FILM AND ELECTRONIC ARTS

FILM 113 - 114: HISTORY OF CINEMA

The one-year sequence, conducted as a lecture course, is designed to give the student a broad introduction to the history and aesthetics of film from a roughly chronological perspective. There are weekly screenings of major films widely acknowledged as central to the evolution of the medium as well as supplementary reading assignments which provide both a narrative history and a strong encounter with the leading critical and theoretical issues of cinema, often within a context of 20th century art and literature. While the student can take either half of the sequence, the program recommends that both parts of the course are taken, especially for any student contemplating film as a concentration. Mid-term and final exams; term paper. Open to First-year students only.

CRN	90367	Distribution	A
Course No.	FILM 113
Title	History of Cinema, Part I: Its Origin to the End of the Silent Era
Professor	Scott MacDonald
Schedule	Wed 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm PRE Th 10:00 am - 12:20 pm PRE

The first half of the sequence begins with the early so-called primitive films of Lumiere, Melies, Porter, Sennett, and Feuillade; and then explores the rapid evolution of the medium through the works of a number of major artists, including the narrative pioneers Griffith, von Stroheim, Weber, and Dreyer; the silent comedians, Keaton and Chaplin; the soviet montage artists, Kuleshov, Vertov, Eisenstein and Dovzhenko; the German expressionists, Murnau, Lang and Pabst; the major Japanese figures, Kinugasa and Ozu; and practitioners of the French avant-garde, Leger, Clair, Man Ray, Bunuel, and Dulac; as well as innovative documentaries by such filmmakers as Ruttmann and Flaherty. Readings by Arnheim, Eisenstein, Munsterberg, et al.

CRN	90363	Distribution	F
Course No.	FILM 201 A
Title	Introduction to the Moving Image
Professor	Leah Gilliam
Schedule	Tu 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm Studio B

Introduction to the basic problems (technical and theoretical) related to film and/or electronic motion picture production. Coupled with Film 202 (offered in Spring), this course is designed to be taken in the sophomore year and leads to a spring Moderation project in the Film and Electronic Arts Program.

Prerequisite: a 100 or 200- level course in Film or Video History.

CRN	90364	Distribution	F
Course No.	FILM 201 B
Title	Introduction to the Moving Image
Professor	Peter Hutton
Schedule	Th 9:30 am - 12:30 pm Studio B

See description above.

CRN	90365	Distribution	F
Course No.	FILM 201 C
Title	Introduction to the Moving Image
Professor	Jacqueline Goss
Schedule	Wed 1:30 pm -4:30 pm Studio B

See description above.

CRN	90431	Distribution	F
Course No.	FILM 203
Title	Electronic Media Workshop:Digital Video
Professor	Jacqueline Goss
Schedule	Tu 1:30 pm -4:30 pm HDR 106

Cross-listed: Integrated Arts

This course combines lectures, demonstrations, and in-class exercises to introduce students to a variety of computer applications for media production. Students design and construct desktop video projects which incorporate elements culled from moving-image, graphic, text, and audio sources. This class places media arts in the context of the role played by new technologies in visual exploration and their place in the traditions of film history. The course is open to students with some experience in film and video.

CRN	90448	Distribution	F
Course No.	FILM 211
Title	Scriptwriting Workshop
Professor	Lisa Katzman
Schedule	Mon 1:30 pm - 3:50 pm PRE 101

From an idea to a plot; from an outline to script. Character development, dramatic/cinematic structure. Continuous analysis of students' work. Students who wish to take the course should have a demonstrable background in film or writing and be willing to share their work with others. Limited enrollment.

CRN	90059	Distribution	A/B
Course No.	FILM 214 A / LIT 2136
Title	Topics in History of Cinema: Shakespeare and Film
Professor	Nancy Leonard
Schedule	Th 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm PRE Fri 10:30 am -12:50 pm PRE

The history of Shakespeare films unites the development of cinematic art, acting style and changing understandings of Shakespeare. Films are powerful productions of Shakespeare, and many stand as fascinating classics as well as versions of today's cultural understandings. We will read several Shakespeare tragedies, a comedy and a history, and grasp them in intense dialogue with important films of the plays. Questions to be raised include the influence of a director's style, the role of montage, poetic vs. dramatic conceptions of action, the nature of realism, the role of acting styles, and the contrasts between classic and contemporary films. Films will be screened from different national traditions, and are listed here by the plays to be studied: Macbeth (Welles, Polanski, Kurosawa), Hamlet (Olivier, Kozintsev, Almereyda), King Lear (Godard, Brook, Kurosawa), Romeo and Juliet (Zefferelli and Baz Luhrman), A Midsummer Night's Dream (Max Reinhardt) and a film of Henry IV or V (Olivier, Welles or Branagh). Lecture/discussion.

CRN	90368	Distribution	A
Course No.	FILM 214 B
Title	Topics in History of Cinema: The American Avant-garde Film 1942 - 1975
Professor	John Pruitt
Schedule	Tu 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm PRE Wed 10:00 am - 12:50 pm PRE

A lecture, survey course devoted to one of the most significant artistic movements in film following World War II, a movement closely tied to art forms like poetry and painting, which thus calls into critical question the medium's normal association with narrative fiction. The course will focus on a relatively small number of major filmmakers: the early pioneers of the 1940's, Deren, Peterson, Menken, Maas, and Broughton; the mythopoeic artificers of the 1950's and early 1960's, Anger, Brakhage, and Baillie; and the formalists of the late 1960's, Frampton, Snow and Gehr. We will also pay attention to the strong graphic/collage cinema of artists like Cornell, Conner, Smith, and Breer as well as to the anarchic, comic improvisations of figures like Jacobs, Kuchar, and MacLaine. We will end in the mid 1970's by touching on the movement's then future prospects, e.g. the revitalisation of storytelling through autobiography (Mekas) and feminist/critical narrative (Rainer). Supplementary readings, including many theoretical works by the filmmakers themselves as well as material touching on parallel avant-garde movements in painting, photography, poetry, and music from the same era, works by highly influential artists like Charles Olson, John Cage, et al. Two essay exams and a term paper. Open enrollment.

