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Autumn 1996

101. Introduction to Film I (=Eng 108, GS Hum 200). PQ: This is the first part of a two-quarter course. The two parts are offered in alternate years and may be taken in sequence or individually. The first part introduces basic concepts of film analysis, using examples from different national cinemas, genres, and directorial oeuvres. Along with questions of film technique and style, we consider the notion of the cinema as an institution, comprising an industrial system of production, social and aesthetic norms and codes, and particular modes of reception. Films discussed include works by Hitchcock, Porter, Griffith, Eisenstein, Lang, Renoir, Sternberg, and Welles. Not offered 1996-97; will be offered 1997-98.

102. Introduction to Film II (=Eng 109, ArtH 180, GS Hum 201). PQ: This is the second part of a two-quarter course. The two parts are offered in alternate years and may be taken in sequence or individually. This quarter builds upon the skills of formal analysis, knowledge of basic cinematic conventions, and familiarity with the institutions of cinema acquired in the first quarter. In this course we address intertextual and contextual problems, such as those associated with genre, authorship, stars, and various responses to the classical Hollywood film. Alternatives studied include documentary, European national cinemas, "art cinema," animation, and various avant-garde movements. T. Gunning. Autumn.

201. American Cinema to 1934 (=Eng 285, GS Hum 202). This course moves through, roughly, three phases of American film history: early cinema, the elaboration of the classical Hollywood mode of film practice, and the transition to sound. We focus on the following issues: the emergence of cinema in the public sphere of turn-of-the-century commercial entertainments; the social composition of early audiences and the role of mixed audiences into a mass culture of consumption; the development of the star system and fan cults; the interplay of technological, economic, and aesthetic factors in the transition to sound; and the threat of censorship and the implementation of the Production Code in 1934. M. Hansen. Winter.

202. American Cinema since 1934 (=Eng 286, GS Hum 203). This course offers a survey of American film history from 1934 to, roughly, 1960, focusing on the height of the Hollywood studio era and its decline in the 1950s. Special emphasis is placed on classical genres such as the western, gangster film, and musical, including revisionist and metageneric variants; film noir and its status between genre and stylistic movement; the role of cinema as social institution and symbolic form; and the relation of cinema to television and video. Filmmakers discussed include Hawks, Ford, Capra, Huston, Welles, Hitchcock, Sirk, and Preminger. Not offered 1996-97; will be offered 1997-98.

203. American Cinema since 1961 (=Eng 287, GS Hum 204). The year 1960 is commonly understood as a watershed in American film history, marking the beginning of the end of the so-called "classical" Hollywood cinema. We discuss this assumption in terms of a series of transformations internal to the institution of cinema: the break-up of the studio system; the erosion of the Production Code; the crisis of audience precipitated by the mass spread of television; and changes in modes of film reception and production under the impact of video, cable, and electronic communication technologies. We look at post-1960 cinema in terms of the social and political issues and ask how the films reflected and intervened in contested areas of public and private experience. Films screened include work by Cassavetes, Conner, Penn, Altman, Polanski, Coppola, Spielberg, Charles Burnett, Spike Lee, Susan Seidelman, and Lizzie Borden. Not offered 1996-97; will be offered 1998-99.


205. European Silent Film (=ArtH 200). This course offers a survey of cinema
in Europe from the Lumiere Brothers to the first talkies, focussing on those feature of visual
style that made this cinema look specifically "European." We will look at Melies and Pathe versions of trick cinema (1897-1906); the international influence of Film d'Art (1907-1912); the formation of
national schools of filmmaking in Scandinavia, Italy and Russia (1910-1918); film-as-art movements in Germany, France and the Soviet Union in the 1920s; and the artistic platform "Cinema Europe" (1927-1929). "European" styles of filmmaking emerged as a result of a complex interaction with (absorption, revision, rejection of) filmmaking practices in America, and the course will focus on such aspects of this two-decade-long dialogue of film cultures as deep staging and editing, stylized and naturalist acting, tableau style and continuity technique, visual and narrative means of representation. We will also look at the influence of American films (Intolerance, Broken Blossoms, Way Down East) on Soviet filmmakers (Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov) and that of German filmmakers (UFA) on Hollywood (Fox) productions in the late twenties (1927-1929). Y. Tsivian. Autumn.

