31801. Chicago Film History (=CMST 21801, ARTV 26750/36750):

This course will screen and discuss films to consider whether there is a Chicago style of filmmaking. We will trace how the city informs documentary, educational, industrial, narrative feature, and avant-garde films. If there is a Chicago style of filmmaking, one must look at the landscape of the city, the design, politics, cultures, and labor of its people, and how they live their lives. The protagonists and villains in these films are the politicians and community organizers, our locations are the neighborhoods, and the set designers are MIes van der Rohe and the Chicago Housing Authority. J. Hoffman. Spring.

32901. German Cinema: 1945-1989 (=GRMN 34801):

This class provides an introduction to German cinema from the collapse of National Socialism in 1945 to the reunification of the two German states in 1989. Beyond examining a wide swath of films (i.e. by Fassbinder, Herzog, Kluge, Ottinger, Sanders-Brahms, Straub/Huillet, Staudte, Syberberg, Wenders, and Wolf) we will explore some of the issues in the history and theory of German cinema, incorporating, among others, questions of genre, auteur theory, psychoanalysis, history, politics, and film style. All readings and films will be available in English; a knowledge of German would, of course, be welcome. D. Levin. Autumn.

33201. From Page to Screen: Literary Adaptation in the Italian Cinema (=CMST 23201, ITAL):

Italian cinema has a long history of adapting literary texts to the screen. From silent versions of Dante's Divine Comedy, to Pasolini's iconoclastic film version of Boccaccio's Decameron; from neorealist cinema's often disavowed connection to literary sources, to very recent film adaptations both of classic texts such as Pinocchio and contemporary novels by authors such as Cavazzoni and Ammaniti, Italian cinema has fostered a strong tie with literature that is at once enriching to the two artistic modes in question, and theoretically complex. In this course we shall study selected theories of film adaptation, the history of Italian cinema's use of literature, and we shall analyze specific cases of book to screen adaptations. The wide influence of Pirandello on not only Italian but other national cinemas will be considered as well. Films studied will include Pasolini's Decameron, Visconti's Ossessione and Death in Venice, Benigni's Pinocchio, Fellini's La voce della luna, Rossellini's Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thief), Salvatores' Io non ho paura (I Am Not Afraid), and we shall read the texts upon which these films draw. Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley, set in Italy and based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith, will also be studied, as will one or two films that show the strong influence of Pirandellian concepts of the interplay of reality and illusion. Students concentrating in Italian studies will be expected to read materials in Italian; non-concentrators will do their work using English-language materials.R. West. Winter.

33500. Pasolini (=CMST 23500):

Description forthcoming. A. Maggi. Autumn.

34201. Cinema in Africa (=CMST 24201, ENGL 27600/48601):

This course examines cinema in Africa as well as films produced in Africa. It places cinema in Sub-Saharan Africa in its social, cultural, and aesthetic contexts ranging from neocolonial to postcolonial, Western to Southern Africa, documentary to fiction, art cinema to TV. We will begin with La Noire de... (1966), ground-breaking film by the "father" of African cinema, Ousmane Sembene, contrasted with a South African film, The Magic Garden (1960) that more closely resembles African American musical film, and anti-colonial and anti-apartheid films from Lionel Rogosin's Come Back Africa (1959) to Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga, Ousmane Sembene's Camp de Thiaroye (1984), and Jean Marie Teno's Afrique, Je te Plumerai (1995). The rest of the course will examine cinematic representations of tensions between urban and rural, traditional and modern life, and the different implications of these tensions for men and women, Western and Southern Africa, in fiction, documentary and ethnographic film. L. Kruger. Winter.

34401. Czech New Wave Cinema (=CMST 24401, SLAV 26700/36700):

The insurgent film movement known as the Czech New Wave spawned such directors as as the internationally acclaimed Milos Forman (The Fireman's Ball, Loves of a Blonde), Jiri Menzel (Closely Watched Trains), Jan Kadar (The Shop on Main Street), and Vera Chytilova (Daisies), and the lesser known but nationally inspirational Evald Schorm, Jarmir Jires, Oldrich Lipsky and Jan Nemec. "Of course," Peter Cowie notes, "many of these directors had already slogged through various worthy feature-length assignments [before 1964]. But some magical alchemy worked upon them to respond to the spirit of their time in a way that remains unsurpassed." This indeterminate "magical alchemy of their time"--the serendipitous life of the Czech New Wave--is as much a subject of the course's inquiry as close technical and semantic research of the films themselves. M. Sternstein. Spring.

