“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 1509 Monstrosity – Fall and Winter terms
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Instructor: André Loiselle
“Movie Monstrosity: A Creepy Fascination with the Abnormal”
Details on the First Year Seminars is available on the FYSM website.
And, about this course in particular, read a news article on the FASS website.
Offered by the School for Studies in Art and Culture – Film Studies. Note: this section is only available for students in the ArtsOne program Monsters and Monstrosities cluster. Does not count as a major requirement.
Using a wide variety of examples ranging from well-known horror movies, such as “The Bride of Frankenstein” and “Psycho,” to more esoteric titles such as “Freaks” (1932) and “Audition” (1999), as well as non-horror films that project a different type of monster, such as the biopic “Monster” (2003), this seminar will explore various kinds of monstrosity to encourage students to develop a critical perspective on notions of normality and aberrance. In the process, students will acquire the ability to decipher social constructs. They will learn to read against the grain of prevailing discourses. And ultimately, they might come to creatively resist governing practices of marginalization that always equate the Other with the Monster.
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- FILM 1000A Introduction to Film Studies - Fall and Winter terms
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Instructor: José Sánchez
Instructor’s Statement: 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 cours
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) and a discussion group (1 hours/week)
Text: Textbook & Coursepack
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- FILM 1000B Introduction to Film Studies - Fall and Winter terms
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Instructor: Erika Balsom
After taking this course, you will never look at movies the same way again. Throughout the year, we will develop critical viewing skills that will allow you to consider how cinema has operated as a mass entertainment, an art form, and a social practice since its invention in 1895. Moving beyond a “thumbs up, thumbs down” mentality, we will interrogate questions of form, style, aesthetics, and politics. By the end of the year, students will have developed a familiarity with the formal language of cinema and the fundamental concepts of film studies. This course is intended as a gateway to a major in Film Studies, but will be of interest and relevance to students coming from other areas of study as well.
The course will be divided into four units:
1) Style and Technique: This unit will introduce students to the basic formal elements of cinema, such as narrative, mise-en-scène, editing, cinematography, sound, and the impact of digital technologies.
2) The Filmmaker: This unit will examine the figure of the filmmaker in different production contexts, such as Hollywood, European art cinema, experimental film, postcolonial film, and independent film.
3) Film genres: This unit will unpack the category of genre as a way of understanding film through two case studies, melodrama and film noir.
4) Special focus on documentary and the question of truth: This unit will delve into how ideas of truth and authenticity operate in non-fiction filmmaking. We will ask: what makes an image “true” or “real”? What strategies and discourses work to produce a film image as trustworthy and/or authentic.
Evaluation will consist of a midterm test, a final exam, two essays, participation in discussion sections, and attendance.
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- FILM 2000 Introduction to Film Theory and Analysis - Fall and Winter terms
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Instructor: Marc Furstenau
TENTATIVE COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES:
The objective of FILM 2000 is to familiarize students with all the main theories and modes of critical thinking that have influenced the study of cinema since its inception. The first part of the course (Fall) will focus primarily on film theory prior to the 1980s. Starting with theories of the silent film, montage and realist theories, the course will then examine various approaches developed in the 1960s and 1970s including auteur theory, genre criticism, psychoanalysis and feminist theory.
The second part of the course (Winter) will focus on the main developments in film theory since the 1980s, including theories of history and historiography, cognitive and philosophical film theories, post-colonial and queer theory, and theories of new media.
METHOD OF EVALUATION:
Four Short Essays (5 to 7 pages each essay): 70%.
Final Take-Home Exam: 30%READINGS: all readings (text and coursepack) will be available at Haven Books.
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- FILM 2101 The Film Industry - Winter term
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Instructor: Dino Koutras
This course will offer an historical account of the “film industry” through an examination of its three major branches: production, distribution, and exhibition. The focus will be primarily on the Hollywood film industry, although we will also touch upon the impact of Hollywood on the world film industry and its responses to Hollywood film practice. The course will be organized around the key economic, industrial, and technological changes that have taken place in Hollywood over the course of its history, from its inception as a fledgling industry, through the rise and fall of the studio system, and culminating with a look at the emergence and consolidation of the blockbuster/high concept format. Of particular interest will be the impact of these key changes on the film form and style of American cinema.
Evaluation: attendance/participation, mid-term, essay, final exam.
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- FILM 2106 The Documentary - Fall term
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Instructor: Sylvie Jasen
This course is a historical survey of documentary cinema, providing an overview of the canonical films, filmmakers, and movements. We will examine changes in styles and conventions in relation to shifts in technologies and socio-cultural contexts. A wide variety of documentary practices will be considered, including ethnographic, poetic, and experimental forms. Emphasis is on critical analysis of the films screened, with attention to the issues that have been central to documentary theory and practice.
