The 2016-17 course info will be available soon! Please check back in the early June!
“Course Summaries” will be listed below as they become available – simply click on the course title to view the course summary information. Special Topics courses may vary from year to year.
Please note:
- the TIME and LOCATION of courses is published in the Public Class Schedule
- OFFICIAL COURSE DESCRIPTIONS are available in the Undergraduate and Graduate Calendars
- the OFFICIAL COURSE OUTLINE will be distributed at the first class of the term
- FYSM 1510 First-Year Seminar: Moving Image Plus Sound – Fall/Winter term
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- for more information about First-Year Seminars see: https://carleton.ca/first-year-seminars/
- Instructor: Charles O’Brien
- Course description: This course provides an introduction to the discipline of film studies through the endeavor of analyzing films. The course will involve the examination of mise-en-scène, editing, cinematography, and sound in a selection of important films, certain of which will be the focus of detailed analysis over two to three weeks. Through writing about movies, students will acquire the technical and critical vocabulary needed for the study of films and other moving image media. They will also gain knowledge of certain of major artists, style movements, and technological transformations that have defined the history of cinema from the late nineteenth century up through the digital present.
- Films likely to be screened for the course include: Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1940), The Prestige (C. Nolan, 2006), Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1983) Les quatre cents coups (dir. François Truffaut, 1959), Record of a Tenement Gentleman (Yasujiro Ozu, 1947), Chungking Express (Wong Kar-Wai, 1994) Steamboat Bill, Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1928), and The Fog of War (Errol Morris, 2003).
- Course evaluation will be based on a variety of short writing assignments, exams, and class attendance and participation. The textbook is David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, tenth edition. Film Studies majors who take FYSM 1510 are exempt from the need to take FILM 1000 Introduction to Film.
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- FILM 1000A Intro to Film Studies - Fall/Winter term
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- Instructor: José Sánchez
- FILM 1000 “Introduction to Film Studies” is the only Film Studies course offered in first year at Carleton University. It is offered by the Film Studies Program, one of the three Programs within the School for Studies in Art and Culture. (The School’s other two Programs are Music and Art History). Students may pursue a B.A General or a B.A. Honours in Film Studies. Many students take Film Studies courses as options within other degree Programs.
- This course is organized as an introduction to the different ways in which films may be studied. We pay particular attention to questions of form, style and critical method. The objectives of the course are to familiarize students with the vocabulary and concerns of cinema studies and to survey three overlapping areas of inquiry: film as art, the aesthetics of film form and film as a social practice. While there is obviously a historical dimension to the course, we do not follow a strictly historical chronology in the presentation of films or issues.
- The course is divided into four units. Unit 1, “Style and Technique,” introduces students to the basic elements of cinema as an artistic and communicative form. During Unit 2, “Film Genres,” we look at generic categories as a way of classifying films and examine particular genres. The genres studied are the Romantic Comedy and the Horror Film. Unit 3, “The Filmmaker,” looks at the problems and advantages of analyzing films in terms of the creative personality of the director as Auteur. We will examine three different filmmakers. Finally, Unit 4, “A Period in Film History,” focuses on specific movements within film history. This year we will look at Contemporary Québec Cinema.
- CAVEAT: Films screened in this course may contain disturbing images and sounds. In order to conduct valid film analyses, students must be able to adopt a critical distance vis-à-vis audiovisual material that might be unsettling or shocking. Individuals who are unable or unwilling to adopt such critical distance should not take this Film Studies course.
- Evaluation: Each section of the course will be examined separately by an In-Class Test and/or Out-of-Class Essay and/or Formal Exam. During the discussion groups there may be surprise pop-quizzes on the readings and the films or written exercises aimed to improve essay writing. Attendance and participation are compulsory and will be evaluated as part of the final grade.
- Lecture format: lecture & screening (three hours/week); discussion group (1 hours/week)
- Text: Textbook & Coursepack
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- FILM 1000B Intro to Film Studies - Fall/Winter term
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- Instructor: José Sánchez
- FILM 1000 “Introduction to Film Studies” is the only Film Studies course offered in first year at Carleton University. It is offered by the Film Studies Program, one of the three Programs within the School for Studies in Art and Culture. (The School’s other two Programs are Music and Art History). Students may pursue a B.A General or a B.A. Honours in Film Studies. Many students take Film Studies courses as options within other degree Programs.
- This course is organized as an introduction to the different ways in which films may be studied. We pay particular attention to questions of form, style and critical method. The objectives of the course are to familiarize students with the vocabulary and concerns of cinema studies and to survey three overlapping areas of inquiry: film as art, the aesthetics of film form and film as a social practice. While there is obviously a historical dimension to the course, we do not follow a strictly historical chronology in the presentation of films or issues.