34502. The Soviet Imaginary:

Registration open to advanced undergraduates with consent of constructor only. Soviet culture emerged out of a mix of national traditions, Marxist ideology, modern science, and modernist aesthetics. Though distinctive in innumerable respects, Soviet culture may have been most unique precisely in the very relationship it fostered between these different discourses or registers. We will investigate specific texts in various media (history, ideology, literature, children's literature, cinema, photography etc.) from the 1920s to the 1970s to illumine both the underlying Soviet imaginary and its evolution from modernism through Stalinism and the Thaw. Such dominant cultural themes as the re-forging of humanity, the harnessing of natural resources, and the establishment of networks of power and transportation will be traced via works by Aleksandr Bogdanov, Evgenii Zamiatin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Marietta Shaginian, Veniamin Kaverin, Dziga Vertov, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Andrei Platonov, Valentin Rasputin. Attention will also be paid to the ways in which the Soviet imaginary was adopted in other East and Central European countries. The theoretical background for the course will comprise key texts on the concept of the imaginary by Sartre, Lacan, Jameson, Castoriadis, Iser and others. Knowledge of a Slavic language required. R. Bird. Autumn.

34801. Iranian Cinema (=CMST 24801, NELC 2xxxx/3xxxx):

This course will introduce the history of the Iranian cinema, the major directors and films from the 1960s through the 1990s, and situate them in the political and historical context of modern Iranian society. The focus will be on feature films made in Iran but will also include some documentaries, shorts and films made outside Iran. In addition to analyzing the films as artistic constructs, we will consider larger questions such as how the political and intellectual history and ideology of modern Iran is reflected in its films, the aesthetics of Iranian cinema, "third-world" cinema and the economics of the Iranian film industry, the image of women, the system of film censorship, etc.F. Lewis. Autumn.

34903. Cinema in Japan: Art and Commerce in a Transnational Medium (=CMST 24903, EALC 24903/34903):

This course surveys Japanese cinema from its prehistory to the work of contemporary transnational auteurs. We will focus on both aspects of the object of study: Japan and the cinema. Each week will present, in roughly chronological order, a "moment" from the history of Japanese cinema and a methodological issue in film studies brought into focus by that week's films. For example, we will study vernacular modernism in 1930s Japan, the war film and theories of propaganda, genre theory and 1950s program pictures. We will of course pay attention to the Masters of Japanese cinema (Mizoguchi, Ozu, Kurosawa, et. al.) but we will also study film in relation to broader cultural movements such as the "new wave" and the "political modernist" turn. We will also interrogate theories of national cinema and study theories of ethnicity and recent Japanese representations of the Other. All readings on the course are in English; no Japanese is required, though accommodations will be made for students who wish to read original language material. M. Raine. Autumn.

35501. Poetic Cinema (=CMST 25501, SLAV 29001/39001):

Films are frequently denoted as "poetic" or "lyrical" in a vague sort of way. It has been applied equally to religious cinema and to the experimental avant-garde. Our task will be to interrogate this concept and to try to define what it actually is denoting. Films and critical texts will mainly be drawn from Soviet and French cinema of the 1920s-1930s and 1960s-1990s. Directors include Dovzhenko, Renoir, Cocteau, Resnais, Maya Deren, Tarkovsky, Pasolini, Jarman, and Sokurov. In addition to sampling these directors' own writings, we shall examine theories of poetic cinema by major critics from the Russian formalists to Andre Bazin beyond. R. Bird. Winter.

37600. Beginning Photography (=CMST 27600, ARTV 24000):

Camera and light meter required. Photography affords a relatively simple and accessible means for making pictures. Demonstrations are used to introduce technical procedures and basic skills, and to begin to establish criteria for artistic expression. Possibilities and limitations inherent in the medium are topics of classroom discussion. We investigate the contemporary photograph in relation to its historical and social context. Course work culminates in a portfolio of works exemplary of the student's understanding of the medium.Field trips required. Lab fee $60. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

37602. Photography Workshop I (=CMST 27602, ARTV 24401/34401):

PQ: ARTV 10100 or 10200; or consent of instructor.Camera and light meter required. Using photographic materials, black & white or color, students focus on a set of issues and ideas that expand upon their experience and knowledge, and that have particular relevance to them. All course work is directed toward the production of a cohesive body of photographic work. An investigation of contemporary and historic art issues informs the students' exploration as does extensive darkroom work, gallery visits, critical readings, group and individual critiques, and presentations. Course can be taken several times as color and/or black and white, with series of projects developing and changing. Taught concurrently with Photography Workshop II. Lab fee $60. L. Letinsky. Winter, Spring.

