11336

FILM 106 Introduction to Documentary Media

Ed Halter Screening:

. . . . F . . . Th .

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

AVERY 110 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.

11329

FILM 114 History of Cinema

Keith Sanborn Screening:

. . . Th . . . W . .

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

AVERY 110 AVERY 110

AART

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. Open to first-year students only.

11325

FILM 203 Digital Animation

Jacqueline Goss

. . . Th .

9:30 - 12:30 pm

AVERY 217

PART

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.

11331

FILM 207 A Introduction to Video Production

Jacqueline Goss

. . . . F

9:30 - 12:30 pm

AVERY 217 / 333

PART

This course is designed to introduce you to various elements of video production with an emphasis on video art and experimentation. The class culminates with the completion of a single channel video piece by each student. To facilitate this final project, there will be a number of camera and editing assignments that are designed to familiarize you with digital video technology while investigating various aesthetic and theoretical concepts. Class sessions will consist of technology demonstrations, screenings, critiques and discussions. Technology training will include: cameras, Final Cut Pro, studio lighting and lighting for green screen, key effects, microphones and more. No prerequisites, permission from instructor.

11382

FILM 207 B Introduction to Video

Les LeVeque

. T . . .

9:30 - 12:30 pm

AVERY 117 / 333

PART

See above.

11335

FILM 208 Introduction to Film:16mm

Peter Hutton

. . . Th .

1:30 -4:30 pm

AVERY 319

PART

An introduction to filmmaking with a strong emphasis on mastering the 16mm Bolex camera. Students will be required to shoot six different assignments designed to address basic experimental, documentary, and narrative techniques. A wide range of technical and aesthetic issues will be explored in conjunction with editing, lighting, and sound recording techniques. No prerequisites, permission from instructor.

11330

FILM 211 Screenwriting I

Marie Regan

. . W . .

1:30 -4:30 pm

AVERY 338

PART

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, priority given to Sophomores and Juniors, or by permission of the professor. Submission of work and/or an interview prior to registration is recommended.

11323

FILM 219 Film & Modernism

John Pruitt Screening:

M . . . . Su . . . .

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

AVERY 110 AVERY 110

AART

Operating on the assumption that the study of film, a syncretic art par excellence, offers a particularly advantageous perspective on understanding the aesthetic underpinnings of 20th Century art, the course explores the relationship between a certain mode of cinematic achievement, for the most part labeled avant-garde, and the major tenets of modernist art, both visual and literary. Many of the films studied are by artists who worked in other media (such as Léger, Strand, Cornell, and Duchamp) or whose work manifests a direct relationship to various artistic movements such as surrealism, futurism, and constructivism. An attempt is made to relate certain films to parallel achievements in photography, poetry, and music, with some attention paid to relatively little-seen filmmakers such as Lye, Kinugasa, and Jennings. Much of the assigned reading is not film criticism as such, but crucial critical works that help to define modernism in general, including those by Baudelaire, Pound, Ortega y Gasset, Moholy-Nagy, and Brecht. Other films studied are by (Europeans) Vertov, Eisenstein, Buñuel, Dulac, Ruttmann, Man Ray; and (American) Deren, Brakhage, Anger, Snow, Gehr, Conner, Rainer, Frampton, et al. Three take-home essay exams.

11403

FILM 238 Survey of Japanese Cinema

Ian Buruma Screening:

M . . . . Su . . . .

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

AVERY 217 PRE 110

AART

Cross-listed: Asian Studies This course surveys the history of Japanese cinema from the silent films, with their extraordinary "benshi" performances, to recent Japanese cinema as seen at international film festivals. Along the way we will consider such topics as the relation of cinema to cultural traditions, to modernization, and to questions of nation and post-modernity. We will pay particular attention to the “golden age” of Japanese cinema in the 1950s. Methodologically, we will consider the utility of, for example, auteurism, historical poetics, and the study of cinema as a “complex social sign.” Film texts include art films already well-known in the West along with examples of Japanese popular cinema. We will learn that Japanese cinema is more than an illustration of literature or an expression of individual artistic sensibility; it is both a vibrant strand within the ongoing history of Japanese popular culture and the object of considerable attention throughout the history of Western film studies. Mid-term and final exams; web responses; term paper.

11383

FILM 314 Contemporary Narrative

John Pruitt Screening:

. T . . . M . . . .

