Course

FILM 109   The History and Aesthetics of Film

Professor

Gerard Dapena

CRN

18368

 

Schedule

Th         9:30 - 12:30 pm     AVERY 110

(screening) Mon  7:00 - 10:00 pm  AVERY 110

Distribution

Analysis of Art

A one-semester survey course comprising weekly screenings and lectures designed for first-year students, especially those who are considering film as a focus of their undergraduate studies. Films by Griffith, Chaplin, Keaton, Renoir, Rossellini, Hitchcock, Deren, and others are studied. Readings of theoretical works by authors including Vertov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Munsterberg, Bazin, and Arnheim. This course is for first-year students only.  On-line registration 

 

Course

FILM 114  The  History of Cinema II: The Sound Era

Professor

Keith Sanborn

CRN

18370

 

Schedule

Wed      1:30 -4:30 pm        AVERY 110

(screening) Tue   7:00 - 10:00 pm  AVERY 110

Distribution

Analysis of Art

Open to First-year students only. 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. The second half of the sequence begins with crucial films in the transition to the technology and aesthetic of the sound film on an international scale, those by Lang, Sternberg, Bunuel, Vertov and Vigo. There follows a study of the evolution of the long-take, deep-focus aesthetic in the films of Renoir, Welles and Mizoguchi; of Hollywood genres in the films of Ford, Hitchcock, Hawks and Sturges; the rise of neo-realism in Rossellini, DeSica and Visconti; the contribution of the American avant-garde in Deren, Peterson, Brakhage, Anger, Smith, Conner and Breer; the French New Wave in Godard, Truffaut and Rohmer; the northern tradition in Dreyer and Bergman; selections of Asian filmic practice in films of Ray, Kurosawa, and Ozu; and finally, further European innovations in Antonioni, Varda, the Taviani Bros., Pasolini, et al. Readings by Bazin, Brakhage, Deren, Bresson, Sontag, et al.    

 

Course

FILM 202 A   Introduction to the Moving: Video

 Image II

Professor

Les LeVeque

CRN

18269

 

Schedule

Tue       9:30 - 12:30 pm     AVERY 333

Distribution

Practicing Arts

A continuation of the study of basic problems (technical and aesthetical) related to the video medium.  Prerequisite: Film 201  On-line registration 

 

Course

FILM 202 B  Introduction to the Moving: Film

 Image II

Professor

Kelly Reichardt

CRN

18367

 

Schedule

Tue       9:30 - 12:30 pm     AVERY 319

Distribution

Practicing Arts

See description above. On-line registration 

 

Course

FILM 202 C  Introduction to the Moving: Video

 Image II

Professor

Peggy Ahwesh

CRN

18371

 

Schedule

Wed      9:30 - 12:30 pm     AVERY 333

Distribution

Practicing Arts

See description above.On-line registration 

 

Course

FILM 202 D  Introduction to the Moving: Film

 Image II

Professor

Peter Hutton

CRN

18375

 

Schedule

Th         1:30 -4:30 pm        AVERY 319

Distribution

Practicing Arts

See description above. On-line registration 

 

Course

FILM 204  History of  Documentary Film

Professor

Peggy Ahwesh

CRN

18373

 

Schedule

Th         1:30 -4:30 pm        AVERY 117

(screening) Wed  7:00 - 10:00 pm  AVERY 110

Distribution

Analysis of Art

This course provides a historical overview and critique of the documentary form, with examples from ethnographic film, social documentary, cinema verité, propaganda films, and travelogues. The class investigates the basic documentary issue of truth and/or objectivity and critiques films using readings from feminist theory, cultural anthropology, general film history/theory, and other areas. On-line registration 

 

Course

ART / FILM 206 F/H  Sculpture II

Professor

Kenji Fujita / Peter Hutton

CRN

18348

 