210. (Re)Defining African American Cinema: Black Film from the Teens to the
Present (= Eng 279). This course examines African American cinema from the 1910s to the
present in order to think about the question: What is African American cinema? Does any film
about Black people or with a predominantly or all-Black cast constitute an African American film?
Must a Black film be oriented to a Black audience? Must a Black film demonstrate a "Black film
aesthetics"? Can a Black film be made within the Hollywood studio system? How important are these distinctions? We will focus on films directed, written and/or produced by African American filmmakers in order to explore their unique relationship to both independent and Hollywood filmmaking traditions. Starting with Emmett Scott's The Birth of a Race, a response to the racist depictions of Blacks in Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, we will move roughly chronologically through the major periods of Black film history -- from pioneer "race film" directors Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams to the so-called "Blaxploitation" era of the 1970s; from the little-known independent work of the "LA Rebellion" filmmakers (Burnett, Dash, Gerima) to the commercial success of Spike Lee; from the diverse contemporary films by Black women (Chenzira, Davis, Martin, Parkerson) to the recent wave of Hollywood films directed by African Americans (Duke, Franklin, Singleton, Whitaker). Previous coursework in film and/or African American studies is highly recommended. J. Stewart. Spring.

225. Postwar Cinema and History: "History Written in Lightning" (=ComLit 341, GS Hum 210/310, German 232/332). From its beginning, the cinema has been preoccupied with historical subjects to restage the past. This course focuses on a body of postwar films (including works by Rossellini, Straub and Huillet, Pasolini, Watkins, Jansco, Syberberg, Schroeter, Pontecorvo, Kluge, Resnais, Wajda, Szabo, Solanis and Gettino, Ray, Sanders-Brahms, Angeloupolos, and Rouan) that use materialist, documentarist, structuralist, annalistic, mythopoetic, and psychoanalytic models to think about historical events and experience. Readings are by Lévi-Strauss, Braudel, LeRoy Ladurie, Auerbach, Sartre, Fanon, Momigliano, Foucault, Ferro, Koselleck, as well as by everyday life, feminist, and subaltern historians. K. Trumpener. Spring.

226. New German Cinema: History and Subjectivity (=Eng 284, GS Hum 211/311, German 222/412). The aim of this course is to present an important body of postwar German film in its historical and intellectual context. Films by Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlöndorff, Rainer Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet, Wim Wenders, Helke Sander, and Helma Sanders-Brahms are considered in relationship to contemporaneous New Cinemas in Europe, North and South America, and to political and intellectual developments within West Germany. We look at how new paradigms of film and social theory influenced films' dramaturgy, visual style, and narrative form, and also precipitated debates about film as a social and political force. All readings available in English; all films subtitled. K. Trumpener. Not offered 1996-97; will be offered 1997-98.

227. Women's Cinema in Germany: Feminism and Female Spectatorship (=GS Hum 209, German 219, Hum 227). This course offers students an introduction to both feminist film theory and feminist filmmaking in Germany. By bringing together questions of gender and representation with questions of spectatorship and the cinema (as an institution), the syllabus aims to challenge how we think about concepts such as women's cinema and feminism in general and more specifically in the Federal Republic. We consider a range of issues in postwar German history as well as various formal experiments with genre (e.g., documentary, melodrama, the essay film, and comedy) and consider the "feminism" of certain filmic approaches to topics such as World War II, the consumer culture of the fifties, the student movement, the women's movement, terrorism, and the situation of "foreigners." Films in German with English subtitles. T. Caprio. Autumn.

235. Cinematic Visions of Twentieth-Century Italian and Italian-American Culture (=Ital 287/387). PQ: Knowledge of Italian helpful. This course studies visions and revisions of modern Italy's past and present sociopolitical and cultural identities as constructed and portrayed primarily in the medium of film. Topics include the Fascist era, the post-war reconstruction, postmodern technologized society, Italian national identity in America, and portrayals of masculinity and femininity. Authors may include D'Annunzio, Calvino, Pasolini, Vattimo, the feminist "Diotima" group, and selected women writers under Fascism and beyond. Films by Bertolucci, Rossellini, Wertmuller, Fellini, Moretti, Nichetti, Leone, Scorcese, and Ferrara are viewed. All work in English, but Italian concentrators read texts in original. There are two screenings a week in addition to scheduled class time. R. West. Autumn.

245. Images of Women and Chinese Modernity (=EALC 236, Hum 236). This course focuses on the production of images of women in twentieth-century Chinese literature and cinema, and its impuedness in the question of modernity. Examining a wide range of texts, including poetry, fiction, autobiography, and silent and sound films), students confront issues such as "the woman question" and the modern vernacular imagination; the imagery of the "New Woman" and the city; and gender performance under socialism and/or market economy, We also explore how different media, genre, space, and gender affect rhetorical and formal strategies and how they help shape or refigure visions of modernity. Z. Zhang. Spring.

