Archived: 2022-2023 Undergraduate Course Listings

Summer 2023

FILM 1101A Introduction to Film Studies - May/June

PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
DESCRIPTION: This introduction to film studies course approaches the study of film from the perspective of its cultural contexts, formal composition, organizational structure, and critical perspectives. Focus will be placed on learning the vocabulary of film forms, the impact of film’s extratextual realities, and how to analyze its components. Films to be watched will be selected from the 125 years of film history, but they will be presented in terms of that day’s topic, not chronologically.The delivery will be mixed synchronous and asynchronous: students will receive PowerPoint “lectures”, and instructions to watch particular films and do targeted readings every week on their own, and we will use our Zoom meetings to discuss films, lectures, and readings as well as other activities. Students must plan to attend Zoom meetings having already completed the asynchronous course work, with questions and notes on all components of the asynchronous material in hand, so that we can spend our collective time together building on these components.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Students will be able to choose a combination of forum participation, film analyses, quizzes, and/or a final essay.
READINGS: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction. Sixth Edition. Boston and New York: Bedford and St. Martin’s, 2021.The textbook is available for purchase at the Carleton Bookstore as a paperback, as a loose-leaf edition, and as a digital edition.

FILM 1101B Introduction to Film Studies - May/June

PROFESSOR: Christopher Rohde
DESCRIPTION: This course will examine the history, theory and criticism that forms the basis of the academic study of film. Topics covered will include: the historical, technical and artistic development of film images and sounds, interpreting the audiovisual language of cinema, film spectatorship and film styles.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Online participation (15%), Midterm (35%), Written report (15%), Final exam (35%)
READINGS: The Film Experience (6th edition) by Timothy Corrigan & Patricia White, plus additional online readings

FILM 1101C Introduction to Film Studies - July/August

PROFESSOR: Christopher Rohde
DESCRIPTION: This course will examine the history, theory and criticism that forms the basis of the academic study of film. Topics covered will include: the historical, technical and artistic development of film images and sounds, interpreting the audiovisual language of cinema, film spectatorship and film styles.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Online participation (15%), Midterm (35%), Written report (15%), Final exam (35%)
READINGS: The Film Experience (6th edition) by Timothy Corrigan & Patricia White, plus additional online readings

FILM 2601 Film Genres: The Psychological Thriller - July/August

PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
DESCRIPTION: Psychological thrillers are a subgenre of suspense thrillers that use plot twists and other narrative devices to expose, disturb, and interrogate the protagonist’s grasp on reality, often provoking fascinating philosophical, cultural, and psychological questions. This course traces the psychological thriller from its origins in German Expressionism through Hitchcock, to domestic noir, to technological nightmares, and to the more narratively complex “mind game movies”. Our broad objectives are 1. to understand the concept of genre along with its history in film studies, 2. to learn how to define and recognize a particular genre (the suspense thriller) and one of its subgenres (the psychological thriller) and 3. to analyze how individual films inhabit this (sub)genre by embracing their conventions and/or contesting them. This course will be run as a partial seminar, meaning that it will be largely discussion-based with a lecture component, and as such, it will be held synchronously on Zoom, during which time we will discuss the readings and films, participate in student-led panel discussions, watch full films, and engage in small group activities. Students will need to have working microphones and webcams to fully participate in this course. Regular preparation for, attendance of, and engagement in classes is expected of all students.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: The evaluation process will include an asynchronous discussion component, two mid-length papers, a group-led discussion/presentation, and several small assignments.
READINGS: All course readings will be provided.

Fall 2022/Winter 2023

FILM 1101A Introduction to Film Studies - Fall

PROFESSOR: Charles O’Brien
DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to various ways of analyzing and interpreting films, with a focus on applying vocabulary, concepts, and issues taken up in Film Studies. The focus is on three overlapping areas of inquiry: film as art, as entertainment, and as a social phenomenon.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: FILM 1101A will be delivered entirely through Brightspace. The course lectures, which happen online each week on Tuesdays at 8:35 a.m., will be recorded and made available on cuLearn to students. All other course activities and assignments (including film viewing; participating in an online discussion forum; completing quizzes on the reading assignments, and two take-home exams) will be delivered asynchronously.
READINGS: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience (Macmillan), Sixth Edition.