37702. Photography Workshop II (=CMST 27702, ARTV 24402/34402):

PQ: ARTV 10100 or 10200; or consent of instructor.Camera and light meter required. Using photographic materials, black & white or color, students focus on a set of issues and ideas that expand upon their experience and knowledge, and that have particular relevance to them. All course work is directed toward the production of a cohesive body of photographic work. An investigation of contemporary and historic art issues informs the students' exploration as does extensive darkroom work, gallery visits, critical readings, group and individual critiques, and presentations. Course can be taken several times as color and/or black and white, with series of projects developing and changing. Taught concurrently with Photography Workshop I. Lab fee $60. L. Letinsky. Winter, Spring.

37800. Theories of Media (=CMST 27800, ARTH 25900/35900, COVA 25400, ENGL 12800/32800, ISHU 21800, MAPH 32800):

PQ: Any 10000-level ARTH or COVA course, or consent of instructor. This course explores the concept of media and mediation in very broad terms, looking not only at modern technical media and mass media but also at the very idea of a medium as a means of communication, a set of institutional practices and a habitat in which images proliferate and take on a "life of their own." Readings include classic texts (e.g., Plato's Allegory of the Cave and Cratylus, Aristotle's Poetics); and modern texts (e.g., Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media, Regis Debray's Mediology, Friedrich Kittler's Gramaphone, Film, Typewriter). W. J. T. Mitchell. Winter.

38000. Documentary Video (=CMST 28000, ARTV 23901):

This course focuses on the making of independent documentary video. Examples of direct cinema, cinema verite, the essay, ethnographic film, the diary and self-reflexive cinema, historical and biographical film, agitprop/activist forms, and guerilla television are screened and discussed. Topics include the ethics and politics of representation and the shifting lines between fact and fiction. Labs explore video pre-production, camera, sound, and editing. Students develop an idea for a documentary video; form crews; and produce, edit, and screen a five-minute documentary. A two-hour lab is required in addition to class time. Lab fee $50. J. Hoffman. Winter.

38001. Documentary Video: Production Techniques (=CMST 28001, ARTV 23902):

PQ: ARTV 23901 or consent of instructor.This course focuses on the shaping and crafting of a nonfiction video. Students are expected to write a treatment detailing their project. Production techniques focus on the handheld camera versus tripod, interviewing and microphone placement, and lighting for the interview. Post-production covers editing techniques and distribution strategies. Students then screen final projects in a public space. Lab fee $50. J. Hoffman. Spring.

38302. Adaptation: Literature, Drama, Opera, Film (=CMST 28302, GRMN 27600/376000, MUSI 30706):

An intensive, comparative examination of theories & practices of adaptation. We consider a disparate set of case studies spanning a host of epochs and genres (e.g., Schiller/Brecht/Dreyer's St. Joan; Heine/Wagner's Flying Dutchman; Fontane/Fassbinder's Effi Briest; Buechner/Berg/Herzog's Woyzeck). Beyond exploring the stakes and traces of adaptation in each work, we will be occupied by interstices--the generic, programmatic, historical, institutional and expressive spaces that open between a work and its precursors. I'm guessing that all materials are available in English, but a reading knowledge of German would be exceedingly helpful. Open to advanced undergraduates and beginning graduates.D. Levin.

38700. Early Video Art, 1968-1979 (=CMST 28700, ARTV 26700/30100):

A survey of the first wave of video art in the U.S. We will be screening and discussing the first ten years of video produced by artists and activists, primarily on the east coast and in California, including Bruce Nauman, John Baldessari, Martha Rosler, Eleanor Antin and Top Value Television. Because of relatively inexpensive equipment and inherently synced sound, video democratized the production of moving images, allowing artists to challenge imagined limits of broadcast television and encultured gender representations. Much of the work we will be looking at in this new medium was made as an auxillary activity by artists already working in sculpture, conceptual art, and performance. We will analyze the work as it relates both to this art context and to the socio-political climate of the seventies.Staff. Winter.