Required Texts: A New History of Documentary Film by Jack C. Ellis and Betsy A. McLane (New York: Continuum, 2005) and a course pack from Haven Books.
Evaluation: Attendance (10%), Textual Analysis (15%), Reading Review (20%), Essay (25%), Exam (30%)
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- FILM 2201 National Cinema (British Cinema) - Fall term
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Instructor: Sylvie Jasen
Topic: British cinema. This course will introduce students to the key themes and debates in the study of British national cinema through an examination of films that belong to the tradition of Social Realism. The course will explore the construction of national identity through (a) changing representations of the British working class and (b) cinematic renderings of immigrant communities and experiences. We will also attend to the structure of the British film industry, the impact of Thatcherism on cinema, the influence of European or Hollywood films, and the relationship of Social Realism to other genres (heritage films, comedy, and art cinema).
Required Texts: a course pack will be available for purchase from Haven Books.
Evaluation: Attendance (10%), Short formal analysis (15%), Reading Review (20%), Short essay (25%), Exam (30%).
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- FILM 2201 National Cinema (Mexico) (description revised Nov. 2012) - Winter term
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Instructor: Zuzana Pick
This is a survey course aimed at exploring the main trends and styles of Mexican cinema through the study of selected films produced between 1943 and 2001. The objective is to examine how certain genres, characters and visual motifs have served to promote and represent the country’s distinctive national identity. Particular emphasis will be placed on the relationship between aesthetics and nationalism, representations of genre, sexuality, social relations and history that conform and/or challenge prevailing discourses. This study will be complemented by considerations about the cultural, social, political and industrial, factors that have shaped filmmaking in Mexico, including the convergence of cinema and music in the 1940 and rise of auteur cinema in the 1970s, and created audiences for Mexican films at home and abroad.
Readings: Course reader and online resources
Requirements: Mid-term exam, short written assignments and final essay
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- FILM 2209 The Canadian Cinema - Fall and Winter terms
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Instructor: TBA
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- FILM 2401 The Film Maker - Fall term
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Instructor: TBA
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- FILM 2401 The Filmmaker (Almodovar, Sembene, Denis) - Winter term
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Instructor: Malini Guha
Readings: Reading material will be available in a “course pack.”
Instructor’s Statement: This course is structured around the study of three filmmakers, namely Pedro Almódovar, Ousmane Sembene and Claire Denis. We will investigate the thematic motifs and stylistic tendencies found across the work of each of these three directors while also paying close attention to issues of gender, genre, intertextuality, political concerns and national/production contexts. We will simultaneously survey some of the more recent literature concerning cinema and authorship, thereby allowing us to examine key developments within this branch of film studies including the ‘return of the author’, the ‘commerce of authorship’ and ‘auteur desire’, as they bear a certain relevance to the directors under investigation in the course
Evaluation: One short paper, one long research paper, and a final in -class test.
Lecture Format: Lecture and screening three hours a week: lecture one hour a week
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- FILM 2601 Film Genres (The Western) - Fall term
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Instructor: Murray Leeder
One of the oldest and most durable film genres, the Western is also perhaps the genre most closely linked to American identity, and yet its appeal has never been confined to the United States. This course’s focus on the Western will allow us explore how we can define genre and how genres change and evolve over time, as well as issues of gender, ideology, race and national identity.
Evaluation: Essays and shorter writing assignments
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- FILM 2601 Film Genres (From Hollywood to Bollywood) - Winter term
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Instructor: Charles O’Brien
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- FILM 2608 History of World Cinema - Fall and Winter terms
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Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
This course is articulated around three major categories: time, space, and form. Through the category of time, the history and evolution of the cinema will be explored from its beginnings in the late 19th century to the first two decades of the 21st century. The category of space will not only make it possible to look at the cinema in a truly global manner, but also to study ways in which the cinema is at once tributary to the space of the nation-state and is inevitably bound to exceed it in light of the historical and contemporary configuration of capital and geopolitics. Finally through the category of form, we will examine the evolution and transformation of film form, from the cinema of attractions to the age of the digital, via Soviet Montage, German Expressionism, Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, the New African Cinema, the rise of Asian cinema, Dogma 95 among others.