FILM 1101B Introduction to Film Studies - Winter

PROFESSOR: Charles O’Brien
DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to various ways of analyzing and interpreting films, with a focus on applying vocabulary, concepts, and issues taken up in Film Studies. The focus is on three overlapping areas of inquiry: film as art, as entertainment, and as a social phenomenon.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: FILM 1101B will be delivered entirely through Brightspace. The course lectures, which happen online each week on Wednesdays at 8:35 a.m., will be recorded and made available on cuLearn to students. All other course activities and assignments (including film viewing; participating in an online discussion forum; completing quizzes on the reading assignments, and two take-home exams) will be delivered asynchronously.
READINGS: Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience (Macmillan), Sixth Edition.

FILM 1120A Seminar in Film Studies - Fall

PROFESSOR: Aboubakar Sanogo
DESCRIPTION: 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.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Quizzes; screening reports; discussion groups; take home final exam (tentative)
READINGS: Corrigan, Timothy and Patricia White. The Film Experience: An Introduction. New York and Boston: Macmillan, 2021 (6th edition).

FILM 2001A Film Theory and Analysis I - Fall

PROFESSOR: Katherine Morrow
DESCRIPTION: The objective of this course is to introduce students to 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 and as an art form. We will view films chosen from throughout the history of the cinema, representing various genres, styles, and national contexts.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
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).

FILM 2002B Film Theory and Analysis II - Winter

PROFESSOR: Katherine Morrow
DESCRIPTION: The objective of this course is to further explore the main theories and methods of analysis that have been developed for the study of film. Building on FILM 2001, students will explore specific theories of film in more depth. We will consider some of the more significant theoretical debates in the history of film theory, and more recent film and media theory. We will analyse a range of significant films, in relation to the specific theoretical issues we will be considering. We will view films chosen from throughout the history of the cinema, representing various genres, styles, and national contexts.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
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).

FILM 2101B The Film Industry - Winter

PROFESSOR: David Richler
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. 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 the contemporary film landscape, 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).
METHOD OF EVALUATION: 4 short Reading Reports and 1 Final Essay. Subject to change
READINGS: Online readings

FILM 2106A The Documentary - Fall

PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
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. 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. This course is crosslisted with JOUR 2106.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
READINGS: All required readings will be made available on the free external annotation site, Perusall.

FILM 2201B National Cinema (focus on Chinese Cinemas) - Winter

PROFESSOR: David Richler
DESCRIPTION: This course will explore the category of “national cinema,” and the concepts of nationalism and national identity. We will focus specifically on the Chinese-language context, namely, the cinemas of Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, with brief detours to Singapore, Malaysia, the greater Chinese Diaspora, and, finally, Hollywood. We will begin in 1937 with a look at the leftist cinema of 1930s Shanghai and conclude with the twenty-first century revival of the Wuxia film. In between, we will discuss the relationship between film, national/cultural identity, and historical representation; depictions of the “rural” and the “urban”; the function of genre codes and conventions (e.g. melodrama, martial arts, the musical, film noir, etc.); the representation of genders; transnational stardom (e.g. Bruce Lee, Chow Yun-Fat); cross-cultural adaptation; and, finally, the impact of international film festivals, government film policies and multinational co-productions (within and beyond Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan) on Chinese cinemas.Each week we will examine the “national” and/or “transnational” contexts of a specific film (or group of films) from multiple angles and perspectives, focusing on the complex relationships between text/context, self/other, and, most crucially, nation/world. This course will therefore address issues of cultural translation, and the evolving status of “the national” in an increasingly globalized world.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Short Research Report, Film Analysis paper, and 1 final essay. Subject to change
READINGS: Online readings

