courses 2009 fall
CINEMA STUDIES CORE REQUIREMENTS
CINEMA STUDIES ELECTIVE COURSES
CINEMA PRODUCTION COURSES
CINEMA GRADUATE COURSES
CRITICAL WRITING PROGRAM <http://writing.upenn.edu/critical/>.
CINE 101.601 - World Film History and Analysis to 1945
ARTH 108; ENGL 091
Rebecca Sheehan
T 5:30-8:30
This course surveys the history of world film from cinema’s precursors to 1945. We will develop methods for analyzing film while examining the growth of film as an art, an industry, and a political instrument. The course begins with the emergence of film technology and early film audiences. We will then look at the rise of narrative film and the birth of Hollywood before turning to a number of national film industries that flourished after World War I, including French, Italian, Soviet, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Indian film. Along the way, we will look at different genres and topics including African-American independent film during the silent era, animation, ethnographic and documentary film, censorship, and the coming of sound. We conclude with the transformation of several film industries into propaganda tools during World War II (including the Nazi, Soviet, and US film industries). There are no prerequisites. Requirements include a short essay, a research project, a midterm, and a final. Fulfills the Arts and Letters Sector (All Classes).
CINE 102.401 - World Film History and Analysis, 1945-present
ARTH 109; ENGL 092
Timothy Corrigan
TR 9:00-10:30
Focusing on movies made after 1945, this course allows students to learn and to sharpen methods, terminologies, and tools needed for the critical analysis of film. Beginning with the cinematic revolution signaled by the Italian Neo-Realism (of Rossellini and De Sica), we will follow the evolution of postwar cinema through the French New Wave (of Godard, Resnais, and Varda), American movies of the 1950s and 1960s (including the New Hollywood cinema of Coppola and Scorsese), and the various other new wave movements of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s (such as the New German Cinema). We will then selectively examine some of the most important films of the last two decades, including those of U.S. independent film movement and movies from Iran, China, and elsewhere in an expanding global cinema culture. There will be precise attention paid to formal and stylistic techniques in editing, mise-en-scene, and sound, as well as to the narrative, non-narrative, and generic organizations of film. At the same time, those formal features will be closely linked to historical and cultural distinctions and changes, ranging from the Paramount Decision of 1948 to the digital convergences that are defining screen culture today. There are no perquisites. Requirements will include readings in film history and film analysis, an analytical essay, a research paper, a final exam, and active participation. Fulfills the Arts and Letters Sector (All Classes).
CINEMA STUDIES ELECTIVE COURSES
CINE 016.401 - Scenes of Teaching
ENGL 016
Heather Love
TR 3:00-4:30
Teaching is considered one of the helping professions, but what does it help students to do? Does teaching aim to make students accept dominant social norms, or does it give them the tools to question them? In this course, we will consider the theory and practice of pedagogy in a range of texts. We will look both at classic statements on the meaning and politics of education as well as representations of teaching and learning in memoirs, novels, short stories, and films. Topics will include critical pedagogy, language and power, school reform, class and upward mobility, education and the professions, social control, pedagogical eros, race and racism, and the social space of the classroom. Reading may include texts by Plato, Rousseau, Henry James, Margaret Mead, Richard Wright, Muriel Spark, Richard Rodriguez, Helen Keller, Sherman Alexie, Américo Paredes, Toni Cade Bambara, Richard Powers, Barack Obama, John Dewey, Paolo Freire, bell hooks, Maria Montessori, Jacques Ranciere, Deborah Britzman, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Paul Willis, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and others. We will also watch films including Blackboard Jungle, The 400 Blows, High School, Half Nelson, Happy-Go-Lucky, and The Class, and will consider the representation of pedagogy in The Wire. A few short papers, a class presentation, and a longer final paper.
CINE 036.401 - The Middle East through Many Lenses
NELC 036
Heather Sharkey
M 2:00-5:00
This seminar introduces the contemporary Middle East by drawing upon cutting-edge studies written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. These include history, political science, and anthropology, as well as studies of mass media, sexuality, religion, urban life, and the environment. We will spend the first few weeks of the semester surveying major trends in modern Middle Eastern history. We will spend subsequent weeks intensively discussing assigned readings along with documentary films that we watch in class. The semester will leave students with both a foundation in Middle Eastern studies and a sense of current directions in the field.