- The course is divided into four units. Unit 1, “Style and Technique,” introduces students to the basic elements of cinema as an artistic and communicative form. During Unit 2, “Film Genres,” we look at generic categories as a way of classifying films and examine particular genres. The genres studied are the Romantic Comedy and the Horror Film. Unit 3, “The Filmmaker,” looks at the problems and advantages of analyzing films in terms of the creative personality of the director as Auteur. We will examine three different filmmakers. Finally, Unit 4, “A Period in Film History,” focuses on specific movements within film history. This year we will look at Contemporary Québec Cinema.
- CAVEAT: Films screened in this course may contain disturbing images and sounds. In order to conduct valid film analyses, students must be able to adopt a critical distance vis-à-vis audiovisual material that might be unsettling or shocking. Individuals who are unable or unwilling to adopt such critical distance should not take this Film Studies course.
- Evaluation: Each section of the course will be examined separately by an In-Class Test and/or Out-of-Class Essay and/or Formal Exam. During the discussion groups there may be surprise pop-quizzes on the readings and the films or written exercises aimed to improve essay writing. Attendance and participation are compulsory and will be evaluated as part of the final grade.
- Lecture format: lecture & screening (three hours/week); discussion group (1 hours/week)
- Text: Textbook & Coursepack
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- FILM 2000 Introduction to Film Theory and Analysis - Fall/Winter term
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- Instructor: Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
- Introduction to major film theories and analytical practices. Focus on 1) Classical Film Theory, 2) Theories of the 1960s and 1970s, and 3) Contemporary Film Theory.
- Prerequisite(s): FILM 1000 and second-year standing; or permission of the Discipline.
Lecture and screening three hours a week, lecture one hour a week.
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- FILM 2101 Film Industry - Fall term
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- Instructor: David Richler
- Global Film Industries
- Course description: This course will examine multiple film industries (e.g. Hollywood, France, Hong Kong/China) and their transnational connections. Focusing on the industry’s three major branches—production, distribution, and exhibition—we will adopt a global perspective and explore the international nature of cinema, analyzing film content and style in relation to industry practices and technological developments. Topics may include: analysis of the studio system; the relationship between ‘independent’, ‘art’, and ‘commercial’ filmmaking, the suburban multiplex, repertory theatre, and international film festival; the role of film advertising (trailers, posters, etc.) and the star system; the function of genre; adaptation and remakes; blockbusters and the special effects industry; legal issues and government policies regulating film production and circulation (copyright, censorship, etc.); international co-production and media convergence; film translation (incl. dubbing and subtitling); the recent impact of DVDs and the Internet, etc.
- The goal is ultimately to consider how ‘the industry’ regulates, promotes, and represents itself—by, for example, looking at how fiction films (e.g. The Player) and DVD extras such as making-of documentaries (e.g. Full Tilt Boogie) depict the film industry and the process of film making, and by analyzing how tent-pole blockbusters and smaller art and independent films are marketed for, and consumed by, audiences. In doing so, the course will explore the complex socio-cultural, economic, technological, and aesthetic forces that shape global cinema, all of which make it difficult to separate the art of film from its commercial status as industrial mass entertainment.
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- FILM 2106 The Documentary/JOUR 2106 - Winter term
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- Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
- This course will introduce students to the documentary, one of the most important and exciting modes of filmmaking. We will examine, historically, the major forms and movements of documentary ranging from the ethnographic to the Griersonian school, direct cinema to cinema verite, the animation documentary to the emerging form of web/interactive documentary. We will also explore the ways in which documentary addresses not only issues of politics, history, social justice and identity, but also more philosophical concepts such as truth, reality and ethics. Major figures in documentary such as the Lumiere brothers, Robert Flaherty, John Grierson, Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Michael Moore and John Akomfrah will be studied.
- Modes of evaluation: Take-home essays, in-class exams.
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- FILM 2207 The Canadian Cinema I - Fall term
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- Instructor: Tom McSorley
- THE CANADIAN CINEMA: Origins to 1980
- The art of film arrived in Canada at the end of the 19th century; Canadians began making films shortly thereafter. This course will trace the fascinating and sometimes troubled evolution of filmmaking in Canada from the silent era up to 1980. Exploring the influence of documentary cinema on the fiction feature film in Canada after the founding of the National Film Board of Canada, we will also be looking at examples of Canada’s accomplishments in animation and experimental filmmaking. The course will also probe the relationship, political and economic, between Canada and the USA generally, and Canada and Hollywood specifically.
