“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
- FILM 1101A Introduction to Film Studies - Fall term
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- Instructor: Gunnar Iversen
- What is film? How does film impact us and our society? How do films tell stories? This course introduces students to the vocabulary and issues of Film Studies and surveys three overlapping areas of inquiry: film as an art and entertainment form, the aesthetics of film form, and film as a social practice.
- The course is divided into three units. Unit 1, “Terms and Core Elements of Film,” introduces students to the basic elements of cinema as an artistic and communicative form. In Unit 2, “Film as a Social and Cultural practice,” we look at the relationship between film and society. Unit 3, “Film as Narrative Storytelling,” discusses different forms of storytelling in cinema, including genres and styles.
- Evaluation: Each section of the course will be examined separately by an In-Class Test, an Out-of-Class Essay and a Final Exam. Attendance and participation in the corresponding discussion group is required and will be evaluated as part of the final grade.
- Lecture format: Lecture and Screening (three hours/week); discussion group (1 hours/week)
- Text: Textbook and additional readings on Ares.
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- FILM 1101B Introduction to Film Studies - Winter term
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- Instructor: Gunnar Iversen
- What is film? How does film impact us and our society? How do films tell stories? This course introduces students to the vocabulary and issues of Film Studies and surveys three overlapping areas of inquiry: film as an art and entertainment form, the aesthetics of film form, and film as a social practice.
- The course is divided into three units. Unit 1, “Terms and Core Elements of Film,” introduces students to the basic elements of cinema as an artistic and communicative form. In Unit 2, “Film as a Social and Cultural practice,” we look at the relationship between film and society. Unit 3, “Film as Narrative Storytelling,” discusses different forms of storytelling in cinema, including genres and styles.
- Evaluation: Each section of the course will be examined separately by an In-Class Test, an Out-of-Class Essay and a Final Exam. Attendance and participation in the corresponding discussion group is required and will be evaluated as part of the final grade.
- Lecture format: Lecture and Screening (three hours/week); discussion group (1 hours/week)
- Text: Textbook and additional readings on Ares.
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- FILM 1120 Introduction to Film Studies (Seminar) - Fall term
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- Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
- This course will explore the most important ways in which the cinema has been thought about, discussed, analyzed, studied, written about and transmitted. It will examine the multiple ways in which the cinematic world is constructed and experienced as an art form and as a repository, a conveyor as well as a site of experimentation of social, cultural and political imaginaries. While looking at the ways in which the cinema creates meaning through its own language (mise en scene, cinematography, editing, sound, etc.) we will also investigate the numerous ways in which it has been transformed and dispersed in recent years since the advent of the digital (online platforms, VOD, interactivity, etc.), and how it has, in the process, contributed in its own unique way, to reshaping the world and our relationship to it.
- Evaluation: In class quizzes and take home exams (tentative)
- Required Text (TBA)
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- FILM 2000 Introduction to Film Theory and Analysis - Fall and Winter terms
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- Instructor: Marc Furstenau
- The objective of this course is to familiarize students with the main theories and methods of analysis that have been developed for the study of film. As we trace the history of film theory, we will consider a wide range of significant examples of film analysis and interpretation, as well as broader accounts of the cinema as a medium. We will view films chosen from throughout the history of the cinema, representing various genres, styles, and national contexts. The main theme that will be developed in the course is the question of cinema as a popular art. Our primary case study will be the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock. We will view several of his most significant films, which have raised key theoretical questions for film critics.
- METHOD OF EVALUATION: 1) Two Reading Reports: 20% x 2 = 40% 2) Mid-term Quiz: 10% 3) Critical Essay: 25% 4) Final Exam: 25%
- READINGS: The main text for this course is Marc Furstenau, ed. The Film Theory Reader: Debates and Arguments (New York: Routledge, 2010), which will be available at Haven Books. Additional readings will be available through the on-line reserve system of the Carleton University library (ARES).
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- FILM 2101 Film Industry - Winter term
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- Instructor: David Richler
- In this course, we will focus on the film industry’s three major branches—production, distribution, and exhibition. A wide range of films will be screened and analyzed, from “blockbusters” to “art films” and studio-based “indies.” Adopting a transnational perspective, we will analyze film content and style in relation to various industry practices and technological developments. Students will be asked to consider how the structure of the industry, along with different forms of commercial logic and strategy, has shaped the conduct and output of Hollywood and other film industries.