FILM 2204A Indigenous Cinema and Media - Fall

PROFESSOR: Kester Dyer
DESCRIPTION: This course introduces students to cinema and media by Indigenous directors working in Turtle Island and globally. Drawing on Indigenous scholarship, it reflects on how Indigenous filmmakers have countered dominant misrepresentations, assumptions, and ideologies, and how their work continues to challenge colonialism in various forms and contexts. The course addresses prevalent themes and socio-political concerns, important innovations in genre, key filmmakers, stylistic and methodological approaches, and theoretical concepts that have marked the vibrant expansion of Indigenous cinema and media.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
READINGS: Online readings

FILM 2206B Canadian Cinema: From Origins to Present - Winter

PROFESSOR: Tom McSorley
DESCRIPTION: Largely unfamiliar to most Canadians, the Canadian cinema is famously described by film scholar Peter Harcourt as “the invisible cinema: a cinema that exists but is not seen.” This course is intended to illuminate the historical, cultural, and critical outlines of filmmaking in this country. More than simply making apparent the ‘invisible,’ however, the course will also investigate the backgrounds and contexts of film production in Canada from the silent era right up to the 21^st century. We will identify and explore the evolution of two major streams of film practice in Canada: documentary and experimental. In addition, the course will examine the troubled, tentative evolution of Canadian feature fiction filmmaking. Our investigations will also explore various recurring themes in our national cinema: technology, alienation, marginality, identity, memory, ethnicity, history, and interiority.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Mid-term test (20%); Essay (40%); Exam (40%)
READINGS: TBA

FILM 2401A Authorship in Film and Media - Stanley Kubrick - Fall

PROFESSOR: Tom McSorley
DESCRIPTION: 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 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, while examining the various conditions of production in which that work was made. Theoretical investigations of authorship will be undertaken, but they will not determine our approach to the films. Questions of representation, genre, gender, psychology, technology, alienation, desire, and myth will be raised, as all of Kubrick’s work offers complex and multi-faceted explorations of these ideas.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Film Analysis (20%); Essay (50%); Exam (30%)
READINGS: TBA

FILM 2601A Film Genres: The Melodrama - Fall

PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
DESCRIPTION: Melodrama has long been dismissed for its association with the emotions, excess, woman’s films, high romance, and low-brow entertainment, but as we will see in this course, the melodrama offers unique insights into gender, class, nationalism, modernity, race, ethics, psychology, and aesthetics. Whether we think of it as a genre, expressive mode, or ideological form, the melodrama at its best employs a variety of aesthetic conventions and stylistics to provide emotional resonance to moral and political issues. This course takes an international perspective focusing on, how melodrama deals with gender, race, and class; the queering of genre; the influence of Hollywood’s genre development on other national cinemas; and the effect of heightened audiovisual sensation on the cinematic experience.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
READINGS: The required text is Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility by John Mercer available in hard copy through the Carleton bookstore or as an e-book (please acquire this text prior to the start of class). In addition, other course readings will be provided on the free external annotation site, Perusall.

FILM 2601A Film Genres: Science Fiction - Winter

PROFESSOR: Gunnar Iversen
DESCRIPTION: The course offers an introduction to science fiction cinema. We will explore the definitions of the genre and central themes and issues, such as representations of technology, surveillance, biopolitics, race and gender. We will also discuss the history of science fiction cinema as a genre from the silent period to today
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Essays
READINGS: All readings will be available on ARES or on Brightspace.

FILM 2606A History of World Cinema I - Fall

PROFESSOR: Charles O’Brien
DESCRIPTION: Offering a survey of the history of the cinema that begins in the late 19th century and continues until World War II, FILM 2606A covers major developments in the history of film from around the world. Through an examination of canonical art films and movements as well as currents in popular cinema, the course examines world cinema relative to a variety of historical events, contexts, and movements.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: delivered entirely through Brightspace. The course lectures, which happen online each week on Wednesdays at 8:35 a.m., will be recorded and made available on Brightspace to students. All other course activities and assignments (including film viewing; participating in an online discussion forum; completing quizzes on the reading assignments, and two take-home exams) will be delivered asynchronously.
READINGS: The reading assignments come from the following textbook: Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History (Macmillan), Fourth Edition.