- This exciting cinematic journey will take us from the oldest surviving silent film in Canada to the arrival of such internationally renowned talents as Norman McLaren, Denys Arcand, and David Cronenberg.
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- FILM 2208 The Canadian Cinema II - Winter term
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- Instructor: Tom McSorley
- THE CANADIAN CINEMA: 1980 to the Present
- This course will cover the rapid and impressive developments in Canadian cinema in all its forms from 1980 onward, including the arrival on the scene of such contemporary filmmaking luminaries as Atom Egoyan, Sarah Polley, Denis Villeneuve, and others. Building on origins of Canadian filmmaking examined in Film 2207, this course will also include feature fiction films, documentaries, experimental film, short drama, and animation, showcasing the rich and exciting diversity of contemporary Canadian cinema, as well as exploring what these films are saying about a changing late 20th and early 21st century Canada.
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- FILM 2401B The Film Maker - Winter term
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- Topics in Film Authorship: Women Directors
- Instructor: Laura Horak
- Course Description:
- What difference does it make when a woman is behind the camera? Do women directors have a particular sensibility? What industrial and historical factors shape women’s opportunities to direct? What relationships exist between feminist movements and women’s filmmaking? These are some of the questions this class will ask.
- The first half of the class will explore the history of women filmmakers in North America, from the silent era to today, ranging from mainstream Hollywood to avant-garde and documentary films. The second half will investigate the films of twenty-first century women directors, using Patricia White’s new book Women’s Cinema, World Cinema: Projecting Contemporary Feminisms (2015) as our guide. We will watch films made by women in Canada, Indonesia, Iran, Lebanon, Peru, and Thailand. Throughout the class, we will ask what it means to identify and be recognized as “a woman,” and consider work made by cis-gendered and transgendered women, white women and women of color, and straight and queer women. We will also think through theories of authorship and how they relate to the phenomenon of women “auteurs.”
- Assignments
- – Reading Responses
- – In-class Exam
- – Wikipedia Entry on a Woman Filmmaker
- – Analytic Essay
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- FILM 2601B Film Genre - Winter term
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- The Horror Film
- Instructor: André Loiselle
- On the surface, Horror Cinema might be seen as a genre whose ghastly content and trashy aesthetics seek to appeal exclusively to the sick and twisted minds of deranged teenage boys in search of cheap thrills. However, the horror film’s excessive display of violence, blood and gore, its emphasis on physical, mental and sexual aberrations, and its reliance on visual and sound effects that trigger visceral as well as intellectual responses, can also be interpreted as intricate modes of address that confront spectators with radicalized versions of themes and issues central to the human experience. The objective of this course is to look at various approaches to the horror film in an attempt to delineate these modes of address and explain the peculiar fascination that Horror exerts over audiences. Questions of genre, gender, cognitive responses, psychoanalysis, censorship, culture and history will all be broached during the term.
- Assignments:
- Three Reading Reports : 60%
- Take-Home Final Exam : 40%
- All readings will be from Harry M. Benshoff, A Companion to the Horror Film. Chichester (UK): Wiley Blackwell, 2014.
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- FILM 2606 History of World Cinema I - Fall term
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- Instructor: Malini Guha
- The objective of this course is to provide a historical survey of the evolution of cinema around the globe, beginning with the invention of the medium in the late 19th century until 1945. As the title of the course suggests, we will study the most significant film movements from around the world in an effort to explore the development of cinematic cultures from both a national as well as a transnational perspective. As many have argued, world cinema must be examined as a set of complex and overlapping circulatory practices that often remain grounded within a national context while also exceeding the nation state as a result of the global nature of film production, distribution and exhibition. We will pay careful attention the development of film form and style in this course as it pertains to a variety of film movements and categorizations such as the ‘cinema of attractions’, Soviet Montage, German Expressionism, French Poetic Realism and Japanese studio filmmaking. We will also study the most significant technological shifts of this historical period, including the coming of sound and colour.
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- FILM 2607 History of World Cinema II - Winter term
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- Instructor: Malini Guha
- The objective of this course is to study some of the most salient developments in the history of world cinema from 1945 to the present day. More specifically, we will examine cinematic practices from around the world as a set of complex and overlapping circulatory practices that often remain grounded within a national context while also exceeding the nation state as a result of the global nature of film production, distribution and exhibition. As such, we will consider a number of the most influential film movements of the time period, including Italian neo-realism, the French New Wave, postcolonial cinema, and ‘slow cinema’, among others. We will also explore global accounts of popular usages of narration and style, such as ‘network narratives’ and ‘intensified continuity’ as well as some of the most significant technological innovations of the era, including the rise of lightweight film technology in the post-war period and the more recent dawn of digital cinema.