- The goal is to examine how the film industry promotes and represents itself. To this end, we will look at how fiction films, documentaries, DVD extras and fan texts address their audience and depict the industry, its practitioners, and the creative process of filmmaking. We will also examine how producers, exhibitors, and distributors have marketed films, and how audiences and critics have consumed and interpreted them. In doing so, the course will explore the complex socio-cultural, economic, and technological forces that have shaped contemporary film, all of which make it difficult to separate the art of cinema from its commercial status as industrial mass entertainment.
- Topics include, but are not limited to: the studio system; the relationship between independent, art, and mainstream filmmaking; film promotion (trailers, posters, etc.) and branding; auteurism and the commerce of authorship; the economic functions of genre and star talent; the role of critics and film festivals; blockbusters and box-office; fandom and spectatorship; transmedia and industrial convergence; the rise of digital platforms such as DVD and Video-on-Demand (VOD).
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- FILM 2201 National Cinema - Japanese Cinema - Winter term
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- Instructor: Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
- This course examines Japanese film history and its transnational current at various levels of genre, filmic style, and global commodification. Despite Hollywood cinema’s historical dominance of the global cinema market, the ways in which cinema is disseminated have never been monolithic. Such cultural traffic has occurred through negotiations among locales, regions, and nations, across many countries, including Japan and with Hollywood as well. This course scrutinizes Japanese cinema within its strategies towards globalization and regionalization. The course is constructed in two sections: 1) introducing Japanese film history examining the representative filmmakers‘ works and 2) investigating transnational aspects of Japanese cinema with specific topics of “remaking,” “distribution in abroad,” and “international film festivals.”
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- FILM 2207 Canadian Cinema I - Fall term
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Instructor: Tom McSorley
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- FILM 2208 Canadian Cinema II - Winter term
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- The Canadian Cinema: 1980 to the Present
- Instructor: Tom McSorley
- 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, Xavier, and others. Building on origins of Canadian filmmaking, 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 2401A The Filmmaker - Fall term
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Instructor: Tom McSorley
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- FILM 2401B The Filmmaker - Film Festivals in Asia - Winter term
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- Instructor: Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
- This course examines film festivals, especially in Asia, as “media” to connect film texts, film industries, journalism, and audiences. This course overviews various film festivals held in Asia and also contextualizes those festivals within the local film industries. We will analyze mainly festival films from Japan, South Korea, PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Phillippines, Thailand, and Myanmar.
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- FILM 2601 Film Genres: The Video Game - Fall term
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- Instructor: Aubrey Anable
- An introduction to the study of video games as a popular media form, an emerging aesthetic, and a social and cultural practice. Topics include: the history of video games, game form, the game industry, narrative, art and design, interactivity, and theories of play. Playing a variety of video games will be an essential component of this course, though no gaming experience or special equipment are required.
- Evaluation will be based on attendance/participation, a short paper, a mid-term test, and a take-home final exam.
- Course readings will be available electronically.
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- FILM 2606 History of World Cinema I xl w/ENGL 2600 - 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 xl w/ENGL 2601 - 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: Laura Taler
- In MOVING IMAGE PRACTICE I students will be led through a variety of hands-on projects towards a better understanding of the considerations required in the creative process of filmmaking. Smartphones, Super 8 Film, digital cameras and editing tools will be used to gain basic and varied skills in filmmaking practice. Students will screen and present their projects in class. The discussion of these projects is an essential aspect of the course.
- Evaluation is based on a series of hands-on assignments to be presented in class and on participation in discussions.
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- FILM 3105 Questions of Documentary Practice - Fall term
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- Instructor: Gunnar Iversen
- This course discusses different aspects of documentary practice. The first part of the course will focus on different ways of conceptualizing documentary, through different definitions of documentary film and the history of the genre. The second part will discuss documentary ethics as well as examples of documentaries, from political activism to nature docs and the rockumentary.
- Evaluation: One reading-response and a Final Essay.
- Lecture format: Screening and discussion (three hours/week), lecture (1 hours/week).
- Text: Collection of essays on CuLearn and Ares.
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- FILM 3206 Topics in American Cinema: Sex and American Cinema - Winter term
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- 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.
- Learning Outcomes
- By the end of this term, students will be able to:
- Describe key forces and events in American cinema history
- Analyze interrelations between cinema and sexuality in the United States over the past 120 years
- 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 a creative, original argument about sexuality and American cinema and support this argument with evidence.
