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Fall '03 Undergraduate Atlas

Fall '03 Graduate Atlas

FALL 2003 COURSE ATLAS

FILM 270:  Introduction to Film

Content: This course teaches students the critical skills involved in the interpretation of films. During the first half of the semester, we will learn the basic techniques of film form and style. For the remainder of the course, we will discuss these techniques as they relate to issues of critical analysis (cultural criticism, genre, ideology) in both Hollywood narrative cinema and non-Hollywood/alternative cinemas.

Texts may include: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (6th edition)
Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing About Film (4th edition)

This course is required for the Film Studies major and minor.

This course satisfies AREA IVb of the GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS.

Content: This course teaches students the critical skills involved in the interpretation of films. During the first half of the semester, we will learn the basic techniques of film form and style. For the remainder of the course, we will discuss these techniques as they relate to issues of critical analysis (cultural criticism, genre, ideology) in both Hollywood narrative cinema and non-Hollywood/alternative cinemas.

Texts may include: David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (6th edition)
Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing About Film (4th edition)

This course is required for the Film Studies major and minor.

This course satisfies AREA IVb of the GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS.

FS 270 Freshman Seminar: Introduction to Film

Content: The course will familiarize the student with the formal and stylistic elements of the medium as well as with various methods of critical evaluation. Through discussion, screenings, film analyses, and readings, the student will become a more informed and sophisticated observer of the cinema.

Texts may include: David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (6th edition)
Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing About Film (3rd edition)
Graeme Turner, Film as Social Practice (3rd edition)

Particulars: This course is writing intensive, and grading is based upon weekly short writing assignments, and three critical analysis papers.

This course is required for the Film Studies major and minor.

This course satisfies AREA IVb of the GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS.

FILM 371: History of Film

Content:  Origins of the Cinema; International Expansion of the Industry, 1907-1918; D. W. Griffith and the Development of Narrative Form; German Cinema of the Weimar Period, 1919-1920; Soviet Silent Cinema and the Theory of Montage, 1917-1931; Hollywood in the Twenties; the Coming of Sound, 1926-1932; the Sound Film and the American Studio System; European Cinema in the Thirties.

Readings: David A. Cook. A History of Narrative Film (3rd edition)

Particulars:  Exams-3 hour tests; one final exam; occasional quizzes. Mandatory attendance of evening screening sessions.

Comment: This is the first half of the two-semester sequence Film Studies 371-372. FS371 is a prerequisite for FS372, History of Film 1938-Present. It may be taken without prerequisite, but keen interest in the subject of film is assumed. Freshmen should not be allowed to register for either FS 371 or 372 under any circumstances. This course is required for the Film Studies major and minor.

This course partially satisfies AREA III, Part 2 of the DISTRIBUTION REQUIREMENTS.

FS373: Women, Love, Time, and Aesthetics (Xlisted with WS385)

McKim, TTh 11:30-12:45, Rich 103, MAX: 7
Mandatory film screening W 8-10

In 1899, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote that “this is the first presentiment of something eternal: to have the time for love." Whether momentary bliss or sustained affection, love has marked time for centuries; the promise and possibility of human intimacy determines our temporal investment in the world. Within cinematic, novelistic, and theoretical contexts, this course will focus on love and time as created, embodied, experienced, and borne by women. Why and how have female bodies simultaneously engendered romantic possibility and subsumed temporal anxieties within various sexual, political, and cultural circumstances? How do aesthetic conventions of writing time and love bear the markings of their own historical and cultural moments? We will explore love and time’s reliance upon (and ostensible creation by) art, and we will consider how such dynamics ultimately write and embody gender.

Texts: Most likely will include Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body; Christa Wolf, Accident; essays by Simone de Beauvoir, Denis de Rougemont, Elizabeth Grosz, Jonathan Dollimore, Walter Benjamin, Trinh Minh-ha, Julia Kristeva, Cathy Caruth, Tania Modleski, Mary Ann Doane, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, and Laura Mulvey; excerpts from Toni Morrison, Beloved; Carson McCullers, The Ballad of the Sad Café; Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther; Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera; Max Frisch, Man in the Holocene; Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage; Michael Cunningham, The Hours; David Hare, Breath of Life.

Films will be selected from Run Lola Run, Amélie, Romeo & Juliet (Zeffirelli), Nobody Loves Me, Maborosi, Moulin Rouge!, Cléo de 5 à 7, Wings of Desire, Sankofa, Y Tu Mamá También, Orlando, Antonia’s Line, Hiroshima, mon amour, Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours, A Woman is a Woman, The Virgin Suicides, Aimee & Jaguar, Lola Montes, Picnic at Hanging Rock, and Cries & Whispers.

Particulars: Students taking this seminar should be familiar with (or at least be prepared to learn independently) basic cinematic and literary concepts.

