sound and image will be analyzed in detail. While there is a high degree of visual sophistication in audiences and academic analysis, there is an almost equal naiveté when it comes to sound. Starting with the physics of sound, the neurophysiology of hearing, and how our perception influences our emotional reactions, we will consider the three main categories of film sound - dialogue, music, effects - from the perspectives of the writer, the director, and the audience, looking at the artistic and technical factors that guide and constrain the creative process, as well as how changes in presentation have affected audience response. Examples will be shown from foreign and domestic feature, documentary, and animated films. Depending on schedules, there will be several guest lectures by directors and editors currently working on the soundtracks of their films. At the end of the course, students should be able to bring an increased sophistication and depth to their understanding of how sound contributes to (or diminishes!) the filmic experience. Requirements:
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Auteur Theory: The Films of the Coen Brothers (Cross-Listed as Rhetoric 133) |
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Film 151.001 Class Times: In this course we will examine the films of writer-director-producer team Joel and Ethan Coen in terms of the ways in which these films confirm, challenge, and provide insight into existing theories of film authorship. The Coens are useful “trouble cases” when it comes to both auteur and genre theories, having positioned themselves and their work in an ambiguous relationship to the often-opposed categories that typically inform these theories: Hollywood studio and independent film practices, classic and postmodern filmmaking techniques, art film and mass entertainment aesthetics, and American and European critical sensibilities. We will screen and analyze most of the Coens’ films including Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, The Man Who Wasn’t There, O Brother Where Art Thou? and No Country For Old Men. Required Texts:
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| The Films of Ingmar Bergman (Cross-Listed as Scandinavian 115) | |
Film 151.002 Class Times: What is a "Bergman film"? Can films be authored in the same way as books? This course will examine the work of Sweden’s premier filmmaker, Ingmar Bergman, the phenomenon of his success in the U.S. and worldwide, his contribution to the notions of auteurism and art cinema, his role within Swedish culture, and the problems he poses by linking film and autobiography. Texts: TBA Prerequisites: None.  |
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| Hayao Miyazaki | |
Film 151.003 Class Times: This Auteur course will explore the works of Hayao Miyazaki. We will examine his extensive filmography and some of his television work and Manga. Recurrent themes in his work explore humanity’s relation with nature and technology and this will form the core of our work over the semester. Thus, interdisciplinary readings from critical theory, film theory and philosophy of technology will complement our interpretations of his works. In order to better understand the cultural reservoir Miyazaki draws from, we will engage supplemental material including Anime and Manga. We will be showing a film almost every week and before each film there will be a short lecture, and a discussion period afterwards. I consider attendance at these showings mandatory. Substantial reading will be required, all of which will be available in the books, class reader or online. Students will be expected to write a short review of each reading in their class blog. Students will be expected to complete a substantial mid-term take home exam and a final research essay of at least 15 pages. There will also be at least 2 in class tests. Students will be encouraged to publish their essays in their blog in order to accommodate film clips and photos. Required Books:
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| German Cinema From Expressionism to Hollywood | |
Film 160 Class Time: In many ways, German Expressionist cinema of the 1920s was a laboratory in which a modern film language was invented. Drawing on theater and the arts, German cinema experimented with cinematography, lighting, composition, editing as well as storytelling and acting; it pioneered an iconography suitable for horror, science fiction, crime, and (in the case of Ernst Lubitsch) even comedy films. The aim of this course is to show how the Expressionist visual style came to be identified with German cinema and how Hollywood adopted this “German style.” American studios hired a number of famous German filmmakers and promoted movies (for example, Dracula and Frankenstein) that showed Expressionist influences. We’ll trace the robust traffic between German cinema and Hollywood not just among filmmakers but also cinematographers, set designers, actors and actresses. We’ll attempt new readings of classic Expressionist films (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu, Metropolis, M) and discuss lesser known, but recently restored films of that period. We’ll also screen selected American films made in the “German style.” Filmmakers to be studied include Ernst Lubitsch, Josef von Sternberg, Erich von Stroheim, F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, as well as early Hitchcock and Orson Welles. All German films have subtitles. Text:
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| Beginning Screenwriting | |
Film 180A Class Time: 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. Prerequisites: Required Books:
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| Digital Video: Focus on the Narrative Short (Cross-listed with Practice of Art C171.001) (This course may be used as an elective for the film major) | |
Film C185 (4 units) Class Time: This hands-on course explores the process of making narrative shorts using digital video production. Students will write, storyboard, shoot and edit four short films (2 - 7 minutes). Lecture topics include how to write an effective short script; storyboarding; working with the digital video camera; directing actors and camera; continuity and coverage; composition; lighting; sound design; fundamentals of video editing and editing esthetics. Class members work outside of class in assigned "crews" to shoot projects and edit in the media lab outside of class as well. Dailies and cuts are screened in class and critiqued by both the instructor and fellow filmmakers. Prerequisites: Consent of instructor required. This class is open to juniors and seniors. Preference is given to Film Studies and Art Practice majors but instructor will try to accommodate students with other majors was well. Interested students should attend the first class session. Required Books:
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| Advanced Digital Video |
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Film C187 Class Time: This advanced studio course (very demanding and very labor intensive) is designed for students who have mastered basic skills and concepts involved in digital video production as taught in FS26 and FS185, and who are interested in further investigating critical, theoretical, and creative topics in digital video production. This semester the course will address the full production process of a short narrative film: from idea, to narrative premise, to treatment, to pre-production, to casting, to shooting-script, to directing the film, to crewing for each other, to post-production and, finally, to exhibition. Narrative should be understood, for the purposes of this class, in a broad sense. The final result (your film) can be, if not mainstream narrative, metanarrative - antinarrative - deconarrative - conceptnarrative - subvertgenrenarrative, and so on. For all of these alternatives to work, however, we must be clear about what narrative is assumed to be in its conventional form by our culture[s]. We will therefore look first of all, and very carefully, at the conventions and techniques of story development, clear communication, and engaging execution. We will do this before we explore the tangents that test the limits and contradictions of the shared traditional conventions of classic narrative cinema. We will focus, of course, on the craft. But just as much as technique, the course is built on the assumption that what needs to be at the core of good filmmaking is a distinct and individual voice that knows what it is about. We will thus explore what you need to master if you are to communicate your ideas, what it is that constitutes meaning , and how much all of this depends on knowing who you are. This class takes it for granted that the most important thing a filmmaker needs to learn from the outset (over and above technique) is what s/he is going to put into the film. Of course, you will need to master further the nuts & bolts of the filmmaking process. Yet we will keep our focus on the fact that the most difficult task for a filmmaker is to have something to say that is worth saying.
Required Books:
Recommended:
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| Field Study at the Pacific Film Archive | |
Film 197A 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 | |
Film 197B (3 units) Description forthcoming, contact instructor for further information. |
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| Film Curating Internship | |
Film 197C Description Forthcoming. Please contact instructor for further information.
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