- Assignments include:
- One close analysis
- One in-class exam
- One analytic essay
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- FILM 3209 Topics in Canadian Cinema: Canadian Multicultural Cinema - Fall term
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- Instructor: David Hanley
- Immigrants, Exiles and Ethnics: The Development of a Multicultural Canadian Cinema
- This course looks at representations of the immigrant over several decades of Canadian cinema, beginning with examples from the 1950s through the 1980s, and then focusing on the emergence in English Canada of a generation of filmmakers from immigrant communities in the 1990s, before finishing with a look at examples from French language Quebec cinema and a discussion of current trends. Among the issues discussed will be the representation of racial and ethnic diversity and how these representations change when members of minority communities are producing the images, the extent to which films about immigrants are an outgrowth of Canadian cinema’s tendency to feature outsider protagonists, how debates over multiculturalism surface in these films, and whether the effect they had on mainstream Canadian cinema was temporary or permanent. Among the filmmakers whose work is likely to be screened include Atom Egoyan, Deepa Mehta, Mina Shum, Clement Virgo and Srinivas Krishna.
- Evaluation will be based on short written assignments and a final essay. There will also be a mark for attendance and participation.
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- FILM 3301 Topics in Cinema and Gender: Analyzing Cinema, Gender, and Sexuality - Winter term
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- Instructor: Laura Horak
- How does audiovisual media 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 gendered politics of labour in film industries and the ways that genre systems (like the romantic comedy) produce gendered meanings and forms of address. The course will also investigate the ways that feminist, indigenous, transgender, and queer media-makers have inventively rethought moving image media for poetic and political ends.
- 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
- Assignments include:
- Creating a new or expanding an existing Wikipedia entry on a woman and/or transgender filmmaker (no technical knowledge required!)
- Writing an analytic essay
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- FILM 3402 Film Music - Winter term
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- Instructor: James Deaville
- also listed as MUSI 3402
- This course examines the historical use of music (and sound) in film, from the silent era to the present day, studying the techniques, styles and theory of film music through the examination of selected scenes. We begin with a brief introduction to the technical aspects of film music, then chronologically and theoretically survey its history (the major portion of the course) and conclude with the consideration of such topics as music in Bollywood, films about music and music for television and animation. Lectures are copiously illustrated with examples from films. Instead of a formal term paper, students will be required to write a 1500-word review of the music for one film, from a selection of four films determined by the class. Attendance at the weekly screenings is required.
- Evaluation: Midterm (30%), Final (35%), Review (25%), 2 scheduled quizzes (10%)
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- FILM 3506 Topics in Film Theory: Gender and Film Theory - Fall term
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Instructor: Bianca Briciu
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- FILM 3608 Topics in Film History: Cahiers du Cinéma and the Birth of the French New Wave - Winter term
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- Instructor: Steve Rifkin
- This course explores the fascinating relationship between film culture, criticism, and practice that emerged in 1950s Paris in the pages of the journal Cahiers du Cinéma and in the films of the French New Wave. We’ll discover how a contentious group of cinephiles, led by Truffaut, Godard, and Chabrol, made the leap from film criticism to filmmaking – and in so doing helped to revolutionize the way that we think about cinema.
- We’ll look at influential films and texts by the Cahiers critics’ predecessors, contemporaries, and adversaries. We’ll consider how their ideas were informed by the political, cultural, and intellectual milieu of postwar France. And we’ll study in detail the key themes and concepts that came to be manifest both in the Cahiers critics’ writings and in their films – including notions of authorship, realism, film form, and political engagement.
- Assignments and Evaluation (tentative): Short reading response papers, film-analysis essay, final term paper, seminar attendance and participation.
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- FILM 3801 Moving Image Practice II - Winter term
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- Instructor: Christopher Rohde
- This course will give students an opportunity to explore different hands-on approaches to mise-en-scène, cinematography, lighting, editing and sound design from a practical and theoretical standpoint.
- Students will be expected to complete a series of short audiovisual and written assignments before submitting a final short film project.
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- FILM 3808A Cinema and Technology: Digital Media - Fall term
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- Instructor: Aubrey Anable
- From YouTube videos and animated GIFs to the immersive worlds of social media and virtual reality, digital media have changed 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 digital cinema to interactive documentaries, viral videos to web series, social media to emerging immersive platforms. Readings will build upon and expand existing models of analysis from film and media studies. Assignments will develop students’ abilities to analyse digital media as culturally meaningful objects.
