|
Sep. 10th, 2013|01:37 pm |
This syllabus is entirely built out of readings on the Yale Film Studies theory "canon list": it is that list, essentially. The films are also drawn from the "film canon." Really the ground-plan for a workshop.
A workshop in film theory.
3:30-5:30 WLH 002
Screenings Sunday at 5:30, mostly in WHC Auditorium
Readings will be available as pdfs (Dropbox)
Week 1 (August 29): Introduction
Week 2 (September 5): Institutions
Screening (September 1): Sunrise; Goddess (WHC Auditorium)
Readings: Bordwell, Thompson, Staiger, The Classical Hollywood Cinema, pp. 1-84, 155-261, 298-308, 365-385.
James Lastra, chapter 4 from Sound Technology and the American Cinema
Thomas Schatz, from The Genius of the System, Parts I and II.
Miriam Hansen, “The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as
Vernacular Modernism,” in Reinventing film studies
Week 3 (September 12): Ideological Analysis
Screening (September 8): Lawrence of Arabia (WHC Auditorium)
Readings: Barthes, “Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein” [in Rosen]
Heath, “Narrative Space” [in Rosen]
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”
J-L Baudry, “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus”
Jean-Louis Comolli and Jean Narboni, “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism”
F Jameson, “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture” [from Signatures of the Visible]
Week 4 (September 19): Experimental Film
Screening (September 15, at 5 pm; IN 212 YORK): Entr'acte; Wavelength; FOLLOWED BY "ABERRATIONS OF LIGHT (BLOCK AND RECODER) AT 7 IN THE WHC
Readings: Stan Brakhage, “Metaphors On Vision”
Sitney, P.A “Major Mythopoeia” from Visionary Cinema
Maya Deren An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film
Week 5 (September 26): Race and Ethnicity
Screening (September 22): Blonde Venus; Les Maitres Fous; Do the Right Thing
Readings: Jane Gaines. “On Looking Relations”
Richard Dyer, “White”
Week 6 (October 3): Subjectivity and Gender
Screening (September 29): Letter from Unknown Woman; Law of Desire
Readings: Christian Metz, “Identification,” “Mirror” “The Passion for
Perceiving” from Imaginary Signifier
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”
Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female
Spectator”
Week 7 (October 10): Film and Reality
Screening (October 6): L'Atalante; Traveling Players
Readings: Andre Bazin, What is Cinema? v. 1
Deleuze, Cinema 1: the Movement Image ch 1-4; Cinema 2: the Time Image, ch 1.
Siegfried Kracauer, “Basic Concepts”; “The Establishment of Physical Existence”
Rudolf Arnheim, “Film and Reality”; “The Complete Film”
Christian Metz, “Problems of Denotation in the Fiction Film”
Week 8 (October 17): Film Language and Style
Screening (October 13): Stagecoach; Ugetsu
Reading: Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Cinema of Poetry”
David Bordwell, Narration and the Fiction Film , part III
Sergei Eisenstein, “Beyond the Shot” and “The Dramaturgy of Film Form”
Daniel Dayan, “The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema”
Nick Browne, “The Spectator-in-the-Text: The Rhetoric of Stagecoach”
Raymond, Bellour, “The Obvious and the Code” [Rosen, Narrative Apparatus Ideologyl]
Noel Burch, Chapter One of Theory of Film Practice
Dudley Andrew, What Cinema Is!, ch 2
Week 9 (October 31): Sound and image
Screening (October 20): M; Conversation
Readings: Pascal Bonitzer, “Silence of the Voice” [in Rosen]
Jean Epstein, “Photogenie” [Abel, French Film Theory and Criticism I]
Roland Barthes, “The Third Meaning” [Image Music Text]
Michel Chion, “Projections of Sound on Image” [Audio-Vision]
Bela Balazs, “The Close-up” and “The Face of Man”
Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Alexandrov, “Statement on Sound”
Eisenstein, “Sound and Image (Montage 1938)” [in The Film Sense]
Week 10 (November 7): Non-fiction
Screening (Nov. 3): Chronicle of a Summer; High School
Readings: Philip Rosen, “Document and Documentary: on the Persistence of Historical Concepts” in Rosen, Change Mummified
Brian Winston, “The Documentary film as Scientific Inscription” in Renov
Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye (“We: Variant of a Manifesto”; “Kinoks: A Revolution”; “On the Significance of Non-Acted Cinema”; “Artistic Drama and Kino-Eye”)
Week 11 (November 14): Media and adaptation
Screening (November 10): Pandora's Box; Gospel According to Matthew
Readings: Bazin, “Cinema as Digest” [in Naremore: Film Adaptation]
Eisenstein, “Dickens, Griffith and the Film Today” [in The Film Sense]
D. Andrew, “Adaptation”; [in Naremore: Film Adaptation]
Stanley Cavell, “Photograph and Screen” from The World Viewed
Week 12 (November 21): Genre
Screening (November 17): 42nd Street; Antonio dos Mortes
Readings: Robin Wood, “Ideology, Genre, Auteur”
Solanas and Gettino, “Towards a Third Cinema” [in Robert Stam, ed., Film Theory]
Julio Garcia Espinosa, “For an Imperfect Cinema” [in Stam]
Rick Altman, “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre” [in Film/Genre]
Week 13 (December 5): Auteurs and stars
Screening (December 1): The Tramp; Jeanne Dielman
Readings: Andrew Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962”
Peter Wollen, “The Auteur Theory”
Bazin, “On the politique des auteurs” [in P. Graham, The New Wave]
Final paper due December 22
Requirements: final paper; workshop participation at every session; mandatory attendance of screenings |
|