CINE 085.401 - Medicine in Literature and Film
ENGL 085
Lance Wahlert
TR 4:30-6:00
What is it like to live with a serious illness? How have laypersons' cultural understandings of sickness and health changed over time? And how do historical images, literary accounts, and cinematic representations of doctors, nurses, and sick people reveal and affect conventional assumptions about disease and medical authority? This course offers a comprehensive study of significant changes and continuities in the history of 19th- and 20th-century medicine, alongside works of literature and film that exemplify the shifting notions of the doctor and sickness in the Western medical tradition. In particular, we will focus on fictional sources (poetry, short stories, novels, and films) as well as on nonfictional accounts (journals, diaries, and documentaries) that explore the emotional and somatic aspects of "conditions" such as hysteria, cancer, syphilis, homosexuality, and madness. As a transhistorical study of Western medicine from the innovations of Paris Medicine through the present, we will be concerned with the power of literary and cinematic narratives to bring coherence and meaning to lives at moments of great physical and emotional crisis. Inspired by recent historiographical trends to study the history of medicine from the bottom up, this course moves away from a methodology that emphasizes the "great men of science" to one that centers on the concerns of sick persons. This semester, we will read works of literature by authors such as Anton Chekhov, Emily Dickinson, Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun, and Sylvia Plath. Additionally, we will watch numerous films including Akira Kurosawa's IKIRU, Alfred Hitchcock's MARNIE, Derek Jarman's BLUE, Todd Haynes's SAFE and SUPERSTAR, and documentarian Frederick Wiseman's TITICUT FOLLIES and HOSPITAL. In conjunction with these literary and cinematic texts, we will study contemporaneous medical topics, such as the history of psychoanalysis, advancements in anesthesia, the elevation of the professional surgeon, the pathology of sexual deviances, the impact of the AIDS/HIV pandemic, and the clinical gaze. Assignments will include two short papers, a midterm, and a final exam.
CINE 106.401 - Mythology and the Movies
ANTH 160
Louise Krasniewicz
TR 10:30-12:00
Myths are powerful symbolic stories that all humans use to interpret the worlds they live in. Traditional myths contain accounts of supernatural events and experiences and tell fantastic and imaginative stories of creations, hero quests, gods, monsters and natural disasters. These stories are enacted in important rituals and when told in social gatherings they are used to teach the most important concepts of a culture. The power of mythmaking is evident in the persistence of these traditional tales and the uses they have had through history. This course will examine the idea that today's blockbuster Hollywood movies carry out the same role that traditional myths did. Using theories from mythological and anthropological studies, the course analyzes popular movies and the use we make of them in our everyday lives. These contemporary myths will be examined using structural and motif analysis as well as interpretive strategies that consider mythic themes, symbols, concepts of kin and other, narrative, and relationships between myth and reality. The class also examines elements of fan culture as a form of mythic reenactment and the class members help design and participate in a public event staged at the Penn Museum that is based on mythology and the movies (in 2007 the event was Harry Potter and the Magical Muggle Museum).
CINE 117.401 - Introduction to East Asian Cinema
EALC 006
David Desser
R 3:00-6:00
An introduction to the cinemas of China (PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan), Japan and South Korea from the point of view of shared themes, aesthetics and cultural concerns. Concentrating on theatrical fiction films from across the region, the course will focus on such issues as nationhood, family, the role of women, responses to colonialism, post-colonialism, national trauma and responses to modernization among other concerns. In addition, we will closely examine the aesthetic qualities of the films and the artistic traditions that give these cinemas their cultural and stylistic particularities.
CINE 118.401 - Iranian Cinema: Gender, Politics, and Religion
COML118; GSOC 118; NELC 118
Pardis Minuchehr
TR 10:30-12:00
This seminar explores Iranian culture, art, history and politics through film in the contemporary era. We will examine a variety of works that represent the social, political, economic and cultural circumstances of post-revolutionary Iran. Along the way, we will discuss issues pertaining to gender, religion, nationalism, ethnicity, and the function of cinema in present day Iranian society. Films to be discussed will be by internationally acclaimed filmmakers, such as Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, Tahmineh Milani, Jafar Panahi, Bahman Ghobadi, among others.
CINE 150.401 - Television Studies
COMM 250; ENGL 078
Heather Hendershot
MW 2:00-3:30
As a complex cultural product, television lends itself to a variety of critical approaches that build on, run parallel to, or depart from film studies. This introductory course in television studies begins with an overview of the medium’s history and explores how technical and industrial changes correspond to developing conventions of genre, programming, and aesthetics. Along the way, we analyze key concepts and theoretical debates that shaped the field. In particular, we will focus on approaches to textual analysis in combination with industry research, and critical engagements with the political, social and cultural dimensions of television as popular culture.