FILM 2607B History of World Cinema II - Winter

PROFESSOR: Gunnar Iversen
DESCRIPTION: In this course, we will 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
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Essays
READINGS: Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell: Film History – An Introduction (Fifth Edition). Additional readings will be available on Brightspace

FILM 2801A Film and Media Practice - Fall

PROFESSOR: Laura Taler
DESCRIPTION: This course is focused on a variety of hands-on projects that will lead students towards a better understanding of the considerations required in the creative process of filmmaking. Students will gain basic skills in shooting images, recording sound, and editing their footage. Students will screen and present their projects in class. The discussion of these projects is an essential aspect of the course.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA (A variety of hands-on creation assignments.)
READINGS: Brief online readings.

FILM 3105B Questions of Documentary Practice - Winter

PROFESSOR: Papagena Robbins
DESCRIPTION: This course will look at questions of documentary practice through documentary 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 center 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 issues raised in the manifestos or in the films paired with the manifesto. This course is crosslisted with JOUR 3105.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
READINGS: All course readings will be provided electronically at no cost to students.

FILM 3209A Topics in Canadian Cinema: Genre Film in Canada - Fall

PROFESSOR: Kester Dyer
DESCRIPTION: This course focusses on the intersection of genre and national cinema in the Canadian context. As such, it deploys genre as a lens through which to explore different cultural and political experiences of Canada. In so doing, the course initiates students to works by filmmakers of different backgrounds who have either privileged genre filmmaking or challenged its paradigms. The course is divided into sections that successively examine genres emphasizing fear, discomfort and anxiety; pleasure, laughter, and entertainment; and geographical space and historical time. Considering both important historical developments and specific socio-political contexts, the course thus seeks, via dominant and marginalized perspectives, to reflect on a range of work that engages with and critiques existing models determined by both genre and nation.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
READINGS: Online readings

FILM 3301A Topics in Cinema, Gender and Sexuality : Action Cinema, Gender, and American Society - Fall

PROFESSOR: Christopher Rohde
CROSSLISTED COURSE: WGST 3812
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.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Attendance 10%, Quiz 20%, Essay 40%, Final exam 30%
READINGS: Collection of online readings (articles and book chapters by various authors)

FILM 3601B Contemporary Québec Cinema - Winter

PROFESSOR: Kester Dyer
DESCRIPTION: This course centres on the phenomenon known as Le renouveau du cinema québécois, or the Québec New Wave. Since 2005, observers have described a common set of formal and thematic trends in Québécois auteur cinema, placing this set of films in contrast with the work of previous generations. In this course, we will interrogate the unity of Le renouveau as a film movement by examining the figures associated with it, their precursors, the traditions against which they pit themselves, as well as contemporaneous filmmakers whose work runs parallel with this trend. Throughout this course, students will contemplate a range of film texts, explore contemporary Québec cinema’s engagement with alterity and diversity, and gain an understanding of the social, cultural, and ideological concerns that have recently characterized Québec society as exhibited through its cinema.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
READINGS: Online readings

FILM 3609A African Cinema - Fall

PROFESSOR: Aboubakar Sanogo
DESCRIPTION: There has seldom been a better time to study African cinema. Indeed, cinema and media practices across the continent have been experiencing a growth and expansion in recent years. African films are winning major awards at major film festivals. Nollywood is a ubiquitous presence around the world. Netflix is actively courting African filmmakers across the continent and across linguistic lines, creating its “Made in Africa Collection” with the tagline “Made in Africa, Streaming to the World.” The Criterion Collection has been releasing restored classics of African cinema through its partnership with Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation and the African Film Heritage Project. There is something akin to renaissance in African cinema in the present moment.
The project of this course is to seek to understand and explain these contemporary transformations by introducing students to African cinema through its history, some of its major and emerging filmmakers, film movements, films and institutions, its key debates and challenges as well as its potential futures.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Take Home Midterm- Essay Proposal-Final Essay
READINGS: N/A

