FILM 392 - Research Seminar in Film History and Theory

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

This course is designed as an in-depth exploration of a theoretical topic. Students contribute to the class through research projects and oral presentations. Their work culminates in lengthy research papers. Because topics change, students are permitted (encouraged) to take this course more than once. Preference is given to film majors who must take this class during their senior year; junior majors and others admitted if space permits.

Topic for 2016/17a: Sensuous Theory. This seminar explores the relationship between film and the senses. How can film, an audio-visual medium, represent and engage with the proximal senses of touch, taste, and smell? How might films employ the senses to reconfigure the relationship between the cinema and the spectator? How can these sensuous films articulate senses of belonging, displacement, or exile? The seminar situates our discussions of these questions within discourses of film phenomenology, postmodernism, gender studies, and postcolonialism. Readings may include: Jennifer M. Barker (The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience, 2009), Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener (Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses, 2010), Laura U. Marks (The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses, 2000, and Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media, 2002), Hamid Naficy (An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, 2001), and Vivian Sobchack (Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, 2004). Film screenings may include: Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929), Daisies (Vera Chytilová, 1966), The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977), Tetsuo, the Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1989), The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991), Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, 1992), Calendar (Atom Egoyan, 1993), Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999), Martyrs (Pascal Laugier, 2008), and The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodóvar, 2011). Ms. Harvey.

Topic for 2016/17b: Compilation Films. This seminar explores the history, theory, and aesthetics of the compilation film, or non-fiction motion pictures that utilize footage produced for another purpose to generate a new text. Drawing on major theories of non-fiction and experimental cinema, we examine the ways that film and other media have been informed by cultural, political and technological issues around the world. The course addresses a range of critical frameworks and historical issues through a series of overlapping case studies covering areas such as the use of cinema as a propaganda tool, conceptions of the archive, cinephilia, and cultural memory. The final part of the course is devoted to the intersection of new media and the compilation film in areas such as remix culture, database cinema, and digital archives. Screenings include features and shorts by Bruce Conner, Santiago Álvarez, Connie Field, Joseph Cornell, Emile de Antonio, Craig Baldwin, Esfir Shub, Jean-Luc Godard, and many others. Alex Kupfer.

Prerequisite(s): FILM 210 /FILM 211 ; two additional units in film history and theory, and permission of the instructor.

One 2-hour period plus outside screenings.