CINE 159.401 - Dream and Madness in Israeli Literature and Film
COML 282; JWST 102; NELC 159
Nili Gold
TR 1:30-3:00
This course analyzes modern and post modern film fiction and poetry that highlight dreams, fantasy and madness in the Israeli context. The Zionist meta-narrative tells of an active, conscious, and rational enterprise of Israeli nation-building. Yet, its subversive shadow-side lurks in literary and cinematic nightmares, surrealist wanderings and stories packed with dreams. This tension exists in the Hebrew Literature of the twentieth century and persists in contemporary films and writings that question the sanity of protagonist and artist alike. Although S.Y. Agnon, the uncontested master of Hebrew literature, denied ever reading Freud, his works suggest otherwise. His literary heirs, A. Oz and A.B. Yehoshua, the pillars of the Israeli canon, often speak in the symbolic language of the subconscious. Israeli film classics like The Summer of Avia, as well as newly released works like Sweet Mud, also confront similar issues. English and German works by Kafka, Woolf and Plath play a comparative role.
CINE 164.401 - Russian Film 1900-1945
RUSS 164
Vlad Todorov
MW 2:00-3:30
This course presents the Russian contribution to world cinema before WWII - nationalization of the film industry in post revolutionary Russia, the creation of institutions of higher education in filmmaking, film theory, experimentation with the cinematic language, and the social and political reflex of cinema. Major themes and issues involve: the invention of montage, Kuleshov effect, the means of visual propaganda and the cinematic component to the communist cultural revolutions, party ideology and practices of social-engineering, cinematic response to the emergence of the totalitarian state. Great filmmaker and theorist in discussion include Vertov, Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Medvedkin and others.
CINE 202.401 - Cinema of Outsiders: American Independent Cinema
ENGL 292
Meta Mazaj
TR 10:30-12:00
This course is a study of the independent sector of American cinema, which has produced many of the most distinctive films to have appeared in the US in recent decades, from the lowest-budget, most formally innovative or politically radical to the offbeat, the cultish and the more conventional. While the course will trace a long and broad history of the independent sector from the early history of cinema, our principal focus will be on particular versions of independent cinema that came to prominence since the mid 1980s, a period when an establishment of an industrial infrastructure (especially in distribution) was a key factor in the development of the indie scene. From milestone films such as Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch) and sex, lies and videotape (Steven Soderbergh) in the 1980s, to Clerks (Kevin Smith), The Blair Witch Project and New Queer Cinema in the 1990s, and the latest ultra-low budget digital video features of the 2000s, we will examine a significant body of work that both stands out from and presents a challenge to Hollywood, but also one that has been co-opted and embraced by the commercial mainstream. A study of important auteurs of independent cinema--John Sayles, Jim Jarmusch, Hal Hartley, Todd Haynes and Quentin Tarantino among others--the course is also an exploration of the various manifestations and dynamic meaning of the term “independent,” which will be examined not only in terms of industrial factors but also according to formal/aesthetic strategies and distinctive relationship to broader social and ideological landscape.
CINE 202.402 - American Film Criticism
ENGL 292
Chris Donovan
MW 2:00-3:30
In our age of bloggers, fansites, and media conglomeration, the art of film criticism and the status of the film critic are often assumed to be in crisis. This class will look back at the history of American film criticism--from pioneers like James Agee to giants like Pauline Kael, Andrew Sarris, Stanley Kaufmann and Molly Haskell to contemporary voices like J. Hoberman, Armond White, Roger Ebert, AO Scott, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Manohla Dargis. We will do so through analysis of the films that sparked the inspiration and sometimes ire of these writers, and led them to both define and increasingly defend their role as arbiters of quality and importance; possible objects of study will include classics like "The Gold Rush," "The Passion of Joan of Arc," "Citizen Kane," "Jules and Jim," "Double Indemnity," "L'Avventura," "Bonnie and Clyde," "2001: A Space Odyssey," and "The Wild Bunch," plus a selection of contemporary films that have stirred up fervent debate including "A History of Violence," "Sideways," "Crash" and "Pirates of the Caribbean." Writings will include short responses to the films and readings and two longer papers.
CINE 215.601 - Indian Cinema
GSOC 213; SAST 213
Priya Joshi
MW 4:30-7:30
Every day, over twelve million people go to the movies in India. Seated on planks of wood and on the floor, in air-conditioned movie palaces and open fields, the world's most avid cinema-goer watches the hundreds of films that roll out of the world's most prolific film industry. Our class will examine the pleasures of this cinema that has frequently been dismissed for being saccharine, melodramatic, and escapist. We will be watching and discussing a cluster of Hindi films made in Bombay (or Bollywood, as it is often called). We will pay particular attention to the manner in which these films embody public fantasies-- those of gender and masculinity, religion and nation, sexuality and the state, family and friends--in an effort to examine how Bombay's blockbusters have dealt with India's preoccupation with its emerging modernity and its increasing global economic prowess. Screenings are scheduled for Wednesday evenings.
