19458

FILM 106 Introduction to Documentary Media

Ed Halter Screening:

. . . . F . . . Th .

10:00 am -1:00 pm 7:00 -10:00 pm

AVERY 217 AVERY 110

AART

An introductory historical survey of the documentary, from the silent era to the digital age. Topics addressed will include the origins of the concept of the documentary, direct cinema and cinema verite, propaganda, ethnographic media, the essay film, experimental documentary forms, media activism, fiction and documentary, and the role of changing technologies. Filmmakers studied will include Flaherty, Vertov, Riefenstahl, Rouch, Pennebaker, Maysles, Wiseman, Marker, Farocki, Spheeris, Hara, Riggs,Honigman, Morris, and Moore. Grades will be based on exams, essays and other research and writing projects. Open to all  students, registration priority for First-Year students and film majors.

19451

FILM 109 The History and Aesthetics of Film

Gerard Dapena Screening:

. . . Th . . . W . .

9:30am -12:30 pm 7:00 -10:00 pm

AVERY 11 AVERY 110

AART

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. Open to first-year students only.

19446

FILM 114 History of Cinema: Part Two, the Sound Era

John Pruitt Screening:

. . W . . . T . . .

1:30 pm -4:30 pm 7:00 -10:00 pm

AVERY 117 AVERY 110

AART

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.

19445

FILM 202 A Intro to the Moving Image II: Video Image II

Les LeVeque

. . W . .

9:30 -12:30 pm

AVERY 117 / 333

PART

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

19450

FILM 202 B Intro to the Moving Image II: Video Image II

Jacqueline Goss

. . . Th .

9:30 -12:30 pm

AVERY 117 / 333

PART

See above.

19452

FILM 202 C Intro to the Moving Image II: Film Image II

Peter Hutton

. . . Th .

1:30 pm -4:30 pm

AVERY 319

PART

See above.

19449

FILM 202 D Intro to the Moving Image II: Film Image II

Peggy Ahwesh

. . . Th .

9:30 -12:30 pm

AVERY 217 / 319

PART

See above.

19448

FILM 203 Digital Animation

Jacqueline Goss

. . . . F

9:30 -12:30 pm

AVERY 333

PART

Cross-listed: Integrated Arts In this course we will make video and web-based projects using digital animation and compositing programs (Macromedia Flash and Adobe After Effects). The course is designed to help students develop a facility with these tools and to find personal animating styles that surpass the tools at hand. We will work to reveal techniques and aesthetics associated with digital animation that challenge conventions of storytelling, editing, figure/ground relationship, and portrayal of the human form. To this end, we will refer to diverse examples of animating and collage from film, music, writing, photography, and painting. Prerequisite: familiarity with a nonlinear video-editing program.

19447

FILM 212 Screenwriting I

Marie Regan

. . W . .

1:30 pm -4:30 pm

AVERY 338

PART

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 it 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.

19455

FILM 220 The State of Independence: A History of American Independent Film

Gerard Dapena

. T . . . M . . . .

1:30 pm -4:30 pm 7:00 – 10:00 pm

AVERY 333 AVERY 110

AART

Cross-listed: American Studies This course will survey the history of American independent cinema, namely those narrative films produced outside of the Hollywood studio system. Defining itself against the economic and aesthetic conventions and restrictions of mainstream commercial filmmaking, independent cinema has emerged as an avenue for innovative, sometimes experimental approaches to storytelling, generally dictated by low budgets and often by propelled by an alternative, critical view of American society. It has also been a more favorable arena for women directors and filmmakers of color to break through. This course will chart the origins of independent filmmaking in America and examine its overlapping and cross-fertilization with the filmmaking scene operating on the margins of the classic Hollywood system (i.e., B movies), exploitation cinema, avant-garde cinema, and European art cinema. Ranging from John Cassavetes to Richard Kelly, from Melvin Van Peebles to Spike Lee, and from Shirley Clarke to Kelly Reichardt, this course aspires to cover a wide range of cinematic voices and styles. In the end, it seeks to raise questions about what it might mean to be an independent filmmaker in the 21st century, as new technological means of production and proliferating alternative channels of distribution and exhibition rapidly shape new media landscapes.

19459

FILM 223 Graphic Cinema Workshop

Peter Hutton

. . . . F

1:30 pm -4:30 pm

AVERY 333

PART

This course explores the materials and processes available for the production of graphic film or graphic film sequences. It consists of instruction in animation, rephotography, rotoscoping, and drawing on film and of viewing and discussing a number of films that are primarily concerned with the visual. Not available for on-line registration.

19453

FILM 235 Video Installation

Les LeVeque

. . . Th .

