Courses – Summer 2019

SUMMER 2019

May-June
FILM 1101 A – Introduction to Film Studies
FILM 2601 B – Film Genres: Bollywood

Bollywood—a term created by the English language press in India in the late 1970s—has now become the dominant global term to refer to the Hindi language film industry located in Bombay (renamed Mumbai in 1955). The Bombay film industry is aesthetically and culturally distinct from Hollywood, but as prolific and ubiquitous in its production and circulation of narratives and images.
Cinema in India encompasses a great deal of diversity. Feature films are produced in approximately 20 languages in the multiple film industries in India. Yet, Hindi films—approximately 20% of total production in the country—are the ones that circulate nationally and internationally, dominate the discourse about Indian Cinema, and are regarded as the standard or archetype to follow or oppose. Outside India, the category “popular Indian cinema” tends to denote Hindi films produced in Bombay and is known as Bollywood: song and dance, melodrama, lavish production values, star-system and spectacle.
As the dominant media institution within India, this course will examine how the Bombay film industry plays an important role in constructing and defining dichotomies like “traditional/modern,” “global/local,” “Western/Eastern” and categories such as “culture,” “nation,” and “Indian.” The use of both post-colonial and genre theories will help us to understand why Bollywood has become a shorthand reference not only to a specific industry, but also to a specific style of filmmaking within the industry which is aggressively oriented toward box-office success and broad audience appeal.
Evaluation: critical readings, final exam, attendance and participation.

July-August
FILM 1101 B – Introduction to Film Studies
FILM 1101 C – Introduction to Film Studies (New! Added June 20, 2019)
FILM 2401 B – Authorship in Film and Media: Stanley Kubrick

This course offers a detailed and thorough examination of the entire body of work by American filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999). One of the most acclaimed and controversial of American film artists, Kubrick’s films were often both critically lauded and commercially successful. Following his entire career chronologically, we will investigate the principal thematic preoccupations, stylistic strategies, and broader cultural contexts of Kubrick’s work.

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Please note:

the TIME and LOCATION of courses is published in the Public Class Schedule
OFFICIAL CALENDAR COURSE DESCRIPTIONS are available in the Undergraduate and Graduate Calendars
the OFFICIAL COURSE OUTLINE will be distributed at the first class of the term

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UNDERGRADUATE COURSES – FALL/WINTER 2019-2020

[slideme title=”FILM 1101 Introduction to Film Studies – Fall term”]

Professor: 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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[slideme title=”FILM 1101 Introduction to Film Studies – Winter term”]

Professor: 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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[slideme title=”FILM 1120 Introduction to Film Studies (Seminar) – Fall term”]

Professor: 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: Screening reports; discussion groups; midterm; final exam (tentative)

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[slideme title=”FILM 2000 Introduction to Film Theory and Analysis – Fall term”]

Professor: 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: Reading Reports, Essay, Exams
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 Carleton University Bookstore. Additional readings will be available through the on-line reserve system of the Carleton University library (ARES).

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[slideme title=”FILM 2000 Introduction to Film Theory and Analysis – Winter term”]

Professor: 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: Reading Reports, Essay, Exams
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 Carleton University Bookstore. Additional readings will be available through the on-line reserve system of the Carleton University library (ARES).

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[slideme title=”FILM 2101 The Film Industry – Winter term”]

Instructor: David Richler
Course description: 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 distributers 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).
Evaluation: TBA
Required text: TBA

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[slideme title=”FILM 2106 The Documentary – Fall term”]

Instructor: Papagena Robbins
Course description: This survey course focuses on the major movements and methods that mark the progression of non-fiction film from protocinema to the present. Topics to be addressed: early motion studies, actualities, ethnography, city symphonies, wartime, direct cinema/cinema verité, compilation film, activist film, autobiographical film, essay film, hybrid-documentary, and more. Emphasis will be placed on the conceptual, rhetorical, and contextual dimensions that influence the organizational structures of non-fiction films, allowing for the inclusion of those films that defy easy comprehension and categorization. Students will learn to analyze documentary films in terms of their strategies of representation, their ethics, their theoretical links, and their cultural and historical contexts. Attending a documentary film festival (RIDM in Montreal) will be highly encouraged but not mandatory.
Evaluation: Attendance/participation, very short response papers, quizzes, film festival review, and a final paper.
Required text: Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary, Third Edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017. And a course reader.