CINE 223.401 - Postwar Japan Cinema and Art
ARTH 210
Julie N. Davis
TR 10:30-12:00
Mizoguchi Kenji, Ozu Yasujirô, and Kurosawa Akira are recognized today as three of the most important and influential directors in Japanese cinema. In their films of the late 1940s and 1950s, these directors focused upon issues surrounding the human condition and the perception of truth, history, beauty, death and other issues of the postwar period. This course will place their films in period context, and will pay particular attention to connections to other visual media, such as painting, photography, and printmaking, as well as to the modern concepts of “art” and “history” in the cinematic context. How three directors of the 1980s and 1990s – Itami Jûzô, Takeshi Kitano, and Miyazaki Hayao – also took up these issues, and referred to the “big three” will be discussed at the end of the course.
CINE 225.403 - Dark Comedy in Theatre and Film
ENGL 292; THAR 273
Marcia Ferguson
TR 12:00-1:30
This course will examine the "troublesome genre" of dark comedy by looking at the ways in which theatre and film use comic structures and traditions to explore concepts and stories seemingly at odds with those traditions. We will become acquainted with the formal and structural characteristics of tragicomedy by tracing its development, from some of its earliest roots in Roman comedy (Plautus) to its manifestation in contemporary films and plays ( Fargo, Topdog/Underdog ). Critical essays and scholarship will enhance our understanding of specific artistic ideas and intellectual positions at work within dark comedies. We will try to determine how they affect audiences by looking closely at performative, cinematic and theatrical technique. Students will have the opportunity to experiment with creating tragicomic effect through performance. Issues to be considered include comparing the way the genre translates across the media of theatre and film, and examining the unique placement of the genre at the heart of contemporary American culture.
CINE 225.601 - Transgressive Performance
ENGL 256; THAR 275
David Fox
R 5:00-8:30
From the shocking frankness of Mae West's SEX to the "love that dare not speak its name" of Lillian Hellman's THE CHILDREN'S HOUR; from the repressed blondes of Hitchcock to the bawdy pistol-packers of Sam Peckinpah; from the joyless partying of Mart Crowley's THE BOYS IN THE BAND to the joyous self-invention of Charles Busch's THEODORA: SHE-BITCH OF BYZANTIUM -- theatre has explored and altered our notions of gender, sexual identity and sexuality. In this course, we will look at 20th Century plays, films, entertainments, and performers that have broken the rules. Queer, drag and camp theatre will be prominent topics, and we will include plays and musicals by Tony Kushner (ANGELS IN AMERICA) and William Finn (FALSETTOS); performance art by Lypsinka and Dame Edna Everage; cabaret and musical performances; bizarre paratheatrical phenomena (Paris Hilton); and more. We will also study material that breaks taboos of heterosexual behavior (FIGHT CLUB, SEX AND THE CITY).
CINE 240.401 - Italian Cinema and the Sacred
ITAL 213
Stefania Benini
TR 12:00-1:30
This course will focus on the way Italian cinema related to the dimension of the sacred. The word “sacer” in Latin means both "sacred" and "accursed, defiled": thus, the experience of the sacred encompasses both sanctity and religion as well as abjection, excess, defilement and violence. From The Gospel According to St. Matthew to Salò, we will follow the trajectory of these double aspects of the sacred in Italian cinema, exploring a range of directors (from Rossellini to Pasolini, from Visconti to Fellini), and genres (from religious films to spaghetti western) through the lens of the different visions of the sacred of thinkers such as Eliade, Caillois, Bataille, Girard and others. The course will be conducted in English. Films will be in Italian with English subtitles. Italian majors may arrange to do readings and final paper in Italian.
CINE 245.401 - Masterpieces of French Cinema
FREN 230
Philippe Met
TR 1:30-3:00
The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to the history and scope of French cinema all the way to the present time through the analysis of key works of the French film canon. Particular attention will be paid to successive period styles (“poetic realism”, “French quality”, “the New Wave”, “le cinéma du look”, cinema de banlieue …) and a variety of critical lenses will be used (psychoanalysis, socio-historical and cultural context, politics, aesthetics, gender…) in an effort to better understand the specificities and complexities of French cinematic culture.
CINE 246.401 - Francophone Cinema (OFFERED IN FRENCH)
AFRC 231; AFST 231; FREN 231
Lydie Moudileno
TR 3:00-4:30
This course will deal with colonial and postcolonial films from the 1930’s to the beginning of the twenty-first century. We will first examine images of the colonial world in Western cinematography (Gréville, Duvivier, Annaud, Claire Denis). We will then study representations of Africa by early and contemporary African filmmakers such as Sembene Ousmane, Djibril Diop Mambety and Bassek ba Khobbio. Finally, we will turn to recent productions by immigrant artists working in France. Introducing a variety of genres, the course will be organized chronologically and thematically around a cluster of issues, including: exoticism, tradition and modernity, the representation of colonial and postcolonial violence, historiography, gender and sexuality, urban dynamics, migration and nostalgia.