38900. Video I: Beginning Video (=CMST 28900, ARTV 23800/33800):

PQ: COVA 10100 or 10200, or CMST 10100. This course is an introduction to video-making with digital cameras and non-linear (digital) editing. Students produce a group of short works, which is contextualized by viewing and discussion of historical and contemporary video works. Video versus film, editing strategies, and appropriation are some of the subjects that are part of an ongoing conversation. Taught concurrently with Video 2: Beginning Video; may be taken multiple times. Lab fee $60. Staff. Autumn.

38901. Video 2: Beginning Video (=CMST 28901, ARTV 23802/33802):

This course is an introduction to video-making with digital cameras and non-linear (digital) editing. Students produce a group of short works, which is contextualized by viewing and discussion of historical and contemporary video works. Video versus film, editing strategies, and appropriation are some of the subjects that are part of an ongoing conversation. Taught concurrently with Video 1: Beginning Video; may be taken multiple times.Lab fee $60. Staff. Autumn.

38903. Video Workshop (=CMST 28903, ARTV 23801):

PQ: ARTV 23800 or consent of instructor.This is a production course geared towards short experimental works and video within a studio art context. Screenings include recent works by Harrison and Wood, Fischli and Weiss, Martin Kersels, Jane and Louise Wilson, Halflifers, and Douglas Gordon. Discussions and readings address non-narrative strategies, rapidly changing technology, and viable approaches to producing video art in a world full of video images. Lab fee $60. Staff. Winter.

40000. Methods and Issues in Cinema Studies (=ARTH 39900, ENGL 48000, MAPH 33000):

This course offers an introduction to ways of reading, writing on, and teaching film. The focus of discussion will range from methods of close analysis and basic concepts of film form, technique and style; through industrial/critical categories of genre and authorship (studios, stars, directors); through aspects of the cinema as a social institution, psycho-sexual apparatus and cultural practice; to the relationship between filmic texts and the historical horizon of production and reception. Films discussed will include works by Griffith, Lang, Hitchcock, Deren, Godard. J. Lastra. Autumn.

48500. History of International Cinema, Part I, Silent Era (=CMST 28500, ARTH 28500/38500, CMLT 22400/32400, ARTV 26500, ENGL 29300/48700, MAPH 33600):

PQ: CMST 10100 must be take before or concurrently with this course. This is the first part of a two-quarter course. The two parts may be taken individually, but taking them in sequence is helpful. The aim of this course is to introduce students to what was singular about the art and craft of silent film. Its general outline is chronological. We will discuss main national schools and international trends of filmmaking. Y. Tsivian. Winter.

48600. History of International Cinema, Part II, Sound Era (=CMST 28600, ARTH 28600/38600, ARTV 26600, CMLT 22500/32500, ENGL 29600/48900, MAPH 33700):

PQ: CMST 10100. This is the second part of the international survey history of film covering the sound era up to 1960. It is strongly recommended that students take the first section first. This course focuses on industrial practices and aesthetics during Hollywood's studio era (1927 to 1960) and alternatives to the Hollywood film, including French poetic realism, Italian neorealism, and Japanese cinema. We will also consider the important political, economic, social and cultural forces, which influenced Hollywood and other cinemas during this period, particularly the rise of fascism in the 1930s, WWII, Hollywood's postwar economic struggles, and various national new wave cinemas. Screenings will include films by Berkeley, Renoir, Huston, Welles, De Sica, Ozu, Hitchcock and Godard. Y. Tsivian. Spring.

48800. Neuronal Aesthetics (=ARTH 45500):

Recently seeing has become an even more amazing process. findings concerning the internal circuitry of the visual brain, insights into brain architecture, biology, psychology, new media, and computation suggest that the domain of aesthetics must be re-defined. This seminar will explore how neurology, optical technology, and both old and new media do and might intersect to create a new area of study. B. Stafford. Autumn.

59900. Reading & Research:

PQ: Consent of instructor. Please register by faculty section. Staff. Autumn, Winter, Spring.

