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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 106 881 CS 501 058 AUTHOR Koch, Christian, Comp.; Powers, John, Comp. TITLE 1972 Oberlin Film Conference Selected Essays and Discussion Transcriptions, Vol. II. INSTITUTION Oberlin Coll., Ohio. SPONS AGENCY National. Endowment for the Humanities (NFAH), Washington, D.C. PUB DATE 74 NOTE 327p.; Not available in hard copy due to marginal legibility of original document EDRS PRICE MF-$0.76 HC Not Available from EDRS. PLUS POSTAGE DESCRIPTOR:, *Aesthetic Education; Conference Reports; *Films; *Film Study; Higher Education; Mass Media IDENTIFIERS *Film Criticism ABSIPACT The announced general focus of the 1972 Oberlin Film Conference was "Goals, Methods, and Scope of Film Study in the 700s," the intention being to emphasize the conceptualization of the cinema experience as messages within larger sets of discourse. To this end, each student submitted an application essay and participated at the conference in discussions dealing with various topics. This document contains a conference schedule, selected student essays, and several transcribed discussions from the sessions. Among the essays included are the following: "Eisenstein and Joyce: Making the Mind Visible," "Film as Media as Epidemic," "Dimensions of Film Genres," "Metaphor in Films" "A Sociovidistic Approach to Film Communication: Theory, Methods, and Suggested Fieldwork," "A Metalogicon of Film: Topics in Film' ,tasemiatics," "'Boudu Saved from Drowning' (1932) Directed by Jean Renoir," "The Concept of Visual Space as a Critical Tool in Cinema," "Cinema as a Humanity: An Objection to Narrowness," "Godard's Paradigm," "Increasing Depth of Field and Sharpening Focus in Film Study," "An Analysis of 'Jules and Jim' as an Adaptation," "The Motion Picture industry, 1896-1921," "Rocking the Role of Cinema in Latin American," "'Fellini-Satyricon,' a Baroque Masterpiece," "Film and Visual Perception," and "The Image of Women in the Cinema." (LL) p4r, 1 7 RECO V S T MINT OF HEWN DUCAtION i WE LEASK NATIONAL NiStTUTE OF SOUCAtiON DO( vMENT NA% BEEN C' E KA(tlr As stETE F stOsT '..( 5+504 Oa acr,Tr.taTONOrt..N ,,, PO NIS 0$ ..EN 001N.ON5 DJ if NE TESAw r Rs PRE AM. ai NAT.o44A mtIrvff04 f rON NOS. .NT4 ORaOt 4,Y 1972 OBERLIN FILM CONFERENCE SELECTED ESSAYS AND DISCUSSION TRANSCRIPTIONS VOL. II Compiled and Edited by Christian Koch and John Powers The 1972 Oberlin Film Conference was made possible by an Lducational Grant (EH-6006-72-84) from the National Endowment for the Humanities, PREFACE During the academic year 1971-72, graduate and undergraduate students from around the United States were urged to write essays of application for a Student Conference on Film Study (Oberlin Film Conference). The conference was sponsored by Oberlin College and made possible by an educational grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The sessions were held on the campus of Oberlin College from Thursday evening, April 20, to Sunday noon, April 23. Thirty-one students were invited; each was provided round-trip air fare plus a or diem allowance for meals and lodging. In addition, two special guest participants were in attendance: Christian Metz of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, and Yves De Laurot, filmmaker and film theorist, New York. Christian Koch of the faculty of Oberlin College was the conference director and John Powers the student chairman. The idea of a Student Conference on Film Study grew out of a conviction that increasing college and university interest in establishing academic programs of cinema studies might benefit, particularly at this time from a nation-wide forum in which various emerging attempts to construct film study methodologies and goals could gain expression and consequent dissemination. There were two additional underlying premises. First, it was felt that such a forum or conference should be attended principally by students -- from different areas of the country with diverse educational backgrounds (e.g., linguistics, anthropology, communi- cation studies, psychology, American studies, etc.) -- many of whom would very soon be fostering the growth of cinema studies programs by virtue of their own positions on academic faculties. Second, it was felt that the conference should be structured in such a way that the participants' own discourse, and not of that of a group of guest experts, should constitute the major portion of the conference sessions. The announced general focus of the conference was "Goals, Methods, and Scope of Film Study in the 70's." If an emphasis on group discourse was to prove fruitful, it seemed essential that the group involved be small in number -- hence the rather arbitrary total of only thirty-four participants.The physical environment for the meetings was one which