Students are expected to attend weekly film screenings and participate regularly and thoughtfully in class discussion. Assignments include regular analyses of films in the context of the readings, in addition to a midterm exam, class presentation, and final paper.

FILM 381WR: Classical Film Theory

Course Description and Objectives:  This lecture class, the first part of a yearlong course in film theory, provides a firm grounding in works on the cinema written prior to 1968. Film theorists whose work we will consider include Hugo Munsterberg, Bela Balazs, Lev Kuleshov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Jean Epstein, Germaine Dulac, Rudolf Arnheim, Sigfried Kracauer, André Bazin, Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren. Occasionally we will turn to thinkers whose work does not lie strictly within the bounds of film theory, yet has influenced the way people think about film. These include Vsevolod Meyerhold, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Henri Bergson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. We will conclude with excerpts from Jean Mitry’s Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema, which in addition to its own merits as a theoretical text, provides insightful readings of the work of several theorists listed above. In most cases, theoretical texts have been paired with films they address directly. Where this is not the case, the film is roughly contemporaneous with the writing of the text. Many of the theorists listed above were also filmmakers, so we will be watching films both in class and at screenings by Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Vertov, Epstein, Dulac, Brakhage and Deren. Other filmmakers whose work we will consider include Robert Bresson, Charles Chaplin, Vittorio de Sica, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, and Alain Resnais.

Prerequisite: FILM 270.

This course fulfills the post-freshman writing requirement of the core requirements.

FS 391: Studies in Major Figures: Alfred Hitchcock

Prerequisite: FILM 270.

Content: This course explores the evolution of non-fiction cinema from the "actualite's" of the late 19th century to the contemporary obsession with so-called "reality television." We will focus in particular on the ways in which documentary films have worked to shape our perceptions of reality and history, and on the unique practical, aesthetic, and ethical issues which separate non-fiction filmmaking from other forms of cultural procuction. Moving beyond a theoretical or academic approach, we will incorporate as well the filmmakers' points of view through interviews and autobiographies, and several practicing documentarians will visit the class to discuss their work. In addition to weekly screenings and discussions of landmark documentary films and several writing assignments, students will get behind the camera and produce a short documentary on video.

Texts: TBA

Particulars: TBA

Prerequisite: FILM 270.

FILM 399: Internship: Filmmaking Projects

Faculty

Content: This project course can involve an internship or film production. Students are to formulate their projects before approaching the member of the Film Studies faculty with whom they wish to work. The project should be discussed the semester before the Internship is to be undertaken. Under no circumstances will retroactive credit be given. Although the Film Studies Program occasionally can find internships for students, students are encouraged to arrange projects on their own.

Requirements: Internships require a minimum of ten hours of work per week, a journal, and an eight-page paper. Film production projects require a minimum of ten hours of work per week, the submission of production notes, and a final product.

Prerequisite: Students MUST be Film Studies majors or minors and should be close to completing the course of study in film. Permission of a Film Studies faculty member is REQUIRED in advance.

FILM 401: Film Criticism

Lieberman, TTh 4:00-5:15, MAX: 25, WRT: No
Mandatory film screening M 8-10pm

Note: this course fulfills the post-freshman seminar requirement and the post-freshman year writing requirement.

Content: This course is a seminar workshop to encourage students to develop their facility with analyzing films. We will first examine the work of journalistic and academic critics, and focus particularly on the issues of writing style and readership. Our primary activity will be viewing new releases in the theaters and writing critiques of these films from various perspectives: feminist, ideological, genre, authorship, national cinema, etc. Class members will read and critique each other’s work.

Texts: The National Society of Film Critics, Love and Hisses
Xeroxed articles.

Partculars: This is a writing intensive course that also requires considerable class participation. Students will write ten papers and revise several of them. They will also be asked to give a presentation on a current, practicing film critic. There will be no exams.

Prerequisite: Film 270.

FILM 402WR: Scriptwriting

Content: Students will perform assignments with the end goal of achieving professional competency in the craft of screenwriting. Assignments will include treatment, development, narrative outline development, character development, and dialogue writing. Film screenings will augment seminar style discussions. The final paper will either be act one of an original feature film or a 30-page original short film script.

Prerequisite: Film 270.

This course fulfills the post-freshman writing requirement of the core requirements.
 

FILM 499: Directed Study

Content: A supervised project in an area of study to be determined by instructor and student in the semester preceding the independent study. Students are to formulate their projects before approaching the member of the Film Studies faculty with whom they wish to work. The project should be discussed the semester before the Directed Study is to be undertaken. Under no circumstances will retroactive credit be given.

Requirements: Directed readings are arranged with the instructor. Internships require a minimum of ten hours of work per week, a journal, and an eight-page paper.