Schedule

Wed      1:00 -4:00 pm        Fisher St. Arts

Distribution

Practicing Arts

Sculpture/Animation Workshop: This is a 200 level class for film/video and studio arts majors. In this workshop students will initiate a studio-based engagement that will focus on the connections between experimental forms of three-dimensional art-making and film/video practice. The emphasis will be on the conceptualization and construction of work that takes three-dimensional forms made in the studio and uses them in cinematic ways to produce a multi-faceted body of work that will consist of sculpture, film/video, and various combinations of the two. Students will be required to complete a series of short film/videos that explore movement in cinematic time of sculptural objects constructed in the studio for the purpose of analytical motion studies. The work of artists such as Yves Tinguely, Hans Richter, Red Grooms, Robert Breer, Michel Gondry, Fischli and Weiss as well as others will be viewed and discussed in class. Class is limited to fourteen students with permission from the instructors. Students interested in this class should email Kenji Fujita prior to on-line registration. On-line registration 

 

Course

FILM 212   Screenwriting

Professor

Marie Regan

CRN

18474

 

Schedule

Wed      1:30 - 4:30 pm        AVERY 338

Distribution

Practicing Arts

Screenplays are the foundation of much of our popular culture, but can they be art?  This intensive writing workshop examines the art and practice of the screenplay form, its root in classical narrative structure, how differs from the other written arts and how one can engage its particular tools to express original ideas.  Weekly writing assignments and class critique form the heart of this workshop.  Students should be prepared to share their work with others and participate fully in class discussion.

On-line registration 

 

Course

FILM 214   History of Cinema:Avant Garde

Professor

Ed Halter

CRN

18377

 

Schedule

Fri         10:00 -1:00 pm       AVERY 117

(screening) Th   7:00 - 10:00 pm  AVERY 117

Distribution

Analysis of Art

A critical overview of North American avant-garde cinema from the post-war period to the early 1970s, widely regarded as one of the most productive and influential eras of experimental film. Filmmakers under consideration will include Anger, Belson, Brakhage, Bute, Clarke, Conner, Cornell, Conrad, De Hirsch, Deren, Jacobs, the Kuchars, Landow, Lipsett, Markopoulos, Mekas, Menken, Ono, Peterson, Schneeman, Sharits, Harry Smith, Jack Smith, Snow, Warhol, Wieland and Whitney. Topics covered: pre-war European and American precedents, the Beats and the underground, the politics of counterculture,

documentary and performance, abstraction, sexuality and transgression, celluloid materialism, the structuralist film, and links to contemporary art movements. Readings will include the major texts on the period (Sitney¹s Visionary Film and Tyler¹s Underground Film: A Critical History), contemporary accounts and essays by programmers, critics and filmmakers, and

later historical analyses of the moment and its legacy.

 On-line registration 

 

Course

FILM 231    Documentary Film  Workshop

Professor

Peggy Ahwesh

CRN

18510

 

Schedule

Thur   9:30 – 12:30 pm  Avery 319

Distribution

Practicing Arts

Cross-listed: Human Rights

A video production workshop for students interested in social issues, reportage, home movies, travelogues and other forms of the non-fiction film. Working in both small crews and individually, the students will travel locally to a variety of locations to cover particular events, people and natural phenomena.  A final project, that is researched, shot and edited during the second half of the semester, is required of each student.  Please write the professor, detailing your interest, experience and propose a project you might do if in the class. On-line registration

 

Course

FILM 235    Installation: Video

Professor

Les LeVeque

CRN

18369

 

Schedule

Tue       1:30 -4:30 pm        AVERY 116

Distribution

Practicing Arts

This production course will investigate the historical and critical practice known as video installation as a vehicle for activating student composed projects. Since the beginning of video art artists have experimented with installation. Wolf Vostell and Nam June Paik’s use of multiple monitors in the 1960’s, Joan Jonas’ incorporation of video with live performance, Juan Downey and Steina’s experiments with interactive laser discs, the use of live feeds, large and small video projections on walls and objects, imply complex shifts of narrative composition as well as temporal and spatial relationships. Through readings and screenings our discussions will examine this diffuse practice. Students will be encouraged to explore high and low tech solutions to their audio visual desires and should be prepared to imagine the campus as their canvas. Prerequisite: Introduction to the Moving Image: Video/Film.