CRN	90370	Distribution	F
Course No.	FILM 278
Title	Film Production Workshop
Professor	Jennifer Reeves
Schedule	Th 1:30 pm -4:30 pm

Who's to say "too many chefs spoil the meal?" As this class functions as a rotating production team, the talent, imagination, and industry of each student will combine to create an original 16mm film. The narrative will be styled by the class and each student will have an opportunity to write, direct, and edit a scene, acting as crew or cast in other scenes. Issues

of art direction, narrative continuity, and collaboration will be tackled as they arise. The primary goal of the class is for students to develop their technical and story-telling proficiency through working in a variety of roles of a film production.

CRN	90533	Distribution	F
Course No.	FILM 300
Title	Non-Linear Editing
Professor	Leah Gilliam
Schedule	Wed 9:30 am - 12:30 pm PRE

A class designed to introduce juniors and seniors concentrating in film and video to current nonlinear editing systems. This class will combine traditional postproduction editing strategies and theory with computer-based nonlinear techniques. Students are required to create short videos based on film or video material.

CRN	90366	Distribution	F
Course No.	FILM 302
Title	Major Conference: Landscape & Film
Professor	Peter Hutton
Schedule	Fr 1:30 pm -4:30 pm PRE

A class designed for Junior level film and video majors. The class will study and compare representations of the American landscape through the history of film and painting vs. the depiction of landscape and environmental issues manifest through television and video. Students will be required to complete a short film or video referencing these issues. Required reading: B. McKibbon's The Age of Missing Information.

CRN	90193	Distribution	F
Course No.	FILM 312
Title	Scriptwriting Workshop
Professor	Adolfas Mekas
Schedule	Wed 1:20 pm - 3:20 pm PRE 101

An intensive workshop for committed writers/cineasts. From an idea to plot, from an outline to full script - character development and dramatic/cinematic structure. Continuous analysis of students' work in a seminar setting. Students who wish to participate in this workshop should have a demonstrable background in film or in writing, and be able to share their work with others. Limited enrollment, for Upper College students only, or by permission of the professor. Submission of work and/or an interview prior to registration is recommended.

CRN	90423	Distribution	A
Course No.	FILM 319
Title	Film Aesthetics Seminar: Chaplin and Keaton
Professor	John Pruitt
Schedule	Mon 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm PRE Screenings: Sun 7:00 pm - 10:00 pm PRE

The course will offer an in-depth investigation of the two most enduring comics of the silent era, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, their many works and widespread influence, from the apprenticeship years of the early short subjects on through the celebrated features of the 1920's. We will look at the context of other American film comics of the same era like Harry Langdon, Harold Lloyd and Marion Davies, as well as at the crucially important and virtually forgotten framework of popular theater, especially vaudeville. Other, more theoretical issues will no doubt emerge, primarily the polemics of modernism which often embraced and sought to transform aspects of so-called "low culture," but we will also investigate the classic elements of comic form, and the nature of film versus that of theater. There will be a number of supplementary readings, including the autobiographies and biographies of both artists and the works of literary figures, ranging from Hart Crane and Bertolt Brecht to Samuel Beckett, who evidently drew inspiration from the vivid and brutal absurdities of popular physical comedy. Upper College only. Open to non-majors but enrollment preference will be given to those students who have already taken a survey course in film history. Class film exercise/project. Required term paper.

CRN	90289	Distribution	C
Course No.	FILM 320
Title	Topics in the History of Cinema: Edgar G. Ulmer, Wunderkind or Hollywood Outcast
Professor	Adolfas Mekas
Schedule	Tu 1:30 pm - 4:30 pm PRE

Edgar G. Ulmer (1904-1972) was the first Independent Filmmaker, and was also called the Father of Film Noir, the Master of B, and Poet of Poverty Row. Nobody made films more quickly and for less money than Edgar G. Ulmer (more than 100 features). Working in every imaginable genre - cinéma vérité, film noir, thriller, horror, sci-fi, pirates, westerns, black musicals, Yiddish dramas, Ukrainian melodramas, Spanish romances, Italian nostalgia, US Army training shorts, and educational venereal disease films - all with extremely low budgets and short shooting schedules (he did not even speak the language of foreign language films he directed), Ulmer developed a personal cinematic storytelling technique that is unique. We will analyze Ulmer's films: the use of light and sound, superimpositions, editing, camera angles, mise en scene - all that makes possible for anyone with ambition to express themselves cinematically, with very little money, but plenty of imagination. Prerequisite: filmmaking experience or good knowledge of film history. The seminar is limited to 12 Upper College students.

CRN	90532	Distribution	A
Course No.	FILM / IA 362
Title	Electronic Networks: Art and the Internet
Professor	Jacqueline Goss
Schedule	Thu 9:30 am - 12:30 pm HDR 106

Cross-listed: Film

This course will examine the electronic networks of the internet, by exploring a variety of information systems, virtual communities and on-line art projects. These various worlds, each as distinct interactive models, will be examined and critiqued through selected readings culled from critical theory, policy, history, and aesthetics. Each student will be expected to spend quality time on-line, to tackle several technologies as they apply to activities on the net and to design and mount an on-line project.