- Evaluation will be based on attendance/participation, two short papers, and one final paper.
- Course readings will be available electronically.
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- FILM 3808B Cinema and Technology - Winter term
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- Instructor: Paul Theberge
- Cinema is a unique technological and cultural form that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries along with a number of other remarkable cultural technologies, including photography, the telephone, sound reproduction and radio. During it’s 100-plus year history, cinema has maintained many of the unique practices associated with its production, distribution and exhibition even as other media (television, gaming, and the internet) have risen along side of it, each influencing cinema and, at the same time, being influenced by it. Given this history, it is useful to consider both the uniqueness of cinema but also its relations with other media, including the economic contexts and technical practices that cut across different media forms. In this course, we will investigate what makes cinema technological and explore cinema’s preoccupation with technology as a form of spectacle (e.g., in genres such as sci-fi). We will also consider some of the limits of a technological understanding of cinema.
- Mode of evaluation:
- – Participation,
- – Several short Reader Response essays
- – A proposal and Final Paper
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- FILM 3901A Topics: Writing for Stage and Screen xl w/ENGL 3902A - Fall term
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- Instructor: Nadia Bozak
- Visit www.carleton.ca/english to see the course outline for more information about the portfolio submission process.
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- FILM 3901B Topics in Film Studies: Archival and Curatorial Practice – Film Programming - Winter term
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- Instructor: Tom McSorley
- Film programming is everywhere. From the multiplex movie chains, to the ByTowne Cinema and Mayfair Theatre ‘repertory’ cinemas, to institutions like the Canadian Film Institute, to hundreds of film festivals in Ottawa, across Canada and abroad, to internet platforms like Netflix, 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? 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 film festivals. Using the instructor’s sample programming as a guide, you will develop a curatorial designs for film programming; this will include film selection and preparation of program notes. You will also get practical experience in the organization and presentation of a public film series.
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- FILM 4001 Research and Critical Methodologies - Fall term
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- Instructor: Malini Guha
- This course introduces students to advanced methods of scholarly research in film studies, with an emphasis on situating cinema within an interdisciplinary as well as cross media context. Topics to be covered include: the status of film vis-à-vis other forms of media; the history of film studies as an multi-disciplinary field; the nature of cinema in the era of digital convergence, divergence and relocation; recent developments in film theory; theories of intersectionality pertaining to gender, race and sexuality.
- Method of Evaluation: TBA
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- FILM 4201 Selected Topics in National Cinemas: Film Festivals and World Cinema - Winter term
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- Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
- This course will examine a new and vibrant sub-field within film studies which takes film festivals as its object of inquiry. We will thoroughly interrogate this object, its place and status, its formative and transformative role in the discourses, institutions and production, exhibition and circulation practices within world cinema. Among other things, we will perform close readings of film festival theory, studies of the politics, economics and programming of festivals, as well as weekly case studies of such festivals as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, TIFF, Sundance, FESPACO, Busan, etc.
- Evaluation: In-class presentation, term paper, takes home exam (Tentative)
- Required Textbook: TBA
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- FILM 4401 Selected Topics in Film Authorship - Walt Disney - Fall term
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Instructor: Jenna Stidwell
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- FILM 4501 Selected Topics Film Theory: Film Theory and the Philosophy of Art xl/FILM 5500: - Fall term
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- Instructor: Marc Furstenau
- Topic: Film Theory and the Philosophy of Art
- Description: This course will consider the history of debates in film theory about the aesthetic status of the cinema. One of the very first questions to be asked about the new medium of film was whether it could be art. The cinema emerged at a time when the very concept of art – its status, its value, its significance – was being questioned by philosophers and critics, and being redefined by artists experimenting with new forms and materials. We will consider the effect that the emergence of the cinema had on these debates, reading representative essays in film theory and in the philosophy of art.
- METHOD OF EVALUATION: 1) Two Reading Reports: 20% x 2 = 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 4805A Practicum in Film and Film Studies - Fall term
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Go to https://carleton.ca/filmstudies/undergraduate/practicum/ for application instructions, deadlines, and course description.
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- FILM 4806B Practicum in Film and Film Studies - Winter term
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Go to https://carleton.ca/filmstudies/undergraduate/practicum/ for application instructions, deadlines, and course description.