Prerequisite: Students MUST be Film Studies majors or minors and should be close to completing the course of study in film. Permission of a Film Studies faculty member is REQUIRED in advance.

Graduate Courses

Fall 2003

503 Seminar in History: Segregated Cinema in a Southern City

Bernstein, M 1-4pm, MAX: 15
Mandatory film screening Th 6-8pm

Content: W.E.B. Du Bois once declared race relations to be "the problem of the twentieth century." This course examines that problem in terms of ordinary people's leisure, particularly moviegoing Atlanta and its rich and diverse history from the turn of the century to the present. In terms of subject matter, we have three primary areas of focus: (1) Atlanta's history of race relations and its connection with how black and white Atlantans enjoyed and understood particular Hollywood and non-Hollywood films; (2) the business of movie exhibition and distribution in Atlanta, which was a distribution hub for the southeast; (3) the depiction of the South, of race and race relations in Hollywood and non-Hollywood films, with reference to Hollywood and Atlanta censorship. While learning about these topics, students will also gain research skills in reception studies, exhibition history as well as textual analysis and contribute actively to gathering knowledge of Atlanta's little-known movie history.

Particulars: You are responsible for writing one paper of 10-12 pages in length choosing from the "biography:" of an Atlanta theater or a research report on the distribution of a particular film in the city. The second paper of 25-30 pages will either describe the reception of a particular film as registered in local and other black and white newspapers or on a topic of your choosing.

Texts:
Books will include Thomas Cripps, Slow Fade to Black and Making Movies Black; Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness; Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattos, Mammies and Bucks (4th ed.); Lucy Fischer, Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life; Atlanta History special issue on Movie Going Atlanta, and assorted articles.

Films will likely include The Birth of a Nation, Body and Soul, I am a
Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Imitation of Life (1934 and 1959), Judge
Priest, They Won’t Forget, Gone with the Wind, Song of the South, Pinky,
The Defiant Ones, School Daze, Driving Miss Daisy.

FILM 504: Seminar in Theory: Masculinity and Violence

Course Description and Objectives: An inquiry into the way representations of masculinity intersect with scenes of violence in American boxing films, war films and westerns, with a focus on some of the most innovative films of the years 1969-1980. Our consideration of each genre (or subgenre in the case of the boxing film) will begin with a classical Hollywood film from which, with the help of readings in genre history, we will work to define the relatively stable characteristics of the form, particularly those pertaining to gender and violence. These films are Body and Soul (Robert Rossen, 1947), Bataan (Tay Garnett, 1943), and The Searchers (John Ford, 1956). Seventies films are Fat City (John Huston, 1972), Rocky (John Avildsen, 1976), Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980), The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978), Apocalypse Now (Frances Ford Coppola, 1979), The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969), and McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman, 1971). Our film viewings will be supplemented with articles pertaining to the film at hand and foundational texts from a range of theoretical discourses (narratology, feminist film theory, Marxism, auteur theory, psychoanalysis), which we will deploy-and evaluate-as tools for analysis. In the final unit on the western we will break frame and read a post-Peckinpah western novel, Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy as well as watch a late example of the genre, Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995). We will conclude with a close analysis of Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) with an eye to the way this non-American, non-seventies film resonates with-and allegorizes-the themes of the course.

FILM 581: Classical Film Theory

Oeler, TTh 10:00-11:15, MAX: 18
Mandatory film screening Tu 8-10pm

Course Description and Objectives: This lecture class, the first part of yearlong course in film theory, provides a firm grounding in works on the cinema written prior to 1968. Film theorists whose work we will consider include Hugo Munsterberg, Bela Balazs, Lev Kuleshov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Jean Epstein, Germaine Dulac, Rudolf Arnheim, Sigfried Kracauer, André Bazin, Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren. Occasionally we will turn to thinkers whose work does not lie strictly within the bounds of film theory, yet has influenced the way people think about film. These include Vsevolod Meyerhold, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Henri Bergson, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. We will conclude with excerpts from Jean Mitry’s Aesthetics and Psychology of the Cinema, which in addition to its own merits as a theoretical text, provides insightful readings of the work of several theorists listed above. In most cases, theoretical texts have been paired with films they address directly. Where this is not the case, the film is roughly contemporaneous with the writing of the text. Many of the theorists listed above were also filmmakers, so we will be watching films both in class and at screenings by Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Vertov, Epstein, Dulac, Brakhage and Deren. Other filmmakers whose work we will consider include Robert Bresson, Charles Chaplin, Vittorio de Sica, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, and Alain Resnais.

FS 591: Studies in Major Figures: Alfred Hitchcock

FILM 599R Thesis Research

Faculty

Prerequisite: Consent of Instructor.

Last updated 03/07/03