FILM 3701A Topics in Animation, Video and Experimental Film - Fall

PROFESSOR: Jenna Stidwill
DESCRIPTION: This course introduces third-year students to the study of American animation history and aesthetics. During the course students will explore how 20th and 21st century American animation has responded to select political, cultural, and 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 genre’s development? 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.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: 10% Attendance & participation; 15% Reading quizzes; 25% Historical Forces Assignment; 15% Historical Research Project Proposal; 35% Final Historical Research Project
READINGS: All course readings will be available for download in electronic format via Ares

FILM 3800B Film/Video Archival or Curatorial Practice: Film Programming - Winter

PROFESSOR: Tom McSorley
DESCRIPTION: Film programming is everywhere. From the multiplex movie chains, to the ByTowne Cinema and Mayfair Theatre ‘repertory’ cinemas, to institutions like the Ottawa Film Society and the Canadian Film Institute, to hundreds of film festivals in Ottawa, across Canada and abroad, to online streaming 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 film festivals? And, more immediate to the broad intentions of this course, how does it work? How does one actually apply one’s knowledge of and passion for cinema in these various venues? These and many other questions will be discussed and analyzed in this course. While we will certainly incorporate theoretical discussions of taste and critical practice, this workshop-style online course is intended to give students practical experience in four specific areas of film programming: themed film series, retrospectives, national/world cinema programming, and film festivals. Using the instructor’s sample programming as a guide, you will develop a curatorial design for film programmes in each of the three areas (themed, retrospective, national/world cinema); this will include film selection and preparation of program notes. The final section of the course work will be your conceptualization, design, and proposed programming of a film festival, as well as proposed strategies for promotion and public outreach.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Weekly short writing assignments (30%); four film program proposals (70%)
READINGS: TBA

FILM 3801B Film and Media Practice II - Winter

PROFESSOR: Christopher Rodhe
DESCRIPTION: This course will give students the opportunity to explore practical and conceptual approaches to filmmaking. Students will be guided through the process of developing an original character, writing a short narrative screenplay, understanding cinematography and sound recording techniques, and learning DIY approaches to various aspects of film production.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
READINGS: Collection of online readings (articles and book chapters by various authors)

FILM 3808B Cinema and Technology - Winter

PROFESSOR: Philippe Bédard
DESCRIPTION: Study of the technological development of cinema. Topics may include advances in sound and colour processes, digital effects, exhibition technologies and new media. The goal of this course is to introduce students to various approaches to the study of the techniques and technologies of cinema in order to appreciate and evaluate the impact of select technological developments on the “identity of cinema.”
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
READINGS: TBA

FILM 3810B Sound in Film and Media - Fall

PROFESSOR: Matthew Poulter
DESCRIPTION: TBA
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
READINGS: TBA

FILM 3902A Screenwriting Workshop - Fall

PROFESSOR: TBA
DESCRIPTION: TBA
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
READINGS: TBA

FILM 3901A Chinese Independent Cinema: The Politics and Aesthetics of Alternative Filmmaking in the PRC - Fall

PROFESSOR: Katherine Morrow
DESCRIPTION: Underground…Banned in China…Independent, these terms, among others, have been used to describe unofficial and unsanctioned production practices and viewing cultures that began to emerge in mainland China in the early 1990s. This course will examine significant examples of such filmmaking, both narrative and documentary, by Wu Wenguang, Zhang Yuan, Jia Zhangke, and Liu Jiayin among others. In addition to engaging with the films, students will consider what independence means for Chinese cinema through theoretical, historical and sociological lenses.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Response papers, participation, essays
READINGS: All required texts for this course will be available on the course Brightspace page through ARES reserves.