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[slideme title=”FILM 2201 National Cinema: National Cinema in East Asia – Winter term”]

Professor: To be announced
National cinema has been a contested term in the East Asian context due to the interconnectedness of the region. Histories of colonialism, imperialism, and permeable borders have influenced the ways in which cinema and its history have developed in East Asia. This course will investigate various national cinema traditions in East Asia will critically engaging with the limits of such constructions. We will look at films from Japan, North and South Korea, and China. Additionally, we will also investigate how cinema can exceed the national with various transnational movements by examining films from Taiwan, Hong Kong, the United States, and Canada that construct images of East Asia in their cinematic representation.
Students will be evaluated based on participation, three short blog posts, quizzes, a midterm exam, and a final paper.
Readings will be available on CULearn.

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[slideme title=”FILM 2204 Indigenous cinema and Media – Fall term”]

Instructor: Howard Adler

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[slideme title=”FILM 2207 Canadian Cinema I – Fall term”]

Instructor: Tom McSorley
Course description: 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.
Evaluation: One mid-term, one essay, final exam, and participation in class discussion.
Required text: Course pack of readings.

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[slideme title=”FILM 2208 Canadian Cinema II – Winter term”]

Instructor: Tom McSorley
Course description: 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 Dolan, Denis Villeneuve, 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.
Evaluation: One mid-term, one essay, final exam, and participation in class discussion.
Required text: Course pack of readings.

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[slideme title=”FILM 2401 Authorship in Film and Media: Pedro Almódovar, Ryan Coogler and Claire Denis – Fall term”]

Professor: Malini Guha
This course is structured around the study of three filmmakers, namely Pedro Almódovar, Ryan Coogler 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. In addition to this, we will survey a number of key concepts belonging to the contemporary study of authorship including ‘the commerce of authorship’ as well as examining the figure of the auteur in relationship to larger social and cultural phenomena related to postcolonialism, race and gender.
Method of Evaluation: assignments will include take-home tests and a short essay

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[slideme title=”FILM 2401 Authorship in Film and Media: Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton – Winter term”]

Professor: Charles O’Brien
Course Description: This course investigates questions of film and media authorship through a study of the work of the great silent-era comedian/filmmakers. The focus is on the films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, with consideration given also to major contemporaries such as Mabel Normand, Max Linder, and Harold Lloyd. Key topics include: the prominence of comedians in the literature on film and media authorship; the challenge of integrating comic performances shaped in live-entertainment media into a feature-length narrative film; the treatment of filmic space in Chaplin versus Keaton; and representation of gender, race, and ethnicity in film comedy.
Learning Outcomes
- By the end of this course, students are expected to be able to:
- Discuss the importance of film comedy to film history.
- Discuss key developments in the history of film comedy.
- Discuss differences in narrative and style between slapstick comedy and romantic comedy.
- Discuss specific films by Chaplin, Keaton, and other major silent-era filmmaker/comedians
- Make original arguments about films, and support them with evidence and a logical chain of reasoning.
- Communicate ideas clearly in writing and orally in class discussions.
Course Requirements are likely to include: two essays (30 points each); ten in-class writings (10 points total); and a take-home final exam (30 points).

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[slideme title=”FILM 2601 Film Genres: Horror – Winter term”]

Instructor: Jose Sanchez
Course description: 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, to explain the peculiar fascination that Horror exerts over audiences and to look if it differs from different approaches around the world. Questions of genre, gender, cognitive responses, psychoanalysis, censorship, culture and history will all be discussed during the term.
Evaluation: Attendance, participation, 3 reading reports from compulsory readings, and a final exam.
Required text: Readings from a variety of books.

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[slideme title=”FILM 2606 History of World Cinema I – Fall term”]

Professor: Gunnar Iversen
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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[slideme title=”FILM 2607 History of World Cinema II – Winter term”]

Professor: Gunnar Iversen
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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[slideme title=”FILM 2801 Moving Image Practice I – Fall term”]

Instructor: Laura Taler
Course description: 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, digital cameras, sound equipment, 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 will be an essential aspect of the course.
Evaluation: TBA
Required text: TBA

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[slideme title=”FILM 2809 The Video Game – Fall term”]

Professor: 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, genre, 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 two short writing assignments, a midterm test, and a final project.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is the same course as the previously offered FILM 2601A Film Genres: The Video Game. If you have already received credit for that course, do not enroll in FILM 2809.