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- FILM 2801 Moving Image Practice I - Fall term
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- Instructor: Michael Ostroff
- Film 2801 is designed for students interested in the practical aspects of making documentary films. The main focus of the course is the production of a 10-15 minute documentary. The autumn term covers basic techniques and language of documentary production, and working collaboratively in production groups of 4, students research and pitch story ideas for a documentary. During the winter term (see Special Topics FILM 3901) the story idea of each production group is made into a documentary. (Equipment and training are provided by the University.)
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- FILM 3206 Topics in American Cinema - Winter term
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- American Sinema: Histories of Sexuality and American Cinema
- Instructor: Laura Horak
- This course uses sexuality as a lens for examining the social, industrial, political and aesthetic history of American cinema. As Linda Williams writes in Screening Sex (2008), “[sex] is not a stable truth that cameras and microphones either ‘catch’ or don’t catch. It is a constructed, mediated, performed act.” In this class, we will investigate myriad ways that American movies have constructed “sex” across the last 120 years and how these variations reveal the contours of a changing film industry. Key threads will be: sexual representation, spectatorship and desire, censorship, cinemas as sexualized spaces, moral panics, and sexual politics (including reproduction, abortion, rape, and sex work). We will consider the interplay of Hollywood and alternative film cultures, including exploitation and avant-garde cinemas. We will explore how cinema constructs different kinds of sexuality, including queer and BDSM eroticism. This course will offer a history of American cinema, as seen through the movies’ shifting participation in the production of sex and sexuality.
- Assignments:
- – Reading Responses
- – In-class exam
- – 2 Analytic Essays
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- FILM 3301 Topics in Cinema and Gender - Fall term
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- Instructor: Laura Horak
- Course Description
- How do moving images participate in the production of gender? In what ways is this process inflected by sexuality, race/ethnicity, class, and national identity? This course will investigate the crucial role of normative and “deviant” genders in the history of moving image production, distribution, and reception. We will investigate the way audiovisual texts use formal means (such as mise-en-scene, editing, camerawork, acting, lighting, and make-up) to make gender visible and the display of gender difference pleasurable. We will also consider the ways that genre systems (like melodrama and the chick flick) produce gendered meanings and forms of address and the gendered politics of labor in media industries. The course will also investigate the way that feminist, transgender, and queer media-makers have inventively rethought moving image media for poetic and political ends.
- Learning Outcomes – by the end of this term, students will be able to:
- Give a nuanced account of gender that takes into account historically- and geographically-specific meanings and a wide array of gender expressions and identities.
- Notice the narrative and formal elements of an audiovisual text (e.g. mise-en-scene, editing, camera placement and movement) and use these elements to sustain an argument about a media text.
- Generate creative, original arguments about gender and moving images and support these arguments with evidence.
- Write an accessible, well-researched entry for Wikipedia, bringing information about notable cis-women and transgender media workers to a global readership
- Grades will be calculated as follows:
- Participation and reading responses: 20%
- In-Class Exam: 20%
- Wikipedia Project: 30%
- Analytic Essay: 30%
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- FILM 3608B Topics in Film History - Winter term
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- Reenactment
- Instructor: Sylvie Jasen
- This course will focus on the practice of reenactment across both documentary and narrative (docudrama) films, marking changes and consistencies from early cinema to contemporary examples. Emphasis will be placed on critically investigating historiographical assumptions behind various approaches to representing the past and its relationship to the present. Other themes covered in the course include performance in documentary, the question of indexicality, minority communities and cross-cultural production, representing war and violence, and trauma.
- Evaluation: Participation, Presentation, Short written assignment, Essay.
- Required Readings: A range of articles will be made available for download through Ares.
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- FILM 3609 African Cinema - Fall term
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- Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
- Preamble: The project of this course is to introduce students to African cinema through its history, some of its major filmmakers, films and institutions, its key debates and challenges as well as its potential futures.
- Please Note: Students taking this course will have hands-on experience organizing the first-ever African Union Film Festival held on campus in partnership with the African Embassies and High Commissions in Canada and the Canadian Film Institute.
- Course Description: This course will explore the history of cinema in Africa, from its beginnings to the present. It will explore among other things the work of the Lumiere brothers in Africa, the colonial cinema, the multiple ways in which Africans have used the cinema since the advent of independence starting in the late 1950s and early 1960s and the recent boom in film production on the continent. The works of such masters as Ousmane Sembene, Souleymane Cisse, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Abderrahmane Sissako, Med Hondo, Faouzi Bensaidi, Fanta Nacro, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, John Akomfrah, will be explored. Such major concerns in African cinema as the problem of auteurism, spectatorship, realism, third cinema, the national, feminism, the popular, cinephilia, Nollywood, the postcolonial, race, Afro-futurism, genre and the challenge of the digital will also be examined.