Evaluation: Take home exams, midterms, research papers
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- FILM 3105 Questions of Documentary Practice (Auteurship) - Fall term
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Instructor: Zuzana Pick
In this course, we will explore issues related to authorship in documentary by examining the work of three prominent Canadian directors Donald Brittain, Alanis Obomsawin and Michel Brault. Selected films will be studied from the perspective of each filmmaker’s distinctive deployment of the codes and conventions of documentary. Consideration about production contexts will enable us to move beyond questions of personal expression and subjectivity to examine the role of institutional, technological and cultural mediations in the respective careers and practices of these directors.
Readings: course reader and online resources
Requirements: 2 short essays and final exam
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- FILM 3301 Topics in Cinema and Gender - Fall term
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Instructor: Bianca Briciu
This course will explore cinema’s challenges to what has been denounced as the universalized Western, white, male mode of knowledge and perception. We will screen a range of films outside the mainstream Hollywood model, that represent controversial issues on embodiment. The course will use intersectionality as a framework for analyzing the cinematic representation of gender, race and class differences. The purposes of this course are to familiarize students with alternative modes of representation and to develop their critical thinking about cinema as a medium with political implications regarding embodied experience.
Evaluation: Class participation, reading response, critical film analysis, final research paper.
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- FILM 3505 Aspects of Film History and Theory - Fall and Winter terms
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Instructor: Malini Guha
Readings: tba
Instructor’s Statement: In this course, we will study advanced topics in film history and film theory. The course is structured in accordance with a number of key moments within both domains of study, in a manner that seeks to demonstrate the often inextricable link between the two as in contemporary film scholarship, the theoretical ‘turn’ within film history is echoed by the historical ‘turn’ within film theory. During the fall term, we will begin with the ‘modernity’ thesis, which will allow us to situate the birth of cinema within a larger framework of historical transformation and then move chronologically through significant periods of film history, including the coming of sound, colour and other moments of technological change and development. Alongside of this, we will also chart the development of film theory, beginning with scholars associated with European modernity, including Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin in the fall term while moving towards contemporary film theory in the winter term, ending with considerations of how digital technology is altering the way we think historically as well as theoretically about the cinema and its future.
Evaluation: One mid term test, one research paper, one final test and class participation
Lecture Format: Lecture and screening, three hours a week, discussion two hours a week
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- FILM 3608 Topics in Film History (African Cinema) - Fall term
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Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
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, Mohamed Lakhdar-Hamina, Faouzi Bensaidi, 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.
Evaluation: Take home exams, research paper, and final exam.
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- FILM 3608 Topics in Film History (Silent Cinema) - Winter term
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Topic: Silent Cinema
Instructor: Murray Leeder
Instructor’s Statement: This class deals with cinema from roughly 1895-1927, the formative silent period neglected in the study of cinema. It will pay attention to the aesthetics, concerns and artistic movements of the silent period, balancing well-known canonical films with more eccentric and obscure fare. The course reading list will draw on the wealth of scholarship on silent cinema to have emerged in the last few decades and pay particularly close attention to the debate about the modernity thesis between (most prominently) Tom Gunning and David Bordwell.
Evaluation: Essays and reaction papers
Lecture format: Three hour lecture/screening, seminar one hour a week.
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- FILM 3701 Topics in Animation, Video, and Experimental Film (History of Animation) - Fall term
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Instructor: Joseph Lipsett
This course will provide an overview and study of the history of animation. Our studies will take us from its early pre-cinema origins in the late nineteenth century to current and emerging digital animation technologies. The course will survey a variety of types of animation, with particular emphasis on the place of animation in pop culture, as well as the evolution and cultural contributions of anime. Students should be prepared to attend the Ottawa International Animation Festival as an integral component of the course.
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- FILM 3701 Topics in Animation, Video, and Experimental Film (The Essay Film) - Winter term
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Instructor: Erika Balsom
“Essay Film”
This course will examine the peculiar blend of politics and poetics that marks the rather elusive form of the essay film. We will ask: What are the characteristics of the essay film? Is it a form distinct from documentary or a subspecies of it? What are some of its main strategies and concerns? After establishing some introductory parameters, our inquiry will proceed through three rubrics that have been richly explored through the filmic essay: identities, geographies, and histories.
Films by: Thom Andersen, Jean-Luc Godard, Patricio Guzman, William E. Jones, Patrick Keiller, Chris Marker, Trinh Minh-ha, Mark Rappaport, Hito Steyerl, Agnes Varda, and others.
Assigned texts: Timothy Corrigan, The Essay Film: From Montaigne, After Marker + a course reader
Evaluation: Two essays, a presentation, and participation.