CINE 260.401 - British Cinema
ENGL 295
Jim English
TR 10:30-12:00
This class treats British cinema of the past twenty-five years, with particular emphasis on the changing social, political, and economic environments in which the British film industry has operated during that period. One of our aims in the course will be to identify some of the distinctive aspects of contemporary British cinema and its particular place in an increasingly regional and global media market. Toward that end, we will consider the differences between films that have succeeded for the most part domestically and those that have achieved widespread international (and especially North American) distribution and acclaim. We will screen some examples of the so-called Heritage Cinema (such as the Merchant-Ivory production Howard's End) as well as films that run sharply counter to this tendency (such as Menalik Shabazz's Burning an Illusion, the Kureishi/Frears collaboration Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, and two films by Gurinda Chadha). We will pay particular attention to the docu-realist tradition in the British cinema and its new engagement with transnational and multicultural subjects; in this connection, we will view two films each by Ken Loach and Mike Leigh as well as recent documentary-inflected films by Paul Greengrass and Michael Winterbottom.
CINE 290.403 - Cinema of the Balkans
COML 287; ENGL 295; SLAV 290
Meta Mazaj
TR 3:00-4:30
This course will be a study of Balkan cinema, with a focus on a wide range of films that were made in response to the 1990s crisis in the Balkans. While the Balkans may be familiar as one of Hollywood’s favorite fantasy nightmares—the bloodthirsty Transylvanian count and vampire, Vlad Tepes-Dracula, or Cat People’s horrific historical Serbs who morphed into ferocious black panthers now living in the heart of Manhattan—Balkan cinema is an often overlooked but one of the richest and most significant cinemas of Europe today. While tracing the history of Balkan cinema, the main focus of the course will be on films made during and after the Balkan war in the 1990s, by filmmakers such as Milcho Manchevski, EmirKusturica, Srdjan Dragojevic, Goran Peskaljevic, and Danis Tanovic. These directors achieved great success in their native countries as well as abroad, and started appearing regularly at all major international film festivals. As such they not only mark a significant moment in thinking about the nation but show how a nation has come to depend on the persuasive power of cinema to articulate itself. As we recognize the difficulties in asserting Balkan culture as a unified one, the aim of the course will be to explore an astonishing thematic and stylistic consistency in the cinematic output of the Balkan region. Looking at these shared issues—the turbulent history and volatile politics, a semi-Orientalist positioning sometimes seen as marginality and sometimes as a bridge between East and West, encounters between Christianity and Islam, a legacy of patriarchy and economic dependency--we will examine how cinema of the Balkans testifies to a specific artistic sensibility that comes from a shared socio-cultural space.
CINE 292.601 - Charlie Chaplin
ENGL 292
Valerie Ross
T 5:30-8:30
Charlie Chaplin, in the baggy pants, derby, little mustache and cane of his great creation, the Little Tramp, is the most universally-recognized figure in film history. His influence on the development of film and the very genre of film comedy is overlooked by those unversed in early cinema, but his influence can be readily remarked in the work of diverse directors, from Lubitsch and Pasini to Ozu and Woody Allen. Mingling pathos with humor and sharp social critique, the perfectionist Chaplin showed filmmakers and audiences alike that film was the perfect vehicle for turning comedy into a serious art form. Contemporary viewers are invariably startled by how fresh, funny, and moving his films remain. Born in the slums of London, abandoned in early childhood, Chaplin’s is a true rags-to-riches story, as he made his way from a stage career at the age of ten to almost single-handedly showing how film could be an immensely profitable business. Chaplin wrote, acted, directed, photographed, and even scored his own films, along the way co-founding United Artists and becoming a hero and spokesperson for the poor and working-classes throughout the world. Inventing slapstick and feature-length comedy films, he moved from one to three-reelers and from silent to talkies, culminating in brilliant, innovative, touching social comedies and satires, such as City Lights, Modern Times, and the first parody of Hitler, The Great Dictator (1940), which Hitler reportedly screened twice. In this course we will explore how Chaplin made comedy a serious and popular art form. Along the way we will learn a history of early cinema and of the US, which shamefully exiled this extraordinary man in the 1950s because of his outspoken views and left leanings.