- Students will participate in organizing on the campus of Carleton University, the very first African Union Film Festival, held in collaboration with the African Embassies and High Commissions in Canada and the Canadian Film Institute. This will include writing entries about the various films being shown in view of their presentation to the general public through both print and online media as well as participating in the promotion and actual logistics of the operation of the festival.
- Evaluation: Take home exam, research paper, final exam, blog entries.
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- FILM 3701 Animation - Fall term
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- Instructor: Jenna Stidwill
- This course will introduce third-year students to the study of animation history and theory. During the course we will explore how 20th and 21st century American animation reflects or has responded to select political, cultural, technological, and theoretical developments. Multiple interpretations of animation history will be explored. We will ask, what considerations should we take into account when studying animation within a national context? What are the significant periods in the development of animation during the 20th and 21st centuries?
- This course is organized chronologically. During each week we will examine an important period in the history of American animation through the lens of a particular theory. A range of significant films from the 20th and 21st centuries will be screened.
- Required texts: All readings will be available electronically through CULearn
- Assessment: TBD
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- FILM 3801 Moving Image Practice II - Winter term
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- Instructor: Steve Rifkin
- This course examines modes of nonfiction film and video practice with an emphasis on the political, scientific, and aesthetic values that inspire and inform them. Through weekly lectures, readings, and screenings, we will explore the multiple – and sometimes contradictory – ideals that underlie and shape our urge to record images and sounds of the world. Deconstructing concepts such as representation, truth, authenticity, witnessing, memory, expression, and beauty, we will consider how these concepts are given life in various modes, genres, and techniques of film practice, including news reporting, ethnography, pornography, and surveillance. Students will be encouraged to reflect upon and interrogate the assumptions that inform their own experiences as practitioners of film, video, and photography.
- Text: Course pack
- Assignments and evaluation (tentative):
- Short response papers (2 x 10%) 20%
- Project proposal and bibliography 20%
- Final essay or audiovisual project 40%
- Attendance and participation 20%
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- FILM 3808 Technology - Fall term
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Instructor: Theberge
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- FILM 3901 Topics in Film Studies - Fall term
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- Digital Media: Networked Screens, Viral Videos, and Immersive Worlds
- Instructor: Aubrey Anable
- Course Description:
- From YouTube videos and animated GIFs to the immersive worlds of social media and online games, digital media have altered our relationship to moving images. This course will examine the history, aesthetics, and theories of computer-based moving image culture. Students will learn key concepts and approaches in new media studies through varied examples, from early experiments in hypermedia and virtual reality to contemporary digital cinema, video games, crowdsourced entertainment, and viral video culture. Course readings will build upon and expand existing models of analysis from film, media, and visual studies. Assignments will develop students’ abilities to analyze digital media as historical, visual, and culturally meaningful objects.
- Evaluation and Assignments:
- Attendance & Participation: 15%
- Short Textual Analysis Paper: 25%
- Course Blog Post: 25%
- Final Take Home Exam: 35%
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- FILM 3901 Topics in Film Studies - Winter term
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- follow-up to FILM 2801 presented in the 2015 Fall term
- Instructor: Michael Ostroff
- Film 2801/3901 is designed for students interested in the practical aspects of making documentary films. The main focus of the course is the production of a 10-15 minute documentary. The autumn term covers basic techniques and language of documentary production, and working collaboratively in production groups of 4, students research and pitch story ideas for a documentary. During the winter term the story idea of each production group is made into a documentary. (Equipment and training are provided by the University.)
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- FILM 4001 Research and Critical Methodologies - Fall term
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- Instructor: Charles O’Brien
- Course description: This course introduces fourth-year students to methods of advanced research in film studies, with a focus on questions of film history. Topics covered by the course include: the variety of ways in which film history has been written; the status of films in film historiography; the limits and possibilities for contextualizing films relative to aesthetic, psychological, economic, technological, and social conditions and forces; and the documentation used in making film-historical claims, such as film reviews, trade press reportage, drafts of scripts, interviews with filmmakers, correspondence, censorship records, and so on. The course will also touch on the practicalities of designing and writing a research proposal for submission to a funding agency and/or admissions committee for a graduate program. The course is thus relevant to students considering graduate work.
