Cinema Studies (CINE-UT)

This course introduces students to the study of cinema as an industry, art form and cultural practice. By learning about aspects of film form and style, such as narrative, cinematography, and editing, students gain familiarity with key terms and concepts in film studies. Students are also introduced to critical methods of film analysis and topics in film history. Screenings represent a wide range of genres and national cinemas spanning the history of the medium. This course aims to provide Cinema Studies majors and minors, and others with the knowledge and skills to think and write critically about film. This course is open to Cinema Studies Majors only, with limited seats for Cinema Studies minors.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Examines the question of how the history of cinema has been studied and written by taking the period of silent film as its case study. Explores the historical and cultural contexts that governed the emergence of film as art and mass culture. Investigates the different approaches to narrative filmmaking that developed, internationally, in the silent period. Screenings include early cinema, works of Hollywood drama and comedy, Russian film and Soviet montage cinema, Weimar cinema, and silent black cinema.

Closely examines a variety of theoretical writings concerned with aesthetic, social, and psychological aspects of the medium. Students study the writing of both classical theorists such as Eisenstein, Bazin, and Cracauer and contemporary thinkers such as Metz, Mulvey, and Baudrillard. Questions addressed range from the nature of cinematic representation and its relationship to other forms of cultural expression to the way in which cinema shapes our conception of racial and gender identity.

Examines the background, context, and history of radio, television, video, and sound. Topics include politics and economics of media institutions, audiences and reception, cultural and broadcast policy, and aesthetic modes and movements.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course offers a broad survey of American cinema from its beginnings (and even its pre-history) up to 1960. While the emphasis will be on the dominant, narrative fiction film, there will be attention to other modes of American cinema such as experimental film, animation, shorts, and non-fiction film. The course will look closely at films themselves -- how do their styles and narrative structures change over time? -- but also at contexts: how do films reflect their times? how does the film industry develop? what are the key institutions that had impact on American film over its history? We will also attend to the role of key figures in film's history: from creative personnel (for example, the director or the screenwriter) to industrialists and administrators, to censors to critics and to audiences themselves. The goal will be to provide an overall understanding of one of the most consequential of modern popular art forms and of its particular contributions to the art and culture of our modernity.

This course surveys the major aesthetic movements and technological developments within international cinema from the birth of the art form until the 1960s. The course will approach films, from a variety of countries, as products of their time, as responses to technological developments, or as contributions to ongoing dialogues about the nature of cinema as an artistic medium. Later sections of the course, after the war and coming of sound, follow more traditional national cinema models. The course will also explore a wide variety of formats including short subjects, serials, and features as well as documentaries and experimental works. The course will introduce students to central texts and concepts of key aesthetic movements such as Expressionism, Surrealism, Poetic Realism, and Neorealism, movements that continued to influence filmmaking far beyond the course’s endpoint in the 1960s.

This course surveys key historical movements and production moments in international cinema since 1960. Through close readings of exemplary films, the course will familiarize students with significant aesthetic, industrial, and technological developments that have occurred internationally over the past half-century. Emphasis will be placed on how social, political, economic, and cultural factors impact modes of production as well as film form and style in various contexts. Studies of historically innovative movements in particular national cinemas will be complemented with transnational perspectives that seek to trace lines of influence across borders. Students will encounter works from a diverse spectrum of filmmakers, including Agnès Varda, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Andrey Tarkovsky, Stephen Frears, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Jane Campion, and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course will provide a historical overview of the diverse cinematic practices and cultures that together comprise the ‘Indian Cinema’ as it traverses political, technological, and aesthetic shifts. While Hindi-Urdu language films produced in Bombay/Mumbai popularity known as “Bollywood” are the focus, we will also study Indian cinemas from other regions, languages, and genres that circulate outside of mainstream productions. This course will familiarize students with the historiographic debates that animate Indian film studies and acquire a synoptic understanding of the film industries that together produce the largest number of films in the world, while inspiring among their viewers what the film critic Anupama Chopra calls “a particularly virulent case of movie madness.”