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- FILM 3808 Cinema and Technology - Fall term
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Instructor: Steve Rifkin
1435 to 1984: From the Camera Obscura to Videotape
This course explores the evolving relationship between technologies of the moving image and the aesthetic and cultural development of the medium of cinema. Through weekly lectures, readings, and in-class screenings, we will discover the ongoing historical dialogue between film and a wide array of representational technologies, including those of painting, sound recording, radio, and television. Placing a dual emphasis on technologies of film practice and distribution/reception, we will examine the technological conditions of cinema’s emergence as a quintessentially modern mode of representation, aesthetic form, and social phenomenon.
Textbook: Coursepack
Assignments and Evaluation (tentative): Short response papers, film-analysis essay, final essay, attendance, and participation.
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- FILM 3808 Cinema and Technology - Winter term
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Instructor: Sylvie Jasen
This course will focus on digital technology. The central theme through the course is the emergence of new technologies and their impact on or transformation of old media, social attitudes, and cultural practices more broadly. We will therefore examine what the emergence of digital technologies has meant for cinema, in terms of filmmaking practice (aesthetics, special effects, narrative, etc.) as well as our definitions and assumptions around film. In addition, the course will address the kinds of utopian attitudes and anxieties that surround new media and its impact on culture more broadly. Many of the films that will be screened represent technologies to foreground societal fears, dreams, and modes of engagement. We will also discuss the growth, uses, and implications of the familiar technologies we employ daily, such as social media and videogames.
Assignments and evaluation are to be determined.
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- FILM 3901 Topics in Film Studies (The Cinematic Ghost) - Winter term - revised Nov 2012
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Instructor: Murray Leedewr
This class examines the figure of the ghost in cinematic history. It covers the ghost in its horrific, comic and romantic variations, spanning from cinema’s earliest moments to the present day, as well as considering the significance of the ghost in experimental cinema. Drawing on such scholars as Sigmund Freud, Tzvetan Todorov, Jacques Derrida and Tom Gunning, we will examine the metaphorical importance of the ghost for the persistence of traumatic histories, for the spiritual gulf created by our technologies of communication, and for the ghostly significance of cinema itself as a machine for communion with the dead.
Assignments and evaluation are to be determined.
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- FILM 4001 Research and Critical Methodologies - Fall term
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Instructor: Charles O’Brien
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- FILM 4002 Topics in Audio-Visual Culture (Sound tracks) - Winter term
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Instructor: Paul Théberge
The aim of this course is to explore the various elements of the sound track—dialogue, music, sound effects (and silence)—and their relationship to narrative form and to moving images. The course will cover both classic and contemporary sound theories, the role of sound technology in the restructuring of film production and reception, the interrelated histories of the film and music industries, the conventions of sound production in film and television genres, and the role of sound, music and interactivity in gaming.
Seminar 3 hours per week (please note: there are no separate screening times for this course)
Readings will be drawn from online articles, book chapters and other sources; brief audio-visual examples will be presented in class. Evaluation: a short, mid-term soundtrack analysis; final proposal and paper; class attendance and participation.
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- FILM 4201 Selected Topics in National Cinemas (Mexican cinema and modernity) - Fall term
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Instructor: Zuzana Pick
This course will consider how cinema in Mexico registered and reflected upon the processes of modernization and the experience of modernity during what is generally known as the “Golden Age” of Mexican cinema. Films produced between 1933 and 1953 will be used as primary texts to explore the emergence and consolidation of the film industry, the formation of a star-system, the creation of a national audience, and the development of distinctly Mexican genres such as the family melodrama, the nationalist romance, the cabaretera (dancing hall film), the rural musical and the urban comedy. Some of the questions to be discussed are: how does cinema insert itself into the modes of production and consumption associated with modernization, how does it negotiate and resolve the tensions between tradition and modernity; and what part does it play in the making of modern identities?
Readings: course reader and online resources
Requirements: Short writing assignments and long final essay.
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- FILM 4501 Selected Topics in Film Theory (Digital Cinema) - Winter term
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Instructor: Erika Balsom
Digital Cinema
This course will take account of how cinema has been transformed by the advent of digital technologies at the levels of production, distribution, and exhibition. Topics will include: special effects, convergence, digital projection, medium specificity, obsolescence, the status of the digital document, 3D, VoD, bootlegging/piracy, and cinephilia.
Texts: Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media; DN Rodowick, The Virtual Life of Film; articles by Bazin, Bordwell, Cassetti, Jenkins, Hilderbrand, Steyerl, Whissel, Williams.