- Films likely to be screened for the course include: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1919) Traffic in Souls (George Loane Tucker, 1913), Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010), Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2012), There Will Be Blood (P. T. Anderson, 2007), Waking Life (Richard Linklater, 2001), Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008), Aventurera (Alberto Gout, 1950), and A Screaming Man (Mahamat Saleh Haroun, 2010)
- The main course requirements for undergraduate students are: reading the weekly assignments and attending all lectures and screenings; completing two exams (a midterm and a final); and submitting a paper at the end of term. Graduate students in the course will be asked to give a class presentation pertaining to one of the weekly reading assignments and/or screenings and to write a longer paper.
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- FILM 4201 Topics in National Cinema - Winter term
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- Topic: Rethinking Third Cinema through The Cinemas of Med Hondo and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea.
- Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
- Preamble: The project of this course is to explore the relationship between aesthetics and politics in the cinema, by using third cinema as point of entry and the cinemas of Med Hondo and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea as case studies. It will involve film history, film criticism, film theory and aspects of curatorial practice.
- Students taking this course will be offered the unique opportunity to directly interact with world-renowned director Med Hondo who will visit the class. They will also have hands-on experience organizing a retrospective and an international symposium on the cinema of Med Hondo with the director in attendance.
- Please note: The course is also open to Masters students.
- Course Description: This fourth-year seminar will explore the historical relationship between aesthetics and politics in the cinema. To do so it will examine one of the primary spaces where such a relationship has been made most visible, that is, third cinema, a cinematic tradition and a body of theoretical texts that brought into a vigorous, productive, dialectic and dynamic conversation filmmaking practices from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America.
- The task of the course is thus to revisit third cinema as theory and practice, and indeed as one of the most important and enduring theoretical accounts of film history. As a cinematic tradition that posits the inextricability of theory and practice, studying third cinema will open the space for reconsidering the relationship between cinema and politics, cinema and spectatorship, cinema and ideology (capitalism, Marxism) and, indeed, the relationship between emotion and reason in the cinema.
- Our study will thus involve a close analysis of the films of Mauritanian giant Abid Med Hondo and the late Cuban master, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, two directors who have creatively engaged with such genres as the musical, the melodrama, the war film and the historical epic in such films as Soleil O, The Last Supper, Memories of Underdevelopment, West Indies, Sarraounia, Death of a Bureaucrat, Fatima, The Algerian Woman of Dakar and Strawberry and Chocolate. Ultimately, our study of their work will lay the foundation for our assessment the meaning of making films politically today, of making political films today and indeed of looking at films politically today.
- We will strive in the course to emulate the inextricability of theory and practice in the class experience itself, by having students participate in organizing a retrospective and an international symposium on Med Hondo which will take place during the course. This will include writing entries about the cinema of Med Hondo and third cinema in view of their presentation to the general public through both print and online media as well as participating in the promotion and actual logistics of the realization of the two events.
- Mode of assessment: Oral presentations-Written Entries- Essays
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- FILM 4501 Selected Topics in Film Theory - Fall term
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- Instructor: Marc Furstenau
- Topic: Film Theory and the Philosophy of Art
- x-listed as FILM 5500 Advanced Film Theory
- Description: This course will consider the history of debates in film theory and philosophy about the aesthetic status of the cinema. The cinema, and photography before it, emerged at a time when the very concept of art – its value, its significance – was being reconsidered by philosophers and critics, and redefined by artists experimenting with new forms and materials. One of the first questions to be asked about the new photographic medium of film, within the context of such debates, was whether it could be included among the traditional arts, or if it was a wholly new kind of modern, technical art, requiring its own specific theory, and perhaps transforming customary notions about art. We will consider various arguments in these early debates about the new media of photography and film, and read some more recent work that has returned to the question of film art.
- Method of Evaluation: 1) Two Reading Reports: 20% each = 40%; 2) Final Essay: 60%
- Readings: Readings will be available through the on-line reserve system of the Carleton University library (ARES).
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- FILM 4800 Seminar in Film/Video Archival or Curatorial Practice - Winter term
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- Seminar in Film/Video Archival or Curatorial Practice: Film Programming
- Instructor: Tom McSorley
- Film programming is everywhere. From the multiplex movie chains and online platforms to the ByTowne Cinema and Mayfair Theatre ‘repertory’ cinemas, to institutions like the Ottawa Film Society and the Canadian Film Institute, to hundreds of film festivals in Ottawa, across Canada and abroad, curatorial decisions are being made that will affect what is seen and, equally important, what is not seen.