permitted the participants to sit around a table, rather than 'oppose' each other over a lecturn. In general, the Student Conference on Film Study was designed to bring together, for a period of three full days, a group of people who would be able to di3cvss the cinema not only in relation to the world of Lam-as-object but who would also, and primarily, have the ability and interest which would permit them to talk about the cinema in relation to contexts both larger and other than -- yet inclusive of -- images on the screen. There was, therefore, a conscious intent to emphasize the conceptualization of the cinema experience as messages within larger sets of discourse. Dne to the presence at the conference of Professor Christian Met', whose special academic competence is cinema semiotics, a large part of the conference pro,.ram came to be devoted to semiological approaches to the problem of cinema studio.. In Western Europe, students haqe been seriously studying the cinema feom n femiotic perspective for some time; in the United States this has not ii 1 been the case. In response to a sua.estion by Professor Thomas Sebeok, a selection of conference materials dealing specifically with cinema semiotics was selected for publication by Mouton, The Hague. This manuscript has been completed and is entitled Semiotics aed the Cinema:Selected Essays and Discussion Transcriptions fro the 1972 Oberlin Film Study_ Conference, Vol. I. Some of the essays contained in this collection are revisions of articles originally written au essays of application to the conference; other essays are reworkings of presentations delivered orally at the conference itself.The "Discussion" portions of the book were edited from tapes made at the meetings. The contents of Vol. I are: "Introduction" by Christian Koch; "On trying to Introduce a Distinction Between Cinema and Film" by Christian Metz; "Discussion of the Metz Presentation"; "Semiology of the Film:' A Review of Theoretical Articles to 1970" by Julia Lesage; "The Referential Generaiiy of Film Imagery" by Jeffrey Bacal; "Discussion of Semiological Analysis of Non-Narrative Films"; "Deitlusioning the Narrative, Destroying the Sign: Robert Nelson's Bleu Shut by narshall Blonsky; "Film and the Limits of Semiology" by M. Claire Kolbenschlag; and "Discussion of the Kolbenschlag Presentation"."Semiology of Cinema: An Analytic Review" by Nicholas K. Browne. The 1972 Student Conference on Film Study was by no means, however, only concerned with semiotics. Consequently, this second volume of materials (1972 Cberlin Film Conference: Selected Essays and Discussion Transcriptions, vol. II) has been prepared aid is being made available through Oberlin College, Department of Communication Studies, Many of the excellent essays contained in this latter collection will also be appearing in various journals and magazines. No attempt was made to standardize procedures for footnoting, referencing, etc. in the present collection. The authors were asked to revise their original essays of application if they wished. Some of the essays were revised; most were not. Four presentations and discussions included in the volume (the Mills discussion and the three concluding discussion/presentations) were edited from tapes recorded at the sessions. Every effort was made in the editing to remain faithful to the spirit, as well as the letter, of the discourse involved. The following listing include the names of all student conference partic- ipants, their schools, and their application essay titles. Most of the students were, at the time of the conference, graduate students at the schools listed. Many are now or, the faculties of other institutions. Following the listing of participants is a schedule of the actual conference sessions. This schedule includes the names of those persons specifically responsible for 'shaping' each meeting. The schedule itself, however, in''ading the focus of each session, was drawn up by the conference organizers prior to the sessions. Participants ere asked to assume the 'roles' listed, even though the particular session in which they were asked to participate may not have actually reflected their own specialized academic interests. INVITED STUDENT PARTICIPANTS AND APPLICATIM ESSAY TITLES Jeff Baca]. (University of Iowa) "The Referential Generality of Film Imagery" Slew-Ewa Bch (University of California, Los Angeles) "Andy Varhol" James Belson (University of Southern California) "Eisenstein and Joyce: Making the Mind Visible" iii Vlnda acishen (Yale University) "Film as media as Epidemic" Marshall Blonsky (New York University) "Notes for an Affective Film Stylistics" David Bordwell (University of Iowa) "Dimensions of Film Genres" Nicholas Browne (Harvard University) "Prolegomena to a Study of Signification in Film"

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