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2004 (All courses are 4 units unless otherwise noted.) |
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| Reading and Composition | |
Film 1A, Sec 1 (4 units) Required Texts |
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| Reading and Composition | |
Film 1A, Sec 2 (4 units) This course is designed to train students in the skills of college-level academic writing by focusing on the problems of picturing history and time. Through close analysis, as well as extensive peer commentary and rewriting, students will learn to make thorough, concise, and sophisticated arguments about a number of written and visual materials which in some way engage with historical and temporal questions. Rather than taking history and time for granted, we hope here to discover them anew, as spells, alchemic potions of images and words that are not nearly as familiar as we might have once thought. Required Texts Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing About Film; Dominique Laporte, History of Shit; Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Millenium Approaches/Perestroika |
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| Reading and Composition | |
Film 1A, Sec 3 (4 units) Film 1A is a 4-unit writing course designed to help you develop analytical skills essential to college-level work. Because the first step in writing is learning to think analytically, much of the class will be devoted to close reading and discussion. This will help you write essays which make coherent arguments about the texts we are reading and watching. “Text” is defined as a variety of modes of expression, including literature, films, and graphic art. By beginning with written texts, and then moving to visual texts, you will see the similarity in techniques of analysis. Writing skills will be enhanced by in-class exercises and peer review. Required Texts Daniel Clowes, Ghost World |
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| This course fulfills the film major lower division history requirement - Part One. Film History One: Silent Era | |
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25A (4 units) This course provides a history of the silent cinema, from the first experiments with moving pictures to the emergence of the "talkie." We will combine the study of the history of film aesthetics, the development of a range of narrative practices, and the rise of various genres and film movements with analysis of national cinemas and industries (US, French, Italian, Russian/Soviet, German, Japanese, etc.). Class time will be divided between lecture and film analysis. Required Texts Tony Kaes, M; David Cook, A History of Narrative Film; Course Reader |
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| This course fulfills the film major lower division history requirement - Part Two. Film History Two: Sound Era | |
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Film 25B Required Texts Bordwell, Film History |
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| This course fulfills the film major lower division avant-garde requirement.The Avant-Garde Film | |
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28B (3 units) A survey of experimental film, including examples by Vigo, Duchamp, Leger, Bunuel, Clari, Deren, Brakhage, Kubelka, Snow, Gehr, Frampton, and Rainer. Required Texts |
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| This course fulfills the theory requirement. Film Theory : Questions of Cinema | |
Film
100 (4 units) This course is organized historically around theoretical works that address the most compelling questions occasioned by the cinematic medium. What makes the cinema so attractive and fascinating to the human psyche? How do we explain the powerful effects films have on our emotions? What features are unique and specific to the cinematic medium? Is cinema's essence or specificity best defined by its differences from all the pre-existing arts or by its ability to draw on them all? What is the relation of film to reality? Is the film medium best understood as a window on the world or a mirror of the mind? How do films create meaning? Are film narratives best understood as structured like a language or like a dream? What is the relation of the cinema to the /social/economical structures of the nations which produce it? How can the study of film help us to understand the way race and gender are constructed in our society ? Does the medium reinforce the social/political status quo or subvert it? Are some forms of cinema more politically or socially liberating than others? In order to get insight into these question we draw on theoretical writings influenced by aesthetics, philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminism, semiology, structuralism and post-structuralism. It is the goal of the course not to provide conclusive answers to the above questions but to open up new perspectives on the power, complexity and potential of the film medium. We conclude by considering the theoretical issues occasioned by new media. Course Requirements: • Regular attendance and active participation in class discussions • Daily responses to the course readings. For every reading, students will be expected to turn in at least five questions or comments in response to the reading. • Midterm Exam • Final Exam • Final Paper Extra Credit for presenting a theoretical writing to the class Required Text: Course Reader |
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| This course fulfills the film major upper division genre requirement. Animation | |
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Film 108, Section 1 (4 units) From the silent pioneering work of Emile Cohl, Winsor McCay, and Otto Messmer through the computer animation of John Whitney and Peter Foldes to the feature narratives of Japanese animé, we will study the major currents in international animation. The course revisits the best-known animation studios -- Walt Disney, the Fleischer Brothers, Warners, and UPA -- as the producers who helped redefine and Americanize narrative fantasy. We then examine Canadian, European, Eastern European, Russian, and Japanese studios for the experimental alternatives to the American juggernaut, and study how new forms of animation 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 tests animation practice. Required Texts A course reader; Donald Crafton, Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898-1928; Carlo Collodi, The Adventures of Pinocchio. |