CINE 296.402 - Children's Television
COMM 392; ENGL 295
Heather Hendershot
MW 3:30-5:00
This upper-level course examines the history, aesthetics, economics, and ideology of children's television programs in the United States, from the late 1940s to the present. We will focus in particular on how reformers, censors, parents, and producers use television to reinforce or challenge the cultural ideal of childhood innocence. Topics will include: the Children's Television Act of 1990; the Federal Communication Commission's historically shifting stance on regulation; the effects of deregulation in the 1980s; Nickelodeon's history and marketing strategies; the history of the V-Chip and the TV ratings system; the Surgeon General's 1972 Report on Television Violence; the evolution of educational programming; and liberal and conservative activist approaches to the censoring of children's media. Programs such as Howdy Doody, Pokémon, Teletubbies, Sesame Street, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, and SpongeBob SquarePants will be contextualized via consideration of shifting historical conceptions of childhood and study of media censorship battles that preceded the rise of TV.
CINE 352.601 - The Devil's Pact in Literature, Music and Film
COML 241; GRMN 256; RELS 236
Simon Richter
M 6:00-9:00
For centuries the pact with the devil has signified humankind's desire to surpass the limits of human knowledge and power. From the reformation chap book to the rock lyrics of Randy Newman's Faust, from Marlowe and Goethe to key Hollywood films, the legend of the devil's pact continues to be useful for exploring our fascination with forbidden powers.
CINE 365.601 - Chekhov on Stage and Screen
RUSS 426
Vera Zubarev
T 5:30-8:30
“What’s so funny, Mr. Chekhov?” This question is often heard from critics and directors who still are puzzled with the definition of Chekhov’s four major plays as comedies. Traditionally, all of them are staged and directed mostly as dramas, melodramas, or even tragedies. The course is intended to provide the participants with a concept of dramatic genre that will assist them in approaching Chekhov’s plays as comedies. In addition to reading Chekhov’s works, Russian and western productions and film adaptations of Chekhov’s works will be screened. Among them, Vanya on 42nd Street (Andre Gregory), and Four Funny Families (Vera Zubarev).
CINE 370.401 - Blacks in American Film and TV
AFRC 400
Donald Bogle
M 5:00-8:00
An examination and analysis of the changing images and achievements of African Americans in motion pictures and television. The first half of the course focuses on African-American film images from the early years of D.W. Griffith's "renegade bucks" in The Birth of a Nation (1915); to the comic servants played by Stepin Fetchit, Hattie McDaniel, and others during the Depression era; to the post-World War II New Negro heroes and heroines of Pinky (1949) and The Defiant Ones (1958); to the rise of the new movement of African American directors such as Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing), Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), Charles Burnett, (To Sleep With Anger) and John Singleton (Boyz N the Hood). The second half explores television images from the early sitcoms "Amos 'n Andy" and "Beulah" to the "Cosby Show," "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," and "Martin." Foremost this course will examine Black stereotypes in American films and television--and the manner in which those stereotypes have reflected national attitudes and outlooks during various historical periods. This course will also explore the unique "personal statements" and the sometimes controversial "star personas" of such screen artists as Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, Paul Robeson, Richard Pryor, Oscar Micheaux, Spike Lee, Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, and Whoopi Goldberg. The in-class screenings and discussions will include such films as Show Boat (1936), the independently produced "race movies" of the 1930s and 1940s, Cabin in the Sky (1943), The Defiant Ones (1958), Imitation of Life (the 1959 remake), Super Fly (1972), and She's Gotta Have It (1986) and such television series as "I Spy," "Julia," "Good Times," "The Jeffersons," "Roots," "A Different World," "I'll Fly Away," "LA Law," and "Hangin' With Mr. Cooper."
CINE 392.401 - New Wave Cinemas
ENGL 392
Timothy Corrigan
TR 1:30-3:00
Since World War II, numerous national cinemas have emerged around the world, offering alternative visions shaped by those different cultures. This course will examine four of those cinemas in depth, investigating the cultural and social circumstances that underpin them, the local and global pressures of the film industry at that time, the manifestos that often initiated those film movements, the aesthetic similarities and differences which shaped each new wave, and the evolution that describes the historical paths of each. We will examine four new wave cinemas in depth: the French New Wave, the New German Cinema, New Latin American Cinema, and New Chinese Cinema. Alongside a specific focus on the movements and their films, we will consider larger questions of nationhood, globalization, new media, and the purported dominance of Hollyworld as they become configured through film and media culture. There are no prerequisites. Requirements will include a 15-page research project.
CINE 462.401 - Visual Communication and Social Advocacy
COMM 462
Paul Messaris
TR 4:30-6:00
The course explores the use of video and other visual media for social causes. Students choose their own area of interest, conduct background research, design and produce videos, and post them on-line. The course uses a seminar format, and class size is limited to fifteen people.