This course surveys Asian media and popular culture with an emphasis on cultural developments from the 1990s onward. The material we explore hails from various parts of Asia and the Asian diaspora, including East and Southeast Asia, North America, Europe, and Australia. Rather than looking for a single meaning of “Asianness,” we examine the transnational flows, fissures, and movements of images, capital, and politics associated with the term (think memes, BTS, anime). Likewise, we scrutinize the “popular” in popular culture, asking how it might signify beyond mass entertainment, as an omnipresent yet invisible infrastructure defining our daily life.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Globalization has generated new challenges and identities in France and in Francophonie that are reflected by contemporary French and Francophone cinemas. This course offers an introduction to the history of French and Francophone auteur cinema since the New Wave from two angles: (1) the director’s artistic signature and (2) the contextualization of films in the political and cultural history of the French speaking world.

This course is designed to survey Korean cinema aligned with topics related to the social, political, and cultural history of Korea and beyond: colonialism, war, modernity, dictatorship, anti-communism, civil movements, global capitalism, mobility, labor, gender, diaspora, national cries, etc. Selected fiction and nonfiction films from the colonial and post-Korean war era to the platform age will provide students an overview of the development of Korean cinema in a chronological sense. Paired with scholarly readings, we will analyze the films from various points at issue.

This course surveys the cinema and television of Ireland from the silent period to the present day, asking how Irish cinema fits within the wider domain of postcolonial film, literature, and media. The postcolonial context is important. Ireland’s independence from the British Empire is relatively recent and remains partial to this day. The freedom struggle was violent, and it lasted for centuries; not surprisingly, its effects continue to reverberate in Irish culture. As our screenings, readings and discussions demonstrate, the making of a distinctively Irish cinema is, necessarily, a process of cultural reflection on the history of the nation, and on state-engendered physical and emotional violence in particular. Topics covered include settler colonialism and land clearance, entrenched sectarian conflict, and state-sanctioned religious tyranny. We will examine Irish film and media not only in their historical context but also in relation to signature creative works from other twentieth century liberation and decolonization struggles. Assessment will be based on short essays, final group presentations, and ongoing participation.

This class is designed to help the students analyze a film script through both viewing and reading of a script. Plot and character development, character dialogue, foreground, background, and story will all be examined. Using feature films, we will highlight these script elements rather than the integrated experience of the script, performance, directing, and editing elements of the film. Assignments include writing coverage. This section open only to Cinema Studies majors. All others register under FMTV-UT 1084 (sponsor section.)

The films of Stanley Kubrick constitute one of the most innovative bodies of work in the cinema. This course investigates Kubrick’s films in detail with emphasis on their narrative conceptions and structures. The course will explore the uses of irony and voiceover, the relationship between humans and technology, the centrality of the topic of war, and questions of genre in his films.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Hollywood filmgoing, especially during the summer, has become synonymous with “the blockbuster,” a category of films defined by big expectations—big budgets, big buzz, big special effects, big stars, big marketing campaigns, and, increasingly, big controversies! This course will examine the place of this ubiquitous mode of contemporary American film production by approaching it as a formal and narrative style, industrial strategy, mode of production, and cultural phenomenon. Through these lenses, we will consider cinema’s roots in spectacle, high concept narratives, special effects, the contemporary preponderance of sequels and remakes, transmedia storytelling, fandom, and staples of the blockbuster form such as action thrillers, superhero films, and outsized epic adventures; we will also consider the term relationally to address phenomena such as the “box office bomb” and “sleeper hits.” We will consider these films alongside a slew of media paratexts such as trailers, print advertisements, merchandising, and viral marketing campaigns that position and surround these products in the marketplace. Finally, we will also focus on how the blockbuster has become a sizzling site of controversy and an visible site for recent efforts to reform Hollywood’s production culture in direct response to greater calls for diversity in cast and crew and the #MeToo and #TimesUp Movements. In situating the “blockbuster”—and the industry and business machine that sustains it—this summer course will examine the multivalent qualities that have informed and continue to inform commercial filmmaking on a global scale.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course will focus on the New York City films of Martin Scorsese. We shall approach several of the films (e.g. Gangs of New York, The Age of Innocence) as filmic examples of historical fiction and most of the other films in terms of their socio-cultural representation of New York City phenomena (e.g. immigration, crime, the art and entertainment industries). As well, we will be concerned with exploring Scorsese’s “narrative method” – his usages of film form and style – in relation to the above issues.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