1:30 pm -4:30 pm

AVERY 116 / 333

PART

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.

19460

FILM 320 Film Aesthetics Seminar: The Avant-garde Film and the American Poet

John Pruitt Screening:

M . . . . Sun . .

1:30 pm -4:30 pm 7:00 -10:00 pm

AVERY 117 AVERY 110

AART

Cross-listed: American Studies The course will offer an in-depth study of a select number of American avant-garde filmmakers through the lens of modern American poetry. Not only has poetic form long been a useful analogy for understanding many avant-garde films, a number of established artists have consciously evoked their connection to poetry in their works and theoretical writings. Indeed some, like Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, and Hollis Frampton, who have strong ties to the modernist movement, were themselves "frustrated" poets before they turned to filmmaking. Other direct ties abound: James Broughton had a dual career as poet and film artist; Christopher MacLaine was an original "beat" performer in the 1950's; and Abigail Child, a filmmaker of a younger generation, has been associated with the so-called "language poets" through her critical writing. Additional filmmakers to be studied include Marie Menken, Ernie Gehr, Su Friedrich, and Nick Dorsky. Our central theoretical texts will include those of the filmmakers themselves as well as those literary figures whose critical meditations are central to the development of an American poetics, e.g., Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and Charles Olson. The major poets under consideration will also include Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, H.D., Robert Kelly, Susan Howe, John Ashbery et al. Enrollment priority for Juniors and Seniors with either a background in film or poetry. A term paper and a short creative video project required for all students.

19456

FILM 337 Queer(ing) Cinema

Gerard Dapena Screening:

. . W . . . T . . .

7:30 pm -9:30 pm 7:00 -10:00 pm

AVERY 110 / 117 PRE 110

AART

Cross-listed: Gender & Sexuality Studies This course will take a twofold approach to the representation of gay and lesbians on film. One avenue will survey the presence of more or less covert images of gay and lesbians in classic Hollywood and European cinema, exploring the strategies that enabled the encoding of queer sensibilities into otherwise heterosexual systems of cinematic representation and critically examining the range of stereotypes (the sissy, the psychopathic pervert, the sad young man, the suicidal lesbian) to be found in the pre-Stonewall era, as documented by Vito Russo in his seminal book The Celluloid Closet. Theories of camp and processes of re-signification and re-appropriation among gay and lesbian spectators, as put forth by the likes of Alexander Doty and Andrea Weiss, will be brought in and discussed in terms of their usefulness and limitations. Another avenue will consider the open and ever more affirming images of gay and lesbians that followed the rise of the Gay Liberation movement and feminism and the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the emergence of large urban gay and lesbian communities and subcultures in the 1970s, and the increased visibility of homosexuals and transsexuals across the social and cultural domain in the 1980s and 1990s. The devastating impact of AIDS lead to a heightened politicization among a group of gay and lesbian filmmakers, which coupled with more experimental modes of narration gave birth to the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s. These innovative cinematic proposals by the likes of Todd Haynes, Gregg Araki, and Rose Troche have been followed by more mainstream, less confrontational works that reflect the greater social acceptance of homosexuals and the theorization of post-gay and post-lesbian identities. The course will conclude with an analysis of new trends among gay and lesbian filmmakers as the shifting media landscapes and ideologies of the 21st century pose new opportunities for and challenges to the depiction of queer identities and sensibilities on film/video. The screening list will span classic Hollywood films, European art cinema, non-Western cinema, and independent and avant-garde film and video.

19457

FILM 338 Script to Screen

Kelly Reichardt

. . W . .

9:30 am -12:30 pm

AVERY 217

PART

This is a production workshop. Concentration will be on the narrative form with a goal of developing a comprehensive methodology for transforming the text to the screen. Students will be given a script from which to work. Emphasis will be placed on blocking the actors and the use of the camera-as-narrator. Through an extended series of scenes to be shot on video students will explore the dramatic and narrative elements of film, consider motivation for both character and camera, and learn to physicalize on film what is internal or emotional in the given text.

19444

FILM 351 Narrative Workshop: Directing

Kelly Reichardt

. T . . .

1:30 pm -4:30 pm

AVERY 217

PART

Students will explore visual storytelling strategies. Through weekly video exercises students will shoot original assignments or excerpts from selected narrative films. They will work both individually and on crews. For crew assignments members of the class will act as a production team: planning, shooting and editing. Crewmembers should rotate positions so that everyone is getting the chance to experience the various areas of filmmaking. Students will construct a sound design for each piece but must refrain from using music. No titles or credits. All work must be precise. There are no non-decisions.