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[slideme title=”FILM 3105 Questions of Documentary Practice – Fall term”]

Instructor: Papagena Robbins
Course description: This course will look at questions of documentary practice through manifestos written throughout film history. Manifestos have been written by filmmakers, film scholars, film festival curators, archivists, and other members of film communities from all corners of the globe, therefore, they represent a wide range of perspectives and present many different kinds of problems and resolutions around documentary film practices. Each week we will confront a different documentary film paradigm, untangling the theoretical, ethical, technological, social, political, and economic issues at its centre to understand how problems of documentary practice have been conceived, critiqued, and resolved in different eras and social/cultural environments. We will learn to analyze the manifestos as primary texts. We will also read secondary texts on particular issues raised in the manifestos or in the films paired with the manifesto. This course will be run as seminar in which students will have the maximum amount of time possible during class to discuss ideas. Thus, attendance, participation, and keeping up with the readings will be crucial to student success.
Evaluation: Attendance/participation, very short response papers, group presentations (a video essay will be an option), and a final paper.
Required text: A course reader.

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[slideme title=”FILM 3206 Topics in American Cinema: Action Cinema, Gender and American Society – Winter term”]

Instructor: Christopher Rohde
Course description: This course will examine the American action film genre through the lens of gender and sexuality, focusing on how action films reflect shifting cultural values in American society at different points in history. Emphasis will be placed on deconstructing tropes common to the action genre through a critical feminist framework, incorporating other methodologies including psychoanalysis and queer theory.
Evaluation: Essay #1 (30%), essay #2 (30%), and final exam (40%).
Required text: None.

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[slideme title=”FILM 3301 Topics in Cinema, Gender and Sexuality – Fall term”]

Professor: Laura Horak
cross-listed with WGST 3812
Course Description: How do moving images participate in the production of gender and sexuality? In what ways is this process inflected by race, ethnicity, class, and national identity? This course will investigate the crucial role of normative and “deviant” genders and sexualities in the history of cinema production, distribution, and reception. We will investigate the way audiovisual texts use formal means to make gender visible and the display of gender difference pleasurable. We will also consider the gendered politics of labor 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 filmmakers have inventively rethought cinema and video for poetic and political ends.
Learning Outcomes: By the end of this term, students will be able to:
- Give a nuanced account of gender and sexuality 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, cinematography, and sound) and use these elements to sustain an argument about a media text in conversation with existing scholarship.
- Write an accessible, well-researched entry for Wikipedia, bringing information about notable cis women and transgender media workers to a global readership
Assignments (Subject to change):
- Wikipedia project
- Final essay

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[slideme title=”FILM 3608 Topics in Film History: Silent Cinema – Fall term”]

Professor: Charles O’Brien
Course description: This course examines the first 35 years of cinema history, beginning with the first film screenings circa 1895 and continuing up through the adoption of recorded sound in the late 1920s. Topics covered by the course include: early cinema’s links to theatre and other, contemporaneous media and forms of entertainment; the development of techniques of staging, acting, cinematography and editing; the emergence of the feature film circa 1914 as the standard format for commercial cinema; major international film movements such as Soviet Constructivism, French Impressionism, and German Expressionism and New Objectivity; film music in silent cinema; changes in film technique linked to the introduction into cinema of recorded sound.
Learning Outcomes
- By the end of this course, students are expected to be able to:
- Discuss major aesthetic, industrial, and social developments related to silent-cinema history
- Discuss major silent-era film movements such as Hollywood’s classical cinema and the montage cinema of the Soviet Union
- Discuss how silent-era cinema’s interaction with social-historical forces shaped styles and patterns of representation in cinema
- Make original arguments about films, and support them with evidence and a logical chain of reasoning
- Communicate ideas clearly in writing and orally in class discussion
Course Requirements are likely to include: two essays (30 points each); ten in-class writings (10 points total); and a take-home final exam (30 points).