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- FILM 4901A Special Topic: Japanese Animation - Fall term
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Instructor: Wada-Marciano
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- FILM 4901B Special Topic: Cinema and Mobility xl/FILM 5002A - Winter term
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- Instructor: Malini Guha
- This course serves as an introduction to the topic of cinema and mobility, with the aim to expose students to a variety of scholarly methods by which one can conceptualize the relationship between film and movement in addition to exposing students to a wide range of films from across the globe. Questions and topics to be examined in the course include the following: representations of mobile perception related to the use of film style; considerations of the manner in journey narratives can signify in relationship to broader notions of tourism, to the production of alternative forms of knowledge as featured in either documentary or fictional films and/or modes of transformation; motifs of mobility, including the significance of the road, landscapes, vehicles of travel, and other visual as well as auditory motifs;figures that one finds across some of these films including the traveler or tourist, the migrant, the exile, the flâneuse and the nomad.
- Method of Evaluation: TBA
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- FILM 4901C Special Topic: Controversial Films – Representing Race, Religion, Sexuality, and Violence - Winter term
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- Instructor: José Sánchez
- Subject Matter: This course analyzes a far-ranging selection of films that are marked as having been extremely controversial and therefore censored, or outright banned, in their countries of origin or in the international arena. The purpose is to provide a context to understand why some representations of race, religion, sexuality and violence create a concurrent censorship and why others are perceived as acceptable depending the period and the countries.
- 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: 3 short assignments (10%, 15%, 15%); final research assignment (45%); participation (15%)
- Lecture format: lecture & screening (three hours/week); seminar (2 hours/week)
- Text: Coursepack
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- FILM 4904A Independent Study - Fall term
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- In rare cases, students may design a course of reading that they complete independently, with the supervision of a faculty member. A final essay is the usual assignment.
- In order to qualify for an independent study, students must have a CGPA of 10.00 or higher in Film Studies and fourth-year standing. To apply, students must meet with their proposed supervisor well in advance of the start of term and agree on a topic. The student must then write a proposal that includes: a description of the topic including key research questions, a list of proposed readings and films, a description of all assignments with deadlines, and the name of the proposed supervisor.
- The proposal must be sent to the Undergraduate Supervisor at least 2 weeks before the start of term so that it can be reviewed and approved by the Program Committee. Students will not be permitted to register for this course until their proposal is approved.
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- FILM 4904B Independent Study - Winter term
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- In rare cases, students may design a course of reading that they complete independently, with the supervision of a faculty member. A final essay is the usual assignment.
- In order to qualify for an independent study, students must have a CGPA of 10.00 or higher in Film Studies and fourth-year standing. To apply, students must meet with their proposed supervisor well in advance of the start of term and agree on a topic. The student must then write a proposal that includes: a description of the topic including key research questions, a list of proposed readings and films, a description of all assignments with deadlines, and the name of the proposed supervisor.
- The proposal must be sent to the Undergraduate Supervisor at least 2 weeks before the start of term so that it can be reviewed and approved by the Program Committee. Students will not be permitted to register for this course until their proposal is approved.
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- FILM 5002 Special Topics: Media and Emotion xl/CLMD 6105 - Winter term
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- Instructor: Aubrey Anable
- This graduate seminar will consider the ways that emotion figures in theoretical and historical accounts of film and related audio-visual technologies. Questions about emotion and “affect” are at the root of contemporary debates about identity, subjectivity, politics, and representation. Yet, the body—its sensual capacities and vulnerabilities—is often figured as that which media technologies and those who study them must overcome or entirely deny.
- Many of the readings for the course will cover the contemporary “affective turn” in theory, its debates, and its critics. To the degree that aesthetic philosophy is grounded in the question of emotion, we will also consider earlier accounts of sensation, perception, and interpretation. Recent related developments in theory, such as post-humanism, new materialism, and surface reading, will also be brought to bear on our screenings, readings, and discussions.
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- FILM 5002 Special Topics: Cinema and Mobility xl/FILM 4901C - Winter term
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- Instructor: Malini Guha
- This course serves as an introduction to the topic of cinema and mobility, with the aim to expose students to a variety of scholarly methods by which one can conceptualize the relationship between film and movement in addition to exposing students to a wide range of films from across the globe. Questions and topics to be examined in the course include the following: representations of mobile perception related to the use of film style; considerations of the manner in journey narratives can signify in relationship to broader notions of tourism, to the production of alternative forms of knowledge as featured in either documentary or fictional films and/or modes of transformation; motifs of mobility, including the significance of the road, landscapes, vehicles of travel, and other visual as well as auditory motifs;figures that one finds across some of these films including the traveler or tourist, the migrant, the exile, the flâneuse and the nomad.