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- FILM 4800 Seminar in Film/Video Archival or Curatorial Practice (From Analog to Digital) - Fall term
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Instructor: TBA
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- FILM 4800 Seminar in Film/Video Archival or Curatorial Practice (Film Programming) - Winter term
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Instructor: TBA
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- FILM 4901 A Special Topic (The Spanish Civil War: (Re)Constructing History in Film) - Fall term
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Instructor: José Sánchez
Instructor’s Statement: This course analyzes a wide selection of films produced in different countries and in different periods that focus on the Spanish Civil War and/or its aftermath. The purpose is to provide a context to study and understand the different issues at play when dealing with visual modes of historical representation: the relationship between film and the social, political and intellectual movements; the ways in which cinema has both shaped and been shaped by them; and how cinema is not simply structured by pre-existing individual and communal identities or reflects existing social and power relations but rather how it expresses and constructs them.
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 (45%); final research assignment (45%); participation (10%)
Lecture format: lecture & screening (three hours/week); seminar (2 hours/week)
Text: Coursepack
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- FILM 4901 C Special Topic (Controversial Films: Representing Race, Religion, Sexuality and Violence.) - Winter term
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Instructor: José Sánchez
Instructor’s Statement: 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 (45%); final research assignment (45%); participation (10%)
Lecture format: lecture & screening (three hours/week); seminar (2 hours/week)
Text: Coursepack
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- FILM 5000 Directions in Film Theory and History - Fall and Winter terms
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Instructor: Charles O’Brien
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- FILM 5002 Special Topics (Cinema and Mobility) - Fall term
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Instructor: Malini Guha
Cinema and Mobility
This course will explore a variety of methods by which film studies and other related disciplines have forged a series of intrinsic relationships between cinema and mobility. In addition to the examination of textual concerns related to film style, genre and narration, this course will also situate the topic of cinema and mobility within broader historical frameworks that will take us from the onset of 19th century modernity to our current period of globalization.
We will examine the following questions and topics: representations of mobile perception related to the use of film style; relationships between filmic mobility and genre as figured through the road movie, travel film and dance film; considerations of the manner in which journey narratives can signify in relationship to broader notions of tourism and travel as well as in terms of the production of alternative forms of knowledge as featured in documentary or fictional films; motifs of mobility, including the significance of the road, landscapes, vehicles of travel; figures that one finds across some of these films including the traveler, the tourist, the migrant, the exile, the flaneuse and the nomad.
Seminar Presentation: 20%, Participation: 20%, Paper Proposal/Annotated Bibliography: 20%, Final Paper: 40%
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- FILM 5002 Special Topics (From A National to a World Cinema: Brazil) - Winter term
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Instructor: Zuzana Pick
The objective of the course is to elucidate the theoretical propositions, critical tools and analytical approaches found in the current literature on national cinemas, transnationalism and globalization by testing them against and with the history and development of Brazilian filmmaking since the 1960s. Primary consideration will be given to how cinema in that country has registered the shifting relationship and multivalent negotiations between the local and the global. While films associated to the cinema n^vo movement questioned the pathologies of nationalist discourse by mobilizing the idioms of political modernism, contemporary films articulate at once the anxieties triggered by globalization and the changing landscape of audiovisual media culture. As a result, directors like Glauber Rocha and films like City of God have figured prominently in film histories either as agents contesting the hegemony of Hollywood or as catalysts for debates about the homogenizing logic of global film culture. Therefore, the issues addressed in the selected readings and the films will be examined as critical interventions in what is arguably a belated yet constructive acknowledgement of the complex, multiple, asymmetrical yet always interconnected ways in which global film culture has developed and continues to operate and circulate.
Readings: course reader and online sources
Requirements: seminar presentations, short written assignments and final essay
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- FILM 5500 Advanced Topics in Film Analysis - Fall term
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Instructor: Erika Balsom
Cinema and Portraiture
This course will examine the relationship between cinema and the art-historical genre of portraiture. If portraiture is defined as the depiction of a particular individual rather than a generic human image, is not every film image a portrait? Or are there particular films in which the cinema’s ability to represent the human countenance becomes paramount? How can cinema represent the self? And more specifically, how has the human face emerged as a privileged image throughout the history of cinema?
Readings by: Aumont, Barthes, Corrigan, Deleuze, Doy, Levinas, Morin, and others Films by: Clarke, Costa, Godard, Gordon/Parreno, Lanzmann, Rivers, Russell, Teshigahara, Warhol, and others.
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- FILM 5506 Topics in Culture, Identity and Representation (Documentary) - Winter 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 Su Friedrich, Naomi Kawase, John Akomfrah, Harun Farocki and Ari Folman.
Evaluation: Position paper, research paper.
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