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[slideme title=”FILM 3701 Topics in Animation, Video and Experimental Film: History of American Animation – Fall term”]

Instructor: Jenna Stidwell
Course description: This course introduces third-year students to the study of American animation history. During the course we will explore how 20th and 21st century American animation has responded to select political, cultural, technological developments. Multiple interpretations of animation history will be explored. We will ask: what considerations should we take into account when studying animation within a historical context? What are the significant periods in the development of American animation during the 20th and 21st centuries? What theoretical tools can we bring to bear on animation to enhance our understanding of its history?
This course is organized chronologically. During each week we will examine an important period in the history of American animation. A range of significant films from the 20th and 21st centuries will be screened.
Evaluation (tentative): Animation Festival Film Review (15%), Reading Response Paper x3 (20%), DVD Commentary Group Project (25%), and Final Historical Research Essay (40%).
Required text: None – all readings will be available through CuLearn.

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[slideme title=”FILM 3800 Film/Video Archival or Curatorial Practice: Film Programming – Winter term”]

Instructor: Tom McSorley
Course description: Film programming is everywhere. From the multiplex movie chains, to the ‘repertory’ cinemas, to institutions like the Ottawa Film Society and the Canadian Film Institute, to hundreds of film festivals, 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? Who decides what gets shown in the many public presentation contexts of cinematheques, galleries, museums, and festivals? And, more immediate to the broad intentions of this course, how does it work? These and many other questions will be discussed and analyzed in this course. While we will certainly incorporate theoretical discussions of taste and critical practice, this seminar/workshop course is intended to give students practical experience in film programming.
Evaluation: Attendance at in-class screenings, weekly short writing assignments, participation in and practical experience in public film festival planning and organization.
Required text: None.

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[slideme title=”FILM 3801 Moving Image Practice II – Winter term”]

Instructor: Christopher Rohde
Course description: This course will give students the opportunity to explore a variety of practical and conceptual approaches to screenwriting, production design, cinematography, sound recording and editing. Students will be guided through the process of writing a short screenplay and completing a short film project.
Evaluation: Character breakdown (10%), screenplay (25%), in-class quiz (25%), rough cut (10%), and final short film project (30%).
Required text: None.

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[slideme title=”FILM 3808 Cinema and Technology: Digital Cinema – Fall term”]

Professor: Charles O’Brien
Course Description: This course examines the role of digital technology in cinema through a focus on digitalization’s impact on the feature film. Key topics include: the effects of digital exhibition on film style and narration; digitalization’s transformation of the workflow and personnel hierarchies of film production; the effects on cinema of film-viewing via small-screen media; visual effects in contemporary cinema; film sound since the 1980s; and the role of digital technology in facilitating film restoration and otherwise conditioning our access to the cinema’s past.
Learning Outcomes
- By the end of this course, students are expected to be able to:
- Discuss similarities and differences between photochemical and digital cinema
- Discuss different ways in which digital conversion has affected film technique and aesthetics
- Discuss major trends in contemporary cinema, and how these connect with cognate developments in media technology
- Make original arguments about films, and support them with evidence and a logical chain of reasoning.
- Communicate ideas clearly in writing and orally in class discussions.
Course Requirements are likely to include: two essays (30 points each); ten in-class writings (10 points total); and a take-home final exam (30 points).

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[slideme title=”FILM 3901 Topics in Film Studies: Film and the City – Winter term”]

Professor: Malini Guha
In this course, we will examine the longstanding and myriad relationships between cinema and the city. We will take an interdisciplinary approach to this topic, examining ‘cinematic cities’ by drawing upon film and urban studies, as well as cultural geography and cultural theory. We will examine a wide variety of city films including the city symphony film, the networked film, cinema de banlieue and film noir, among others. Specific case studies will tentatively include London, Paris and Kolkata in the cinema.
Methods of Evaluation: TBA

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[slideme title=”FILM 4001 Research and Critical Methodologies – Fall term”]

Professor: 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: assignments will include reading reports, an essay or video essay proposal and a final essay or video essay

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[slideme title=”FILM 4002 Topics in Moving Image Culture: Transgender Cinema – Winter term”]

