Courses > 2010 Spring

Graduate Courses

CINE 842 - The Filmic

ANTH 842 | COMM 846
401 | F 9am-12pm | ANNS 223

This interdisciplinary graduate course takes "film" as its object of study, theorizing it as a medium/mode of representation. We draw on film theory, psychoanalysis, literary analysis, cognitive theory, communication studies, and visual anthropology to discuss several key issues related to the state of film/filmmaking in an age of "digital" media. We interrogate contentious notions of authority, reflexivity, and objectivity. We analyze film's claim to "realistic" (iconic and indexical) representation. We interrogate how "film" and "video" get imagined in all their visual particularity, sometimes conflated into a single visual form and at other moments distinguished as a function of the difference between photochemical and electro-magnetic processes. We also highlight the kinds of techniques filmmakers use to thematize these same issues "on screen." Students will be responsible for watching one film each week (along with the the course readings), and part of the final project involves helping to produce a group documentary/ethnographic "film" that engages the course's central concerns.