CINEMA PRODUCTION COURSES
CINE 061 - Video I
FNAR 061; VLST 061
401 | R 7:30-10:30 | Paul Buck
402 | M 2:00-5:00 | Emory Van Cleve
403 | T 12:00-3:00 | Emory Van Cleve
404 | T 4:00-7:00 | Ellen Reynolds
405 | R 1:30-4:30 | Heidi Mau
601 | R 4:30-7:30 | Paul Buck
This course provides students with the introductory skills and concepts needed to create short works using digital video technologies. Students will learn the basics of cinematography and editing through a series of assignments designed to facilitate the use of the medium for artistic inquiry, cultural expression and narrative storytelling.
CINE 062.401 - Video II
FNAR 062
Ellen Reynolds
W 5:00-8:00
Video II offers opportunities to further explore the role of sound, editing and screen aesthetics. Through a series of three video projects and a variety of technical exercises, students will refine their ability to articulate more complex and creative projects in digital cinema. In addition, advanced level production and post-production equipment is introduced in this course.
CINE 063.401 - Documentary Video
FNAR 063
Anthony Heriza
M 5:00-8:00
A digital video course stressing concept development and the exploration of contemporary aesthetics of the digital realm, specifically in relation to the documentary form. Building on camera, sound and editing skills acquired in Film/Video I, students will produce a portfolio of short videos and one longer project over the course of the semester. Set assignments continue to investigate the formal qualities of image-making, the grammar of the moving image and advanced sound production issues within the documentary context.
CINE 065.401 - Cinema Production
FNAR 065
Emory Van Cleve
W 2:00-5:00
This course focuses on the practice and theory of producing narrative based cinema. Members of the course will become the film crew and produce a short digital film. Workshops on producing, directing, lighting, camera, sound and editing will build skills necessary for the hands-on production shoots. Visiting lecturers will critically discuss the individual roles of production in the context of the history of film.
CINE 116 - Screenwriting
ENGL 116
401 | T 1:30-4:30
601 | T 6:30-9:30
Kathleen DeMarco Van Cleve
This is a workshop-style course for those who have thought they had a terrific idea for a movie but didn't know where to begin. The class will focus on learning the basic tenets of classical dramatic structure and how this (ideally) will serve as the backbone for the screenplay of the aforementioned terrific idea. Each student should, by the end of the semester, have at least thirty pages of a screenplay completed. Classic and not-so-classic screenplays will be required reading for every class, and students will also become acquainted with how the business of selling and producing one's screenplay actually happens. Students will be admitted on the basis of an application by email briefly describing their interest in the course to <kathydemarco@writing.upenn.edu>.
CINE 130.401 - Advanced Screenwriting
ENGL 130
Kathleen DeMarco Van Cleve
M 2:00-5:00
This is a workshop-style course for students who have completed a screenwriting class, or have a draft of a screenplay they wish to improve. Classes will consist of discussing student's work, as well as discussing relevant themes of the movie business and examining classic films and why they work as well as they do. Classic and not-so-classic screenplays will be required reading for every class in addition to some potentially useful texts like /What Makes Sammy Run?/ Students will be admitted on the basis of an application by email. Please send a writing sample (in screenplay form), a brief description of your interest in the course and your goals for your screenplay, and any relevant background or experience. Applications should be sent to kathydemarco@writing.upenn.edu
CINE 130.402 - Advanced Screenwriting
ENGL 130
Andrew Wolk
F 2:00-5:00
The Creative Writing Program in the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (CPCW) and the Cinema Studies Program are co-sponsoring an advanced screenwriting workshop to be taught by screenwriter/director ANDY WOLK. Students will develop a screenplay in the course which will focus on the nuts-and-bolts of structure, plot, character and dialogue and how a story is told visually. This course offered as part of the Avnet Advanced Screenwriting Project. Wolk has written screenplays for every studio, and teleplays and pilots for every network including HBO'S Emmy-winning FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON. He received the Writer's Guild Award for NATICA JACKSON starring Michelle Pfeiffer and was nominated for the Award for the movies CRIMINAL JUSTICE and DELIBERATE INTENT, each of which he also directed along with episodes of many shows including THE SOPRANOS, WITHOUT A TRACE and THE PRACTICE. He has served as a Creative Advisor and Artistic Director of the Sundance Institute's Screenwriting Labs. Students will be admitted to this course by permission of the instructor. Applications should be sent to Mingo Reynolds at: mingo@writing.upenn.edu
CINE 267.401 - Computer Animation
FNAR 267
Joshua Mosley
MW 4:00-7:00
Through a series of studio projects, this course will focus on 2D and 3D computer animation. Emphasis is placed on time-based design and storytelling by developing new sensitivities to movement, cinematography, editing, sound, color, and lighting. Compositing software covered in the course will be used to combine 2D graphics, 3D animation, and sound. Recommended materials: Wacom Pen.