Professor: Laura Horak
Cross-listed with FILM 5506
Course Description: This course explores the widely varied and inventive world of film and media created by trans, Two-Spirit, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming people in the United States and Canada. How have trans people used audiovisual media to create new forms of community, identity, and desire? How have Black trans and Indigenous Two-Spirit people used film to expose and craft ways to collectively survive colonialism, racial capitalism, and the prison industrial complex? What challenges or paradoxes do audiovisual media pose to trans struggles for self-determination and liberation? How has “trans” changed over time and in different places? What is trans cinema? This class will analyze a variety of trans-made feature films, shorts, television shows, YouTube videos, and web series that span modes and genres, including drama, sci-fi, comedy, documentary, experimental, and pornography. We will also compare trans-made media to mainstream representations of trans people. Although the course’s primary focus is on audiovisual media made in the United States and Canada, we will also examine films from Europe, Asia, and Africa. Students will have the opportunity to conduct close analyses of trans-made audiovisual media informed by the latest scholarship in the burgeoning field of Transgender Studies.
Learning Outcomes: By the end of this term, students will be able to:
- Give a nuanced account of gender and sexuality 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, cinematography, and sound) and use these elements to sustain an argument about a media text in conversation with existing scholarship.
- Describe the recent history of trans filmmaking in the United States, Canada, and Europe.
- Bring the latest scholarship in Transgender Studies into conversation with trans-made films and videos.
Assignments (Subject to change):
- Filmmaker presentation
- Close analysis essay
- Final essay with presentation

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[slideme title=”FILM 4201 Selected Topics in National Cinemas: The Cinema of Italy – Fall term”]

Professor: Tom McSorley
This course offers a close study of the Italian cinema from the Neorealist period in the mid-1940s up to the present. In addition to analyses of the films and filmmakers in the course, we will explore the cultural, political, economic, and aesthetic development of post-World War II Italy in the contexts of its own history, as well as its role in the European Union specifically, and its responses to the transnational influences and pressures of globalization. The course will also investigate theories of nationalism and ‘national’ cinema by way of exploring how an Italian ‘national identity’ is imagined, constructed, and/or challenged in Italian films. The course will include works by Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, Lina Wertmuller, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Matteo Garrone, and others

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[slideme title=”FILM 4203 Film Festivals and World Cinema – Winter term”]

Professor: Aboubakar Sanogo
Possibly more than studios, producers and film artists, film festivals are increasingly seen as the most important institution through which debates, ideas and practices around what counts as cinema, how cinema is circulated, accessed, seen and discussed get negotiated. Indeed, it has been argued that film festivals have become something akin to a “government of the cinema” as such. This course will examine and interrogate the veracity of such statements by exploring the new and vibrant sub-field within film studies known as film festival studies, which takes the film festival 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, study the politics and economics of film festivals, as well as analyze curatorial, programming and award policies of various festivals through weekly case studies of such events as Cannes, Berlin, Venice, TIFF, Sundance, FESPACO, Busan, etc.
Evaluation: In-class presentation, term paper, takes home exam (Tentative)

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[slideme title=”FILM 4301 Seminar in Film and Philosophy – Fall term”]

Professor: Marc Furstenau
Topic: Film Theory and the Philosophy of Art
Cross-listed with FILM 5109
Precludes credit in FILM 4501 and/or FILM 5500
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: Reading Reports, Essay
READINGS: Readings will be available at Carleton University Bookstore and through the on-line reserve system of the Carleton University library (ARES).

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[slideme title=”FILM 4805A Practicum in Film and Film Studies – Fall term”]

Go to https://carleton.ca/filmstudies/undergraduate/practicum/ for application instructions, deadlines, and course description.

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[slideme title=”FILM 4806B Practicum in Film and Film Studies – Winter term”]

Go to https://carleton.ca/filmstudies/undergraduate/practicum/ for application instructions, deadlines, and course description.

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[slideme title=”FILM 4901 Special Topic: Video Games and Difference – Winter term”]

Professor: Aubrey Anable
This advanced seminar will explore approaches to analysing video games through the lenses of feminist and queer theory, critical race theory, and disability studies. No video game expertise or experience is required to be successful in this course. Weekly seminar and gaming lab attendance is mandatory.
Evaluation will be based on weekly discussion questions, game demo and presentation, short game analysis paper, and a final project.
Course readings will be available electronically.

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[slideme title=”FILM 4904A Independent Study – Fall term”]

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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[slideme title=”FILM 4904B Independent Study – Winter term”]

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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See courses offered in previous years: