FILM 5900/7900 - Film Theory Fall 2017 Prof. Rielle Navitski
[email protected] Class: T/Th 2:00 – 3:15 pm in 53 Fine Arts Screening: Th 3:30 – 6:15 pm in 53 Fine Arts Office hours: T/W 10:00 am – 12:00 pm or by appointment in 260 Fine Arts Course Description: This course explores a range of critics’, scholars’ and filmmakers’ positions on the “big questions” that arise in relation to films considered as artistic objects and the production and consumption of films considered as meaningful individual and social experiences. Beginning with key debates in film theory and working mostly chronologically, we will consider critic André Bazin’s famous question “what is cinema?” Is it more useful to try to define film’s unique characteristics or to chart its overlap – particularly in a digital age – with other audio/visual media and other visual and performing arts? Should more weight be given to film’s capacity to record and play back a recognizable impression of the visible and audible world, or to its formal or aesthetic qualities – arrangements of light, sound, and time – and the way it communicates meanings through stylistic elements like editing, camera movement, and mise-en-scène. How do elements of film style and the institutions surrounding cinema – from the studio to the movie theater to fan culture – impact spectators’ experiences? How do gender, sexuality, race, and nation shape film aesthetics and viewing experiences? Without seeking to definitively resolve these debates, we will consider how they can meaningfully inform our role as consumers and producers of media.