CINEMA GRADUATE COURSES
CINE 500.640 - Landmarks in Spanish and Latin American Cinema
SPAN 528
Michael Solomon
T 5:00-8:00
This seminar offers an introduction to Spanish and Latin American cinema. Focusing on key shorts and feature-length films from the late 19th century to the present, each session will be dedicated to discussing the technical, thematic, and artistic elements that made the selected work a landmark in Spanish and Latin American cinema. The readings, lectures, and class discussions will help students contextualize these films, illustrating how each work emerged from a specific cultural, political, and artistic moment. We will examine the way these cinematic works promoted and contested notions of Spanish and Latin American nationalism while learning about the major movements and developments in Spanish and Latin American cinema such as “Cinema Novo” from Brazil, “Imperfect Cinema” from Cuba, “New Latin American Cinema” from Argentina, and “Neo-realism” and “Movida” cinema from Spain. Key films include, Hotel Electric (Segundo de Chomon), An Andalusian Dog (Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali), Death of a Cyclist (Juan Antonio Bardem), Barren Lives (Nelson Pereira dos Santos), White Devil, Black God (Glauber Rocha), Lucia (Humberto Solás), The Young and the Damned (Luis Buñuel), The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice), The Law of Desire and All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar), Cows (Julio Medem) Battle in Heaven (Carlos Reygadas), and Amores perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu). This seminar is taught in English. All readings will be English and all required screenings will be available with English subtitles.
CINE 590.401 - Women's Cinema/World Cinema: Aesthetics, Politics, and Institutions
ARTH 590; COML 599; ENGL 593
Patricia White
T 3:00-5:00
The concept of women's cinema, with its ambiguities--by women, or for women? popular or feminist?--has been debated within feminist film scholarship for three decades. The concept of world cinema-curricular component, brand, or transnational formation?--is currently undergoing an intensified interrogation. With a focus on internationally circulating films directed by women from the global North and South, this course looks at authorship and aesthetics, film policy and financing, festival and arthouse programming, and questions of national identity and human rights as they intersect with feminist theory and practice.
CINE 619.401 - The Politics and Practices of Representation
COMM 619
Katherine Sender
R 1:30-4:30
This course engages with the following question from theoretical, aesthetic, and practical perspectives: Who says what about whom, under what circumstances, with what effects? By combining analytical work with media production projects, students probe the aesthetic, structural, and symbolic dimensions of media representation. We will spend the first part of the semester investigating different approaches to this question through six distinct frames: documentary, ethnographic films, activist media, GLBT images, pornography, and the politics of spectatorship. Within each frame we will look at debates over such issues as insider accounts, processes of othering, reflexivity, realism and other narrative and non-narrative conventions, the ethics of consent, “objective” and “biased” shooting techniques, the politics of editing, the role of the intended audience in the production of a work, and so on. There will be weekly film screenings that complement each of the theoretical discussions during the first six weeks. We will simultaneously cover the technical aspects of production that will enable you to produce digital video projects: shooting (Canon GL1s), lighting, sound, editing (Final Cut Pro on Mac G5s), graphics, music, and so on. Students will complete weekly assignments that introduce some of the practical and political challenges of filmmaking. During the final part of the semester each student will produce a short (5-10 minute) documentary or experimental digital video.
CINE 680.401 - French Cinema
FREN 680
Philippe Met
R 4:00-6:00
The purpose of this survey course is twofold:
- To provide an introduction to the history and scope of French cinema all the way to the present time through the analysis of key works of the French film canon. Particular attention will be paid to various period styles (poetic realism, “French quality,” “the New Wave,” “le cinéma du look,” “le film de banlieue,” etc.) and genres (war, drama, comedy, film noir, etc.).
- To provide students with the proper analytical and technical tools for studying and teaching film. A variety of critical lenses will be considered (psychoanalysis, socio-historical and cultural context, politics, aesthetics, gender…) from a practical, rather than strictly theoretical, perspective.
Directors considered typically include Renoir, Duvivier, Carné, Clouzot, Melville, Bresson, Franju, Truffaut, Resnais, Godard, Tati, Chabrol, Tavernier, Blier, Beineix, Varda, Denis, Kassovitz, etc.
CINEMA WRITING COURSES
For listings of WRIT 025's - Writing Seminars in Cinema Studies, please check
CRITICAL WRITING PROGRAM <http://writing.upenn.edu/critical/>.