 

Course

FILM 312   Advanced Screenwriting: Multiple Protagonist Narratives

Professor

Marie Regan

CRN

18374

 

Schedule

Th         9:30 - 12:30 pm      AVERY 338

Distribution

Practicing Arts

The last few years have seen a wave of narrative films structured around multiple points of view.  Starting with Rashomon and ending with Syndromes and a Century, we'll study several films that use multiple protagonist structures to express complex ideas.  Having analyzed these films, the second part of the course will function as a workshop.  During this phase, the course will  break into groups to collaboratively create multiple protagonist scripts.  Preference given to students who have completed Screenwriting.  On-line registration 

 

Course

FILM 319   Film Aesthetics:Theater and Film

Professor

John Pruitt

CRN

18376

 

Schedule

Fri         1:30 -4:30 pm        AVERY 110

(screening) Th  7:00 - 10:00 pm  AVERY 110

Distribution

Analysis of Art

The seminar is not about adapting plays to the screen, nor will it be devoted to a mere comparison of theater and cinema. Rather, our course of study will be an in-depth aesthetic and theoretical examination of narrative film by way of paying particular attention to those vestiges of theatrical expression and form that have always “haunted” the development of the cinematic medium. We will begin by looking at how the popular theater of the 19th Century actually pre-figures so-called cinematic form. This will be especially evident in the silent melodramas of D. W. Griffith and the comedies of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. In the classic era of the sound film, we will see a number of major directors, each in their own distinctive way, transform theatrical conventions into a particularly powerful filmic language, e.g. Jean Renoir (France); Kenji Mizoguchi (Japan); Orson Welles (U.S.) and Sergei Eisenstein (Russia). Later practitioners, of more modernistic bent, have produced works that are self-conscious meditations on the frictional yet fecund relationship between film and theater: Ingmar Bergman (Sweden), Federico Fellini (Italy), Jacques Rivette (France), and Manoel de Oliveira (Portugal).  By looking at other appropriate films, we will also try to find a way of articulating the more elusive elements of screen performance (and the direction of same). Readings by primary critics and theorists like Meyerhold, Bazin, Munsterberg, et al., as well as by major playwrights like Marlowe, Shakespeare, Pirandello, and Strindberg -- and relatively “forgotten” figures of the popular theater like William Gillette and Dion Boucicault. Open to Juniors and Seniors only; priority of enrollment will be given to those students who have already taken film history or theater courses. Required mid-term essay and final paper.     On-line registration 

 

Course

FILM 341   Analog  Video

Professor

Les LeVeque

CRN

18511

 

Schedule

Wed      1:30 -4:30 pm        AVERY 116 / 219

Distribution

Practicing Arts

This production workshop will investigate the making of video art using the recently abandoned technologies of analog video. Throughout the semester we will focus on the video signal as a carrier of luminance and chrominance that can be manipulated and degraded through a reexamination of closed circuit performance and real time processing and mixing. By permission of the instructor.

 

Course

FILM 351   Narrative Workshop Two:  Directing

Professor

Kelly Reichardt

CRN

18378

 

Schedule

Mon      1:30 -4:30 pm        AVERY 217

Distribution

Practicing Arts

This live-action production course is a follow up to Narrative Workshop One and continues the theme of physicalizing the emotional. Concentration will be on the narrative form with the goal of developing a comprehensive methodology for translating script to screen.  Through a series of video exercises students will further explore and deconstruct the dramatic elements of film. Each video exercise requires students to consider motivation for both character and camera.

 

Course

FILM 356   NEW WAVES, NEW VISIONS II: WORLD CINEMA IN THE 1960s

Professor

Gerard Dapena

CRN

18379

 

Schedule

Tue       1:30 -4:30 pm        AVERY 110

(screening)  Sun  7:00 - 10:00 pm   AVERY 110

Distribution

Analysis of Art

The 1960s was not only a decade of great political upheaval,  fast-paced social change, and cultural ferment; it was also an  extraordinarily creative moment in the history of the cinema. This  course, part of a two-part series, will present and discuss the work  of filmmakers from Asia, Africa, and Latin America who made their  cinematic debuts in (or on the cusp of) the 1960s. Special emphasis  will be given to directors from the so-called Japanese New Wave  (Oshima,  Imamura, Teshigahara, Fukasaku, Suzuki, Masumura, Shinoda),  India (Ghatak, Sen, Kaul), the emerging national cinemas in  post-colonial Africa (Sembène, Hondo, Chahine, Rachedi), and the New  Latin American Cinema (Rocha, Andrade, Solanas, Alvarez, Gutiérrez  Alea,  Solas)  On-line registration