250. Alternative Cinemas/Experimental Cinemas (=Eng 288). This course defines the notion of an "alternative" cinema, concentrating on, but not restricted to, what is generally recognized as the "avant-garde" or "experimental" cinema. We look briefly at the alternatives represented by early cinema, Soviet cinema, European Dada and Surrealist cinemas, and especially at alternative cinemas in the United States. Emphasis is placed on understanding these alternatives not simply as groups of deviant texts, but as alternatives systems, based on notions of cinematic pleasure, modes of production, and systems of distribution and exhibition. Films include works by Vertov, Leger, Buñuel, Man Ray, Dulac, Cocteau, Deren, Brakhage, Anger, Cornell, Breer, Baillie, Frampton, Smith, Sharits, Snow, among others. J. Lastra. Not offered 1996-97; will be offered 1997-98.

255. What's Love Got to Do with It? The Genres of Modern Romance (=ArtDes 260, Eng 235). PQ: ArtDes 101 or consent of instructor. Love brings with it romantic promises that are supported by an elaborate culture of representation. Using materials from cinema, literature, the visual arts, and cultural theory, we pose questions about the genres of romance and the construction of romantic subjectivity. This involves rethinking gender, sexuality, desire, love, narrative, pain, and modes of representation. Subjects include the relation of the pornographic and the erotic; of high, avant-garde, and popular culture; of hetero- and homoerotic scenes of pleasure; conventional "women's culture" sites like magazines and talk shows; popular music; and sex-radical art. L. Berlant, L. Letinsky. Winter.

261. The Films of Fritz Lang (=ArtH 288/388; Eng 291, German 261). This course deals with the films of Fritz Lang across four decades of film history and two continents. We will
concentrate on issues of authorship and narrative style, tracing Lang's career through two different
national industries (Germany and USA) and from silent film to sound. Lang's relation to a variety
of cultural issues will be explored: German Expressionism and fantastic films, New Objectivity,
Hollywood production modes and ideology, as well as his relation to a variety of genres such as the
fantasy film, science fiction, film noir, detective films, social melodrama, and even the musical.
In addition, we will follow Lang's confrontation with issues of modern identity and the structure of the big city. Emphasis will be placed on close readings of the films, so a good grounding in film
stylistics is strongly recommended. T. Gunning. Autumn.

270. Classical Film Theory (=Eng 283, GS Hum 206). This course examines basic questions associated with the film medium through the writings of some of its earliest and most influential theorists. Beginning with the question of what constitutes a "theoretical" or "philosophical" approach to film, we pursue a series of persistent issues. What is the nature of film's relationship to reality? Are there "essential" features of the medium that determine its form? How do images and editing make meaning? We place writers (such as Vachel Lindsay, Hugo Münsterberg, Sergei Eisenstein, Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, André Bazin) in historical and cultural terms, and use their work to frame our own theoretical questions. J. Lastra. Spring.

275. Theories of the Photographic Image and Film (=ArtH 272/372, GS Hum 233/333). PQ: ArtDes 101, 102, or 100-level ArtH course, or consent of instructor. This introductory course discusses works by authors including Stanley Cavell, Erwin Panofsky, André Bazin, Christian Metz, Susan Sontag, Edward Weston, Ernst Gombrich, Nelson Goodman, and John Szarkowski. J. Snyder. Not offered 1996-97; will be offered 1997-98.

280. Sound in the Cinema (=Eng 282, GS Hum 205). We have, as a culture, debated images for centuries, focusing on the most technical aspects of construction in order to illuminate their cultural and social functioning. Yet, despite the immense profusion of recorded speech and music, telephones, radios, and "sound bites," we have no well-defined set of terms, concepts, or questions that we systematically use to address to sound representations. Since Hollywood was in the forefront of sound technology research from 1925 to 1965, we examine films with regard to basic questions of sound space, compositional conventions, syntagmatic relations, and spectator positioning, in order to establish basic ground rules for the critical study of sound, especially as it relates to images of various sorts. J. Lastra. Not offered 1996-97; will be offered 1997-98.

285. Brecht and Beyond (=Eng 244, GS Hum 248, German 244). Brecht is indisputably the most influential playwright in the twentieth century. This course explores the range and variety of Brecht's own theater, from the anarchic plays of the 1920s to the agitprop Lehrstück to the classical parable plays, as well as the works of his heirs in Germany (Heiner Müller, Franz Xaver Kroetz, and Peter Weiss), Britain (John Arden, Edward Bond, and Caryl Churchill), and sub-Saharan Africa (Soyinka, Ngugi, and various South African theater practitioners). We also consider the impact of Brechtian theory on film, from Brecht's own Kuhle Wampe to Jean-Luc Godard. L. Kruger. Winter.







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