FILM 3901B Topics in Film Studies: Cinema and Disability - Winter

PROFESSOR: Charles O’Brien
DESCRIPTION: This edition of FILM 3901 investigates film aesthetics in connection with issues of disability, with a focus on manifestations of corporeal impairment in film representation and narration. Scenes featuring characters with visible disabilities receive special attention from writers, actors, directors, and critics. How are such scenes scripted, acted, filmed, edited, and integrated into a film’s story?Through an interdisciplinary investigation drawing on concepts from both Film Studies and Disability Studies, the course examines the role of extraordinary bodies in narrative cinema, and it highlights innovations in casting and storytelling in recent films. While disability stereotypes remain widespread in contemporary media, FILM 3901B emphasizes how a new generation of filmmakers, representing a wide range of cultural experience, is coming up with new techniques for filming disability.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: FILM 3901B will be delivered in a “blended” format, with in-person course lectures supplemented by asynchronous activities. The lectures will happen on campus each Tuesday morning at 8:35 a.m. in 417 St. Patrick’s Building. All other course activities and assignments (including weekly film viewing and the completion of two take-home exams) will be delivered asynchronously.
READINGS: All reading assignments for the course will be made available through the course website on Brightspace.

FILM 4001A Research and Critical Methodologies- Fall

PROFESSOR: Malini Guha
DESCRIPTION: 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 medial context. Topics to be covered include: the status of film vis-à-vis other forms of media; the history of film studies as a 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
READINGS: All materials will be available via Brightspace

FILM 4201A National Cinema: The Cinema of Italy from 1945 to Today - Fall

PROFESSOR: Tom McSorley
DESCRIPTION: This course offers a close study of the Italian cinema from the Neo-realist 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 historical, cultural, political, economic, and aesthetic development of post-World War II Italy in the contexts of its own internal history, as well as its role in the European Union specifically, and in the more general transnational influences and pressures of globalization. The course will also investigate theories of nationalism and ‘national’ cinema by way of exploring how national identities are imagined, constructed, and/or challenged in Italian cinema.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Film Analysis (20%); Seminar Presentation (10%); Essay (40%); Exam (30%)
READINGS: TBA

FILM 4201B Down to the Country and Into the City: The Politics of Space in Mainland Chinese Cinema - Winter

PROFESSOR: Katherine Morrow
DESCRIPTION: This course considers how film, television and other media engage with, reflect, and shape understandings of rural and urban space in mainland China. While much of the course will focus on contemporary material, historical understandings of rural space and people and their relationship to political revolution and reform at key moments in the 20th century will also be covered. Course viewing will include both documentary and narrative films, as well as contemporary reality television and short-form video.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Response papers, participation, essay and research paper
READINGS: All course readings will be available through ARES.

FILM 4201C Selected Topics in National Cinemas: Critical Perspectives on Canadian Cinema - Winter

PROFESSOR: Kester Dyer
DESCRIPTION: This course examines the history of debates and more recent discursive tendencies that have characterized the scholarly assessment of cinema in Canada. It looks at constructions of nationhood that have taken place through debates on what Canadian cinema is and what it should be, developments in canon formation, the influence of key institutions such as the NFB, innovative programs like Challenge for Change/Société nouvelle, notable film movements, predominant genres, and policies impacting the Canadian film industry. Considering influential approaches like auteurism, feminism, and queer theory, and emphasizing attempts to move beyond the “two founding cultures” binary in Canadian film studies, the course stresses local contexts as well as the diversity of film cultures across Canada, notably the dynamism of Indigenous and diasporic filmmaking in this context. Overall, the course adopts a decolonial perspective that interrogates the extent to which approaches to Canadian film studies depart from Eurocentric paradigms.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: TBA
READINGS: Online readings.

FILM 4401A Topics in Film Authorship - Topic: Experimental Cinema Auteurs - Fall

PROFESSOR: Christopher Rodhe
DESCRIPTION: This course will examine how signs of authorship can be read across the body of work of a group of notable experimental film directors; how authorial interests, directorial trademarks and cinematic styles and techniques are transmuted by changes in the cultural and sociopolitical landscape; and how experimental cinema as a mode of production has a unique relationship with ideas surrounding auteur theory.
METHOD OF EVALUATION: Attendance 10%, 2 x Oral presentations 30%, Take-home examination 30%
READINGS: Collection of online readings (articles and book chapters by various authors)

FILM 4904A Independent Study - Fall, FILM 4904B Independent Study - Winter

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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