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course fulfills the film major upper division genre requirement."No Body's Perfect"-- Love, Race, and the Marriage Plot in American Film Comedies Also available as English 166 |
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Film 108, Section 3 (4 units) This course examines how comedy in American cinema has been enlisted to stage race, sexuality, and their conjunctions in twentieth-century America. Taking the marriage plot as the communal narrative through which sexual, racial, and national tensions negotiate their conflicts, this course will analyze films made by, and sometimes about, Jewish Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans, as well as movies from mainstream Hollywood that do not, on first sight, seem to thematize race but are in fact projects working through the racial and sexual troubles haunting the formation of the nation. We will also expand our investigation into marriage beyond the traditional notion of a union between a heterosexual couple to various permutations, including untraditional "marriages of convenience," "green card marriages," "arranged marriages," and "marriage" between men. We will begin with the classic Hollywood screwball comedies of the forties and fifties and study the ways that these films exemplify the gender fantasies plaguing mainstream America and unveil the more invisible labor of aligning heterosexual norm (ratified by marriage) with fidelity to "the American way." The second segment of the course focuses on representations of Jewish Americans as performative expositions on the erratic encounter between the immigrant and the new nation. The third segment of the course turns to African American films and the problems of restaging or subverting stereotypes, in order to explore how African American filmmakers and actors have used humor to negotiate the darker aspects of racial abjection. The last segment of the course concentrates on Asian American cinema, where we will focus on the antics of assimilation and the relationship between Orientalism and Occidentalism. Film List: Hawkes, H: His Girl Friday; Cukor, G: The Philadelphia Story; Wilder, B: Some Like It Hot; Streisand, B: Yentel; Wood, S: A Night at the Opera; Allen, W: Hannah and her Sisters; Lee, S: Bamboozled; Brest, M: Beverly Hills Cop; Nair, M: Mississippi Masala; Wang, W: Eat a Bowl of Tea; Goei, G: That’s the Way I Like It; Lee, A: The Wedding Banquet. Required Texts Course Reader |
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| This course fulfills the film major upper division genre requirement. The Holocaust on Screen Also available as Comparative Literature 170, section 2 |
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Film 108, Section 5 (4 units) This seminar explores how the Holocaust has been depicted on film in a variety of national and historical contexts. Drawing on films from 1945 to the present, from the U.S., Germany, Poland, France, and Italy, it considers to what end images of the Holocaust have been used. The course examines the question of how the horror of the Holocaust can be represented, or indeed whether it should be, by looking at the very different formal choices made by filmmakers. We will consider the distinction between the still image and the moving image, and between documentary and non-documentary film, in order to assess the particular relevance of these distinctions in the context of Holocaust representation. The course also pays specific attention to a number of related political and ethical issues: the implied audience for Holocaust images; the "hollywoodization" of the Holocaust (as in the case of Schindler's List); the question of whether aspects of this difficult topic can ever be taken lightly (as in the case of Life is Beautiful); and the cinematic depiction of perpetrators and survivors. The course explores not only critical theoretical responses to major Holocaust filmmaking, but key intellectual-historical texts as well, through readings of Primo Levi and Hannah Arendt. Films to be shown include: Das Experiment (Germany, 2001); The Gray Zone (US, 2002); Into the Arms of Strangers (US/UK, 2000); Life is Beautiful (Italy, 1997); Mr. Death (US, 1999); Nazi Concentration Camps (US, 1945); Night and Fog (France, 1955); Passenger (Poland, 1963); The Pawnbroker (US, 1964); Photographer (Poland, 1998); Schindler's List (US, 1993); Seven Beauties (Italy, 1976); Shoah (France, 1985 [selections]); The Specialist (France, 1999); Train of Life (France/ Belgium, 1998) Required Texts Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil; Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler; David Engel, The Holocaust: The Third Reich and the Jews; Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved; Course Reader |
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| This course may be used as an elective for the film major. Sound | |
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Film 140, Section 1 (4 units) 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 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, as well as a field trip to The Saul Zaentz Film Center, where the processes involved in creating a soundtrack for a feature will be demonstrated. This provides a unique opportunity to isolate the sonic elements presented in class, explore other alternatives to the finished product, and discuss why final choices were made. 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. Required Texts |
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This
course fulfills the film major upper division auteur requirement.
Auteur Theory: Transnational Directors |
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Film 151, Section 1 (4 units) This course will raise questions about authorship and originality in relation to cinema. The primary focus will be on the films of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888-1931) and Werner Herzog (1942-) - both travelling directors from Germany with transnational careers. Throughout their work we will find corresponding interests, in myth and cinematic experimentation as well as in documentary and challenging locations. 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 whole range of connections. We shall analyze formal characteristics of films by both directors 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 film makers? Works by other directors will be included in our discussion of these questions. Attendance at lectures and screenings is required. See website of Media Resources Center for filmographies and bibliographies on Murnau and Herzog: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/MoviesbydirectorVid.html Required Texts A course reader will be made available at the beginning of the semester. |
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This course fulfills the film major upper division auteur requirement. The Films of Lars van Trier and Dogma 95 |
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Film 151, Section 3 (4 units) The Dogma 95 movement, co-founded by Danish director Lars von Trier, could be described as a publicity stunt with interesting, perhaps unintended theoretical ramifications. Two main paradoxes will be explored in this course: that the Dogma-required suppression of the director's name has effectively promoted the auteur status of von Trier and other Dogma directors, and that the movement's explicit rejection of genre pictures has nevertheless resulted in an identifiable notion of "a Dogma film." The course will thus treat the intersection of auteurism and genre by juxtaposing von Trier's individual career trajectory with a group of Dogma films made by other directors. Films to be screened include: (Carl Dreyer's) The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Element of Crime, Epidemic, Zentropa, The Kingdom, Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, The Celebration, The King is Alive, Italian for Beginners. Can fulfill either the Auteur or Genre course requirement for Film majors; fulfills an elective requirement for Scandinavian majors. NOTE: Cannot be taken for credit by students who took Film 151/Scand 115 with me in Fall 2003--the topic is slightly revised, but substantially the same Required Texts Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie, eds, Purity and Provocation: Dogma 95; Jack Stevenson, Dogme Uncut: Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, and the Gang that Took on Hollywood; John Rockwell, The Idiots; Jan Lumholdt, ed, Lars von Trier: Interviews
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| This
course may be used as an elective for the film major. National
Cinema: Indian Also available as Theater, Dance and Performance Studies 121 |
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Film
160,
Section 1 (4 units) This course is a survey of the history of Indian cinema, evaluating its importance in the global context as the world's largest film industry. In doing so, it will also look at the socio-political functions of popular media in a developing country with a population of a billion, where the cinema has functioned as the most participatory form of public discourse. How cinema has played the role of nation-builder - mediator, instigator, educator in myriad forms - working as a unifying factor for a nation with a population rich in cultures and languages, a form of public discourse where the nation is both imagined and produced. The course will also attempt to unravel the aesthetic bases of Indian film - how a "western" form of art is ingested into an indigenous Indian aesthetic sensibility and hybridized into an entity of its own kind. Consequently, the class will look at the various categories of Indian cinema, following both historical as well as thematic trajectories, like political films, art cinema, romances, Indian "westerns," gangster movies, mythological/devotional films, propaganda war movies, documentaries, musicals, etc. Students will see film excerpts in class, read essays, book chapters, and some screenplays, and will see films scheduled outside class meeting times. Required Texts |
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| This course may be used as an elective for the film major. National Cinema: East Asian Cinemas and Their Transnational Contexts | |
Film 160, Section 2 (4 units) This course comparatively examines the histories of East Asian cinemas in the context of the immense political and cultural transformations in East Asian region over the past century. In addition to local and regional diversity and specificity, thematic, stylistic, and industrial convergences and boundary crossing in these cinemas will be explored. The recent socio-political and economic transformation of these regions has enabled the circulation, mutual influence, appropriation, and translation of popular culture in the form of cinema, music, television, and the celebrity culture among them. The specificity of each cultural sphere is linked to global media culture, with which they form an increasingly cosmopolitan dialogue. How is this reflected in and constructed by motion pictures? Stylistically, many of the films made in East Asia have drawn on the shared cosmopolitan consumer language of cinema. Despite these stylistic convergences, each regional cinema has often created or sustained local specificity of language and culture. This course examines shifting representations of nationalism and cultural identity in East Asian cinemas in the context of globalization and transnationalism. Screenings will include: I Was Born, But… (Umaretewa mitakeredo, Yasujiro Ozu, 1932); Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950); Dragon Gate Inn (Longmen kezhang, King Fu, 1967); Happy Together (Chunguang zhxie, Wong Karwai, 1997); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2001). Required Texts: Lu, Sheldon (ed.), Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender; Course Reader |
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| Screenwriting: Writing Workshop | |
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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 (CMC Publishing); Linda Aronson, Screenwriting Updated; Paul Lucey; Story Sense: Writing Story and Script for Feature Films and Television; Claudia Hunter Jackson, Crafting Short Screenplays that Connect |
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| This course may be used as an elective for the film major. The Language of Cinema | |
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Film 185 (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 Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time; Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace; Paul Auster, City Of Glass; Friedrich Dürrenmatt, The Assignment; Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dream; Course Reader |
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| Please note: this class may only be taken once by film majors with the units counting toward the major.Internships for Film Majors: Independent Studies/Internship at the PFA | |
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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) |
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| Film Curating Internship | |
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Film 197C (2 units)
First Meeting: Friday, 4 - 5pm 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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