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

AVERY 110 7:00 - 10:00 pm

AART

An open-ended, investigative seminar into a select group of prominent, narrative filmmakers who are still active and whose international reputation has emerged within the last twenty-five or so years. A special emphasis will be placed on those artists whose work presents a particular challenge to or innovation in narrative form per se, to the extent that as they approach a kind of visual poetry, they place difficult demands upon the viewer to be a creative collaborator. The list of film screenings may be augmented or altered by current releases in the fall, or student interest as the course progresses, but it will certainly include films by the following: Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, Abbas Kiarostami, Aleksandr Sokurov, Peggy Ahwesh, Claire Denis, Guy Maddin, Hou Hsaio-hsien, Michael Haneke, Lars von Trier, Peter Greenaway and Chantal Akerman. Two written projects: one short and one long. Limited course enrollment: Juniors and Seniors only; preference will be given to those students with background in film criticism and history.

11401

FILM 317 Film Production Workshop:Cinematography

Peter Hutton

. . . . F

1:30 -4:30 pm

AVERY 319

PART

A junior level production workshop designed to give students working in film a more thorough understanding of a wide range of cinematic vocabularies and aesthetics that are unique to the language of film. Students will be required to finish short films that will explore the qualities of film through extensive in class exploration of film stocks, lighting techniques and cinemagraphic strategies. The class will visit a New York motion picture lab to better understand the photo/chemical implications of film in the age of digital imaging.

11333

FILM 320 Aesthetics of New Media

Ed Halter

. . . Th .

1:30 -4:30 pm

AVERY 217

AART

The term “new media” describes various technologies made possible by the advent of digital computing. Artists have been exploring new media for decades. Today, art is made with web pages, computer games, digital video, robotics, digital animation and other technologies. This course examines critical and philosophical approaches to thinking about what constitutes new media art. Does new media art require new evaluative models? Does it change our ideas about art as a whole? Does it alter the relationship between the artist, the artwork and the audience? How should it be curated and exhibited? How can we distinguish new media art from other cultural and creative uses of new technologies? In this seminar, we will look at historical and contemporary examples of art made with new media, as well as work from related movements such as futurism, expanded cinema and process art. We¹ll also read and discuss writers who explore issues relevant to the question of new media aesthetics. Concepts will include interactivity, appropriation, simulation, generative art, identity in networked culture, technological determinism, medium specificity, relational aesthetics, and the nature of analog versus digital. Grades will be based on in-class discussion, online writing assignments and a final essay. Registration is limited to upper-college students with prior coursework in film or art history, or permission of the instructor.

11385

FILM 328 Cinematic Adaptation

Marie Regan

. T . . .

1:30 -4:30 pm

AVERY 117

PART

Is adaptation translation or response? This workshop takes on all kinds of inspirational forms: music, science, painting, literature, dance, philosophy etc. and uses them as roots for cinematic adaptation. We'll explore the process of adaptation by looking at a number of different works and their source materials then, through a series of exercises, students will engage an outside work and not simply translate it to film, but respond to the initial work in their adaptation.

11384

FILM 331 In the Archive

Peggy Ahwesh

. T . . .

1:30 -4:30 pm

AVERY 338

AART

Starting with readings from Derrida, Benjamin, Enwezor and Sekula among others on the archive, we will discuss the impulse to preserve, guardianship, access, the politics of collections and collective memory.  Various preservation models will be examined through visits to film archives, discussions with film preservationists and screenings.  A variety of work by contemporary artists who engage with the history and logic of the archive will be studied, such as Marcel Broodthaers, Joseph Cornell, Renee Green and Walid Raad.  As a group, we will establish dossiers (including: an interview, filmography, bibliography, catalogue of works) on a number of contemporary film/video makers, and begin to form an archive of significant experimental works and related materials at Bard for study, education and exhibition.

11328

FILM 338 Script to Screen

Kelly Reichardt

. . W . .

9:30 - 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.

11334

FILM 341 Analog Video

Les LeVeque

. . W . .

1:30 -4:30 pm

AVERY 117

PART

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.

11402

FILM 351 Narrative Film Workshop

Kelly Reichardt

. T . . .

1:30 -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.

11327

FILM 405 Senior Seminar

Jacqueline Goss

. T . . .

5:00 -7:00 pm

AVERY 110

0 credits As a newly established component of the Film Program's requirements for all majors, the Senior Seminar is an opportunity to share working methods, knowledge, skills and resources among the seniors working on Senior Project. The course will have a number of film and video makers in to discuss their process and techniques, artistic life-after-Bard skills workshop, a review of distribution and grant writing opportunities and critique of works in progress. The course is an integral aspect of Senior Project for all seniors in Film.