For January 2023 Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the New Hollywood (and “newer” Hollywood) of the 1970s Film historians tend to argue that in Hollywood cinema there’s a transition around 1975 to 1977 from films early in the decade that often concentrate on alienated anti-heroes (men generally) restlessly on the go, perhaps looking for some meaning but not finding it, to later works that are less cynical, less downbeat, and less critical and are granted blockbuster success. From a cinema of negativity to a cinema of upbeat optimism, from films grounded in oppressive everyday realities of life to the dazzle of inspiring special effects that promise transcendence of life’s cares. Concentrating on a smash hit in this moment of transition, Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, this course interrogates 70s film history to test the accuracy of the transition-narrative. Spielberg’s film plays on the awe of vibrant visual effects, for both characters in the narrative and we the spectators outside the film, to imagine a new universe of spiritual possibility. On the other hand, it shares with earlier films of the 1970s an emphasis on a male anti-hero who is lost and searching and can find his way at the cost of turning his back on humankind. The course offers a close study of Spielberg’s film but also engages with the director’s career overall in the period (from Jaws to E.T., say); with the diverse qualities of 70s cinema overall (between cynicism and uplift), with the business of Hollywood in the period (franchises, commodity tie-ins, and so on), with content issues of gender and social norms (for example, whiteness as an ideological default mode for much of dominant cinema in the period), to investigate the complex nature of American entertainment cinema in a key moment of its history.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description. For summer 2024: Latin American Women Filmmakers This course remaps Latin American cinema and media following the work contribution and experiences of self-identified women-makers. While learning about past and present influential women film and media makers from Latin America (including Sara Gómez, Margot Benacerraf, Claudia Llosa, and Lucrecia Martel) and their work, the students will become aware of relevant feminist theory and historiography questions. We will compare a wide range of films, as well as periods, places, and modes of production, to highlight common concerns across the region, such as the link between art and activism, raising awareness on reproductive health and rights, healing intergenerational violence, and alternative forms of belonging.

Dark Humor: What We Do in the Shadows of Comedy (Summer 2022) According to humor studies scholar Mathew Winston, dark comedy is not so much a genre as ‘‘an ‘‘attitude, a stance, or a perspective’’ that crosses generic boundaries and forms (Winston 1972: 270). Often, dark comedy ‘‘uses an ironic and biting intelligence to attack sentimentality, social convention . . . and an apparently absurd universe’’; it ‘‘favors the fantastic, the surreal, and the grotesque’’; and it attempts to ‘‘break down complacency’’ by employing ‘‘violent images and shock tactics’’ (Winston 1972: 270). Taking Winston’s observation into account, this course seeks to understand the role of dark comedy in the midst of crisis. Can we look back and face historical atrocities with humor? Are there situations or subjects that remain risibly off limits? Certain events or ideas that cannot or should not be considered “laughing matters?” From the cannibalistic comedy of Eating Raoul, to Fascism made funny and a time-traveling Hitler in Look Who’s Back, to the comic examination of systematic racism through a subversive form of economic mockery in Sorry to Bother You these are some of the questions that will be explored in this course through a broad examination of dark humor in the cinema.