64201. Seminar: South Africa in the Global Imaginary (=ENGL 66700):

This seminar will begin with the persistent fascination in the global North, especially in the US, with the pathos of anti apartheid suffering. In the global and especially US imaginary, South Africa figures as stories of pathos and heroism from Cry the Beloved Country (1948; filmed in 1951 and 1993 recently assigned by Ophrah's book club) to the American made and targeted film Amandla: a revolution in four part harmony (2004). It will deconstruct that fascination through the critical examination of 20th and 21st C South African English literature and culture whose authors choose sometimes to address overseas audiences and sometimes pointedly to ignore them. Literary texts may include those by authors in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial period (Schreiner, Haggard, ..), the neocolonial Union, 1910-1948 (Dhlomo, Dikobe...), as well as the response to apartheid (1950-1994), from the Sophiatown generation (Nkosi, Mphahlele, Modisane, Gordimer, Fugard...) and beyond (Ndebele, Coetzee, Bessie Head), and the writers of plays and stories of the so-called Soweto generation, and the present post-anti-apartheid (if not postapartheid period), especially the work of minority ("Indian," "colored") South Africans, such as Achmat Visual texts include feature films, including adaptations of fiction since 1930s, documentary since the 1970s, and recent TV. We will also examine criticism and theory, both local (Dhlomo, Nkosi, Ndebele, Coetzee...) and abroad (Bhabha, Fanon, Chakrabarty, Gramsci,..), viz the applicability or not of post/colonial terminology to South Africa. L. Kruger. Winter.

64902. Seminar: Modernism, Materiality, and Cultural Mimesis: Japanese New Wave Cinema, 1955-1964:

This seminar aims to provide a context for the "Japanese new wave" that appeared alongside other new cinema movements in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We will begin by studying Japanese cinema as a cultural industry, part of a resurgent and increasingly commodified mass culture that has reached its apotheosis today. We will debate the consequences of those developments, drawing on arguments about Americanization, cultural imperialism, and an iterative practice of "cultural mimesis" that is often distinctive of the weaker side of uneven geopolitical relations. We will also look at challenges to the stylistic and political economy of filmmaking in Japan coming from fine arts and literature as well as from within the industrial cinema. In particular, the renewed emphasis on materiality across several media in the 1950s and the critique of modernity articulated across the political spectrum in Japan prepared the way for the challenges to existing cinema found in the work of documentarists such as Hani Susumu, independent filmmakers such as Teshigahara Hiroshi and Matsumoto Toshio, and studio filmmakers such as Masumura Yasuzo, Oshima Nagisa, and Yoshida Kiju. Beyond the direct study of shifts in Japanese film style and the conceptualization of cinema in Japan, students should gain a greater understanding of cinema as popular culture, of the shift toward auteurism in global cinema, and of the search for a modernist film practice in narrative cinema. Although many of the theoretical readings will be in English most of the primary materials will be in Japanese. However, those readings will be summarized in English and students without Japanese reading skills are welcome to take the class. M. Raine. Autumn.

67200. Classical Film Theory (=ENGL 68600):

This course examines major texts in film theory from Vachel Lindsay and Hugo Muensterberg in the 1910s through Andre Bazin's writings in the 1940s and 1950s. We will devote special attention to the emergence of issues that continue to be of major importance, such as the film/language analogy, film semiotics, spectatorship, realism, montage, the modernism/mass culture debate, and the relationship between film history and film style. We will concentrate on the major theoretical writings of Muensterberg, Rudolf Arnheim, Jean Epstein, Sergei Eisenstein, Siegfried Kracauer, Bela Balazs, Bazin, as well as writings by Walter Benjamin, Germaine Dulac, Maya Deren, Jean Mitry, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and others. J. Lastra. Winter.

67300. Seminar: Cinema as Vernacular Modernism (=ENGL 58700):

This course proceeds from the ostensible contradiction that Hollywood cinema at its most "classical," roughly from the late teens through the fifties, was also perceived, all over the world, as an incarnation of "the modern." We will begin with accounts of cinematic classicality in film history and criticism (Brasillach/Bardeche, Bazin), psychoanalytic-semiotic film theory (Metz, Bellour, Heath, Mulvey), as well as neoformalist-cognitivist approaches (Bordwell,Thompson, Carroll). We will look at films that both meet and exceed their categorization as classical and might more productively be described as a form of "vernacular modernism"—as aesthetic expressions of, and responses to, the social, psychic, and cultural experience of modernity and modernization. Drawing on texts by Kracauer, Benjamin, Epstein, Dulac, Colette, Woolf et al., we will consider the formal, stylistic, and thematic ways in which these films articulate a material sense of the everyday, a new image world, a restructuration of sensory perception, subjectivity, and cultural reception M. Hansen. Winter.