- Just what is this cultural practice called film programming? What is its role in contemporary culture, and in what forms does it appear? Who decides what gets shown in the many public presentation contexts of cinematheques, galleries, museums, and film festivals? And, more immediate to the broad intentions of this course, how does it work? How does one actually apply one’s knowledge of and passion for cinema in these various venues? These and many other questions will be discussed and analyzed in this course.
- This seminar/workshop course is intended to give students practical experience in four specific areas of film programming: themed film series, retrospectives, national cinema programming, and organizing public film festivals.
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- FILM 4901 Special Topic - Fall term
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- Sound in Film and Television
- Instructor: Gunnar Iversen
- Course description
- In this class, we will discuss questions about sound in film and television. What is sound and in what ways does it affect us? What is the relationship between sound and image in audiovisual media? How is sound used to tell stories in fiction films and drama series, and how is sound used to argue about the world in documentaries and factual television? How has technology shaped the representation of sound in film and television? In what ways do sound affect our experience of actual or fictional worlds, characters and narratives?
- In recent years, sound studies has emerged as a vital area of study and practice at the crossroads of the humanities and sciences, and some even talk about a ”sonic turn” or a ”sonic boom”. However, most studies of audiovisual media still put the emphasis on visual aspects, and only briefly discuss sound in itself, and the interplay between sound and image is not discussed to the extent it should. Together, in this course we will discuss the questions about sound and image, and explore sound as a component of audiovisual media, as a domain of artistic expression, and as a component of perception and cognition crucial to human communication.
- In this class, we will explore a vibrant new field of study in Film and Television Studies, and consider the ways in which sound affects our lives and our perception of the world as well as audiovisual media.
- Learning outcomes
- By the end of this course, students are expected to be able to:
- discuss auditive aspects and the interplay between auditive and visual aspects of film and television
- apply, summarize and evaluate theories of sound and sound practices in audiovisual media
- make original arguments about sound and images, and support them with evidence and logical chain of reasoning
- communicate ideas clearly in writing, discussions, and oral presentations
- Special permission to register in this course may be granted for students in the following fields: Journalism, Communication Studies, and Music
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- FILM 4901 Special Topic - Winter term
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- Video Games and Difference
- Instructor: Aubrey Anable
- This advanced seminar will explore video games as an art form, an industry, and as part of popular media culture. Our focus on “difference” signals two primary questions. One, how might we understand video games as an expressive form that shares similarities with other media like cinema and television, but that is also notably different from these media? And, two, as video games have come to surpass other media in sales and are reaching a broader audience, how is the form engaging with gender, race, and sexual difference? Readings, game demonstrations, lab time, and assignments will be geared towards giving students the language and theoretical frameworks to analyze video games. No game expertise or experience is required to be successful in this course.
- Evaluation and Assignments:
- Attendance & Participation: 15%
- Game Presentation: 15%
- Reading Presentation: 20%
- Short Textual Analysis Paper: 20%
- Final Research Paper: 30%
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- FILM 5000 Film Theory and History - Fall term
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- Instructor: Laura Horak
- Directions in Film Theory and Film History
- Course description: In this class, we will ask big questions about film and cinema. What is cinema? How does it relate to other media, to reality, and to society? What kinds of connections exist between films and their viewers? How does seeing interact with hearing and feeling? How does cinema structure contact between self and other, and work through differences of gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, nation, and class? How does cinema shape and exist in space and time? In what ways do films, archives, and written accounts mediate our relationship to the past?
- Together, we will explore different ways that these questions have been answered, contested, and deferred. We will learn about various schools of thought that have been marshaled to answer these questions, from critical theory to history, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, formalism, critical race studies, postcolonialism, queer theory, and sound studies. Histories of theory and theories of history alike will be investigated. By bringing older and newer writings together, the class will investigate the relationship between the discipline’s past and its present. We will consider the way film theory and historiography is changing today, when celluloid is being replaced by data storage devices and fewer people gather in large, public spaces to watch movies, yet moving images are more omnipresent than ever.
- Students will also begin thinking through possible topics for their MA research paper or thesis (when applicable), and strengthen their ability to communicate clearly and make persuasive arguments orally and in writing.
- Note: This course is followed by the second part of Film 5000, in the Winter term, taught by Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano.
- Learning Outcomes: By the end of this term, students are expected to be able to:
- – summarize, evaluate, and apply major film theories and historiographical approaches
- – make original arguments and support them with evidence and a logical chain of reasoning
- – communicate their ideas clearly in writing, discussions, and oral presentations
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- FILM 5000 Film Theory and History - Winter term
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Instructor: Wada-Marciano
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- FILM 5106 Cinema and Technology - Winter term
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- Instructor: Aubrey Anable
- This graduate seminar will cover the major theoretical and historiographical approaches to understanding cinema as a technology as well as understanding cinema as part of a broader technological discourse and imaginary. We will cover key technological changes in moving image culture (sound, colour, television, digital media, etc.) as well as various approaches to studying cinematic technologies (film and media studies, philosophy and film, visual studies, science and technology studies, feminist and queer theory, and critical race studies).