This course surveys the film musical genre from the coming of sound to the present. We examine the musical’s relation to technological changes (the use of optical sound, dubbing, widescreen, motion capture) and also to social, cultural, and economic transformations (the Depression, rise of teen audiences, changing priorities in casting, innovations in music). By paying close attention to editing, cinematography, lighting and other aesthetic elements as well as to the multiple aspects of performance that contribute to the musical’s milieu, we uncover both its utopian and its grittier sides. The course engages the musical’s rich critical literature about: early all-Black cast musicals; the history of classical Hollywood titles of the 1930s-1950s (Maurice Chevalier, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, etc); a range of genre appropriations and deconstructions by non-Hollywood and often non-American filmmakers (Julie Dash, Chantal Akerman, Jacques Demy, Lars von Trier); and weighs more recent musical titles within this history (eg. La La Land, A Star is Born). Coursework: short written responses; a presentation; and a final paper.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Contemporary African and Black Diasporic Filmmaking Exploring films made between 1980 and the present day, this course aims to highlight Black filmmakers from a range of African, Caribbean, and European countries as well as the United States and United Kingdom whose films represent a variety of diasporic positions–whether those of recent immigrants, those based in diaspora for many generations, or those based on the African continent. Exploring films including Gessica Geneus’ Freda (2021), Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny (2022), and Martine Syms’ The African Desperate (2022) and informed by a queer, Black feminist lens, the course focuses heavily on the perspectives of women, representations of queerness, and other experiences outside of those of dominant groups. Rather than a definitive survey of contemporary African and Black diasporic film, the course offers a curated selection of works whose themes include girlhood, migration, spirituality, and the quotidian. Focusing on fiction films, the course will also engage experimental films and music videos. Class meetings will be enhanced by visits from filmmakers (TBC).

January 2021: Elvis When the US Postal Service first floated the idea of an “Elvis Presley” stamp (which some detractors felt gave justification to a dissolute life), they asked patrons to vote between two images: the young rocker from the South, simple in look and garb, and the extravagant Las Vegas superstar in white sequined jumpsuit. The young Elvis won out, but the very fact that there could be such a choice catches something of the ambiguities and instabilities in the star image, especially for this iconic figure in American life. This course sets out to investigate the contradictions of media stardom as embodied in the example of Elvis Presley: the rapid ascend to fame and acclaim and the as-rapid descent into squalid tragedy; the appeal to authenticity (as in the simple guitar and un-mic’ed directness of the “Comeback special”) and the exploitation of overblown artificiality (Las Vegas); the projection of white Southern masculinity combined with a welcoming of racial diversity (for example, the influence of African American folk music traditions); likewise, a blurring of gender identities (the 50s male rocker as intensely macho yet inflected by stereotypical traits of femininity); complex and perhaps even confused standards of artistic taste (the sheer silliness or laziness of many Elvis movies in the 1960s combined with their ongoing box office success), and so on. The goal of the course is not to come up with a singular, dogmatic evaluation of Elvis’s career, across media, but to examine how he lives out the many contradictions of stardom and success idealized in stereotypes of the American dream.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description. For Summer 2024: Video Games and Narratives This course examines narratives in video games and how the video game medium relates to cinema and television. The course questions how video games can reshape the conventions of visual storytelling in film and related media. It aims to study video game narratives from historical, theoretical, cultural, queer, and industrial perspectives (among others) to interrogate the ideology that video games are an emerging medium that can tell immersive stories. In this course students will not only analyze video games by investigating how recent games have turned into blockbuster films (e.g., The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Universal Pictures 2023), theme parks (e.g., Super Nintendo World in Osaka, Japan and Super Nintendo World opening on Feb. 17th, 2023, at Universal Studios, Hollywood) and premium TV shows (e.g., The Last of Us (HBO, 2023)), but we will interact with the local community by visiting and studying arcades such as Wonderville (an independent arcade that offers artists a space to create unique games) in Brooklyn.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

The “New” Hollywood (Fall 2020) In the late 1960s, a group of young filmmakers took Hollywood by storm during a moment of crisis in the then-hegemonic studio system. Directors such as Martin Scorsese, Terrence Malick, Steven Spielberg, Brian de Palma, among others, established new ways to make and market films that earned the rubric of a 'New Hollywood.' Directed by the first generation of filmmakers to come out of film schools (NYU, USC, AFI, etc) and thrive in the industry, these films allied a profound knowledge of the history of cinema with a direct connection to the pulse of their time, and an acute awareness of the discoveries of New Cinema movements worldwide (the French, Czech, and Japanese New Waves, the Brazilian Cinema Novo, Third Cinema, etc). However, what's behind the term 'New Hollywood' is not only a group of filmmakers, but a specific convergence of social, cultural, technological, and economic changes that presented an opportunity. As no-less impactful cultural and technological changes accelerated in the late 1990s, the New Hollywood was no longer new, and the surviving filmmakers of that generation were forced to reposition themselves in a mediascape that is vastly different from the one they helped shape. This class will focus primarily on works made in the 21st century by prominent filmmakers directly or indirectly associated with the 'New Hollywood' from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s - to quote David Thomson, "the decade when movies mattered." The course will track significant changes in the film industry and art through the films, and the individual trajectories of these ​auteurs​, identifying how they reveal and comment upon the social, cultural, economic, and political structures that determine them.