- Method of Evaluation: TBA
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- FILM 5010 Film Theory, History, and Critical Methodologies I - Fall term
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- Instructor: Laura Horak
- This course offers a rigorous orientation to the discipline of Film Studies. We will think critically about and practice key methodologies of the discipline, ranging from hermeneutics and close analysis to argumentation (both written and audiovisual), search, historiography, engaging with archives, and working with theory. Students will also explore the genealogies of key concepts in Film Studies and work on their analytic, writing, research, teaching, and communication skills.
- By the end of this term, students are expected to be able to:
- Use multiple methods to track down primary and secondary sources, evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these methods, and assess critically the material they find.
- Perform a close analysis of an audiovisual text, paying close attention to sound as well as visual elements.
- Describe the genealogy of key concepts in Film Studies, such as archives, authorship, genre, historiography, and media archeology.
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- FILM 5020 Film Theory, History, and Critical Methodologies II - Winter term
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- Instructor: Aubrey Anable
- Building on FILM 5010, this course continues a rigorous orientation to the discipline of Film Studies. We will think critically about and practice key methodologies of the discipline. During the winter term, we will participate in on-going film theoretical conversations of the discipline, often pairing foundational with new work. These questions include: What is the nature and purpose of film? How do film and other audiovisual media shape individuals and societies? Does it make a difference whether something is shot on and projected from celluloid film vs. digital technologies? What happens to us when we watch movies? Students will also explore the genealogies of key concepts in Film Studies and work on their analytic, writing, research, teaching, and communication skills.
- By the end of this term, students are expected to be able to:
- Understand the genealogy of key theoretical and historiographical debates in Film Studies
- Generate original arguments that are in dialogue with existing scholarly work in Film Studies
- Develop strategies of effective pedagogy in a seminar setting
- Communicate their ideas clearly in writing, discussions, and oral presentations
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- FILM 5107 Topics in Film History: Scandinavian Cinema: From Erotic Melodramas to Nordic Noir - Winter term
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- Instructor: Gunnar Iversen
- Course Description: In this class, we will investigate the development of film in Scandinavia, from the erotic melodramas of the 1910s, to great auteurs like Lars von Trier, Ingmar Bergman and Carl Th. Dreyer, to contemporary crime and horror films of “Nordic Noir.” We will concentrate on Denmark, Sweden and Norway, but also look at Finland and Iceland. The course will discuss the development of cinema culture and film production in these countries in relation to issues like sexuality and gender, small national cinemas in a globalized context, censorship, state support of film production, art cinema culture, and the development of major genres like the crime and the horror film.
- Evaluation: One reading-response and a Final Essay
- Lecture format: Screening and discussion (three hours/week), lecture (2 hours/week).
- Text: Collection of essays on CuLearn and Ares.
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- FILM 5203 Issues in World Cinema: Eco Cinema - Fall term
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Instructor: Wada-Marciano
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- FILM 5500 Advanced Film Analysis xl/FILM 4501 - Fall term
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- Instructor: Marc Furstenau
- Topic: Film Theory and the Philosophy of Art
- Description: This course will consider the history of debates in film theory about the aesthetic status of the cinema. One of the very first questions to be asked about the new medium of film was whether it could be art. The cinema emerged at a time when the very concept of art – its status, its value, its significance – was being questioned by philosophers and critics, and being redefined by artists experimenting with new forms and materials. We will consider the effect that the emergence of the cinema had on these debates, reading representative essays in film theory and in the philosophy of art.
- METHOD OF EVALUATION: 1) Two Reading Reports: 20% x 2 = 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 5506 Culture, Identity and Representation: Graduate Documentary Seminar - Fall term
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- Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
- 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 Dieudo Hamadi, Naomi Kawase, John Akomfrah, Harun Farocki and Ari Folman.
- Evaluation: Discussion leading, position paper, research paper.
- Required textbook: TBA
- Important Note: Possible attendance of the Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM) in November (to be confirmed)
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- FILM 5801F Graduate Internship - Fall term
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Go to https://carleton.ca/filmstudies/graduate/internship/ for application instructions, deadlines, and course description.
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- FILM 5801W – Graduate Internship - Winter term
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Go to https://carleton.ca/filmstudies/graduate/internship/ for application instructions, deadlines, and course description.
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