- Evaluation and Assignments:
- Attendance & Participation 20%
- Reading Presentation 20%
- Short Reading Synthesis and Analysis Paper 15%
- Final Research Paper Proposal 15%
- Final Research Paper 30%
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- FILM 5107 Topics in Film History - Winter term
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- Instructor: Charles O’Brien
- The familiar characterization of cinema as a visual art has enabled a neglect of the cinema’s sonic dimension that endures into the present day, when key aspects of film sound continue to receive minimal attention from scholars of film and media. Such aspects provide the focus of this course, which examines film history from the standpoint of the role in cinema of music and sound. Topics covered include: major turning points in the history of the technology and aesthetics of film music and sound, with a focus on similarities and differences between digital conversion in the early twenty-first century and the conversion to electric sound in the late 1920s; the history of film-theoretical reflection on music and sound; the history of cinema’s interface with cognate media such as recorded music, radio, television, and the internet; the function on movie soundtracks of music relative to dialogue and ambient noise; sound’s role in the filmic representation of social difference, including gender and race; how popular songs function as film accompaniment in contrast to orchestral music; the treatment of sound in silent films versus sound; and the virtues and limitations of specific critical methods for film-soundtrack analysis.
- Reading assignments for the course will be drawn mainly from two important recent books:
- James Buhler, David Neumeyer, and Rob Deemer, Hearing the Movies: Music and Sound in Film History (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
- Lea Jacobs, Film Rhythm after Sound: Technology, Music, and Performance (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 2014)
- Films screened for the class are likely to include:
- Catch Me if You Can (dir. S. Spielberg, 2002)
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (dir. Ang Lee, 2000)
- Phantom of the Opera (dir. Rupert Julian, 1925)
- Ivan the Terrible, Part I (dir. Sergei Eisenstein, 1945)
- The Fellowship of the Ring (dir. Peter Jackson, 2001)
- Rashômon (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
- Sleepless in Seattle (Nora Ephron, 1993)
- Dawn Patrol (dir. Howard Hawks, 1931)
- De-Lovely (dir. Irwin Winkler, 2005)
- Cléo de 5 à 7 (dir. Agnes Varda, 1962)
- Steamboat Willie (Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney, 1928) and other animated shorts of the late 1920s/early 1930s
- Course assignments are likely to include: a film-analysis/description paper (four pages) due midterm; a film-interpretive essay (fifteen to twenty pages) due after the end of classes during the exam period; a class presentation; and multiple short in-class writing assignments.
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- FILM 5500 Advanced Film Analysis - Fall term
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- Topic: Film Theory and the Philosophy of Art
- x-listed as FILM 4501 Selected Topics in Film Theory
- Instructor: Marc Furstenau
- Description: This course will consider the history of debates in film theory and philosophy about the aesthetic status of the cinema. The cinema, and photography before it, emerged at a time when the very concept of art – its value, its significance – was being reconsidered by philosophers and critics, and redefined by artists experimenting with new forms and materials. One of the first questions to be asked about the new photographic medium of film, within the context of such debates, was whether it could be included among the traditional arts, or if it was a wholly new kind of modern, technical art, requiring its own specific theory, and perhaps transforming customary notions about art. We will consider various arguments in these early debates about the new media of photography and film, and read some more recent work that has returned to the question of film art.
- Method of Evaluation: 1) Two Reading Reports: 20% each = 40%; 2) Final Essay: 60%
- Readings: Readings will be available through the on-line reserve system of the Carleton University library (ARES).
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- FILM 5601 Studies in Genre (Documentary) - Fall term
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- Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
- Graduate Documentary Seminar
- This course will explore the theory, history and aesthetics of the documentary mode of filmmaking. As such it will examine major theoretical debates related to the very nature of documentary, and its relationship to larger debates such as truth, reality, fiction, representation, memory, history, identity, subjectivity, among other things. The history of the documentary form will also be examined through such canonic figures, schools and movements as the Lumiere brothers, Thomas Edison, Robert Flaherty, John Grierson, Dziga Vertov, Joris Ivens, Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, alongside such newer figures as Su Friedrich, Naomi Kawase, John Akomfrah, Harun Farocki and Ari Folman.
- Evaluation: Discussion leading, position paper, research paper.
- Possible attendance of the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) in November.
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