Critically evaluating select influential scholarship in Asian film studies from the last two decades, this course aims to reconsider and move beyond existing paradigms such as national cinema, world cinema, and transnational cinema, in addition to categories or assumptions derived from traditional area studies with origins in the cold war cultural politics. While critically reviewing literature on specific cases of national and regional cinemas (e.g.; China, Japan, India, Southeast Asia) or genres (e.g.; kung fu, ghost film), we will explore alternative perspectives on trans-Asian and trans-hemispheric film culture histories (for example, film policy, censorship, co-production, traveling genres, festivals), as well as contemporary formations under the impact of globalization and digital media. (The course satisfies one of the two core requirements for the Asian Film and Media minor.)

This course demystifies the professional and intellectual roles of film criticism in the contemporary media landscape through a historical foundation. Students will encounter criticism from a diverse range of sources and eras in addition to writing reviews of recent films, all of which should aid those interested in pursuing further opportunities in criticism and/or developing a deeper understanding of the craft. Through a combination of readings, discussions, and screenings, we will explore the expansive possibilities of criticism across multiple media, online ecosystems, and the impact of the practice on the film and television industries themselves. We will cover the influence of major figures in the profession with course readings and discussions based around work by major figures including Ebert, Kael, Sontag, and many others. Major critics, filmmakers, and other working professionals will visit the course to provide additional context. We will also explore the related field of entertainment journalism. Students will be expected to keep up with readings and assignments, including a final project, and participate in class discussions.

This course involves in-depth study of a specific topic and encourages the student to produce original research. Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course involves in-depth study of a specific topic and encourages the student to produce original research. Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course involves in-depth study of a specific topic and encourages the student to produce original research. Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course involves in-depth study of a specific topic and encourages the student to produce original research.

This course involves in-depth study of a specific topic and encourages the student to produce original research. Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

This course involves in-depth study of a specific topic and encourages the student to produce original research. Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

A look at contemporary African Literature, film and art as a way of examining different outcomes of postcolonial cultural policies in Africa. The main topics include 1) a discussion of the Negritude Movement and the artistic legacy of Leopold Sedar Senghor; 2) a close look at the Guinean Cultural Revolution and the attempts in Marxist Socialist revolutionary art in Africa; and the Pan-African Film Festival of Ouagadougou. The aim of the class is to provide students with a sense of the context of artistic productions in Africa; some of the major trends in African literature and film; and the politics, aesthetics and reception theories of African imaginative works.

Variety of topics offered. See current listings for updated topic/description.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. Cinema Studies students interested in registering for an Independent Study must submit an advisor-approved Independent Study form to be registered.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. Cinema Studies students interested in registering for an Independent Study must submit an advisor-approved Independent Study form to be registered.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. Cinema Studies students interested in registering for an Independent Study must submit an advisor-approved Independent Study form to be registered.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. Cinema Studies students interested in registering for an Independent Study must submit an advisor-approved Independent Study form to be registered.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. A student wishing to pursue an internship must obtain the internship and submit the Learning Contract before receiving a permission code. All internship grades are pass/fail.

Cinema Studies majors ONLY. A student wishing to pursue an internship must obtain the internship and submit the Learning Contract before receiving a permission code. All internship grades are pass/fail.

Students conceive, produce, direct, and edit a short film exploring the Paris experience with smartphone technology. A survey of cellphone cinema history leads to the study of visual storytelling principles and techniques, which students apply through practical exercises. Choosing among available short film genres (experimental, documentary, portrait, essay, fiction), students are trained through every stage of the movie making process: pitching the idea, scripting and storyboarding, shooting, and editing. Each student finishes the course with a facility in smartphone video technology as well as a coherent film record of his or her particular vision of Paris.