CINE 372: Film Theory
Fall 2010
Thursday 1:10 to 3:55
Instructor: Aaron Kerner
Office: FA 536
Email: amkerner@sfsu.edu
Website: http://online.sfsu.edu/~amkerner

Office Hours: Wednesday 12:00-2:00
Or by appointment

Course Description: Seminar in aesthetics with an analysis of theoretical and critical writing on film.

This course focuses on film theory and the cultural/economic/social theories that inform it. The overall concern of the course surveys the significance of visual culture in society. How are cinematic images manipulated? How do they elicit affect in the spectator? How do they acquire cultural, economic or social value?

I want to dedicate some time to developing research and critical thinking skills. Some class time will be set aside specifically to work on research skills and rhetorical development.

Course Requirements:
Attend all class meetings
Readings must be completed by the assigned dates
All written work must be submitted on time

Course Assessment:

Plagiarism and other issues concerning academic integrity will not be tolerated, and is grounds for failure in the course.

NB:
This syllabus is subject to change at any time.
Turn off your cell phones and all other electronic devices!

Citation Method:
The Chicago Manual of Style: For assistance with citations see the online version of Diana Hacker's A Pocket Style Manual.

Course Text:
All the readings are either available through Electronic Reserves, a database (e.g., Project Muse, JSTOR), via iLearn download, or online as specified on the syllabus.

Part One: Cinematic Syntax

Session 1 August 26th

Screening:
Cache, Michael Haneke, 2005

Introduction:

• Syllabus review
• iLearn

Session 2 September 2nd

Screening:
Selected clips from 21 Grams, Alejandro González Iñarritu, 2003
Selected clips from Naqoyqatsi, Godfrey Reggio, 2002
Meshes of the Afternoon, Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid, 1943
A Movie, Bruce Conner, 1958

Reading:
Sergei Eisenstein, "Beyond the Shot [the Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram]," and "The Dramaturgy of Film Form [The Dialectical Approach to Film Form]," in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen eds., Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings Fifth Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 15 - 42.

Session 3 September 9th

Screening:
Selected clips from Mamma Roma, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962
Selected clips from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Julian Schnabel, 2007
Selected clips from Diamonds of the Night, Jan Nemec, 1964

Reading:
Paul Sandro, "Signification in the Cinema," in Bill Nichols ed., Movies and Methods Volume II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 391 - 407.

Christian Metz, "On the Notion of Cinematographic Language," Bill Nichols ed., Movies and Methods Volume I (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 582 - 589.

Session 4 September 16th

Screening:
Selected clips from The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1965

Reading:
Kaja Silverman, “Suture,” The Subject of Semiotics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 194-236.

Part Two: Feminist Interventions

Session 5 September 23rd

Screening:
Looking for Langston, Isaac Julien, 1988
Removed, Naomi Uman, 1999
Selected clips from Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock, 1954
Selected clips from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Howard Hawks, 1953
Selected clips from She Must Be Seeing Things, Shelia McLaughlin, 1987

Reading:
Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 14-26.

Session 6 September 30th

Screening:
Office Killer, Cindy Sherman, 1997
Selected clips from A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick, 1971
Selected clips from Cashback, Sean Ellis, 2006

Reading:
Laura Mulvey, “Fears, Fantasies and the Male Unconscious or ‘You Don’t Know What Is Happening, Do You, Mr. Jones?’” in Visual and Other Pleasures 6 – 13.

Laura Mulvey, “Cosmetics and Abjection: Cindy Sherman 1977-87,” in Fetishism and Curiosity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 65 – 76.

Session 7 October 7th

Screening:
Selected clips from Stepford Wives, Bryan Forbes, 1975
Selected clips from Valley of the Dolls, Mark Robinson, 1967
Selected clips from Sexbot, Summre Gaston, 2007
Selected clips from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Howard Hawks, 1953
“Material Girl,” Madonna, music video Love and Pop, Anno Hideaki, 1998
Selected clips from The Notorious Bettie Page, Mary Harron, 2005
Selected clips from Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, Gough Lewis, 2002

Reading:
Luce Irigaray, “Women on the Market,” and “Commodities among Themselves,” in This Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (New York: Cornell University Press, 1993), 170 - 197.

Session 8 October 14th

Screening:
Selected clips from Fight Club, David Fincher, 1999
Selected clips from The Notebook, Nick Cassavetes, 2004
Selected clips from Dawn of the Dead, 1978
Selected clips from Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord, 1973
This is not a kiss, Christopher Bannister, 2009

Reading:
R. L. Rutsky, “Information Wants to be Consumed,” Consumption in an Age of Information (New York: Berg, 2005), 61-75.

Guy Debord, “Separation Perfected,” Society of the Spectacle, (click here).

Session 9 October 21

NO CLASS – ANNUAL MA CONFERENCE (attendance will be taken)

Part Three: Theories in Non-Narrative Cinema

Session 10 October 28th

Screening:
Not Angels but Angels, Wiktor Grodecki, 1994
Selected clips from Comizi d’amore, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1965 [Love Meetings]
Selected clips from Kids, Larry Clark, 1995
Selected clips from Blow Job, Andy Warhol, 1963
Selected clips from Fuses, Carolee Schneemann, 1967
Selected clips from Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston, 1990
Selected clips from The Good Woman of Bangkok, Dennis O'Rourke, 1991
Selected clips from Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, Gough Lewis, 2002

Reading:
Bill Nichols, “Pornography, Ethnography, and the Discourses of Power,” in Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 201 – 228.

Session 11 November 4th

Screening:
Reassemblage: from the firelight to the screen, Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1982
Surname Viêt, given name Nam: a film, Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1989

Reading:
Trinh T. Minh-ha, "The Totalizing Quest for Meaning," When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics (New York: Routledge, 1991), 29 - 50.

Scott MacDonald, "Trinh T. Minh-ha: Naked Spaces - Living Is Round," Avant-Garde Film (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 147 - 156.

Session 12 November 11th

NO CLASS – Veteran’s Day

Session 13 November 18th

Screening:
The Road to Guantánamo, Mat Whitecross and Michael Winterbottom, 2006

Reading:
Roland Barthes, “The Discourse of History,” in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 127 - 140.

Roland Barthes, “The Reality Effect,” in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 141 - 148.

Roland Barthes, “Writing the Event,” in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 149 - 154.

Session 14 November 25th

NO CLASS – Thanksgiving Recess

Session 15 December 2nd

Screening:
Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman, 2008
Selected clip from Chicago 10, Brett Morgen, 2007
Selected clip from Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris, 2008
Selected clip from The Thin Blue Line, Errol Morris, 1988
Selected clip from Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., Errol Morris, 1999
Selected clip from The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, Errol Morris, 2003

Reading:
Ari Folman interview on Fresh Air “Dancing With Memory, Massacre In Bashir” December 23, 2008
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98634515

Bill Nichols, “The Terrorist Event,” in Mark Franko ed., Ritual and Event (New York: Routledge, 2007), 93 – 108.

Wolfgang Ernst, “Distory: Cinema and Historical Discourse,” Journal of Contemporary History vol. 18, no. 3 (July 1983): 397 – 409. Available via JSTOR.

Session 16 December 9th

Screening:
Bara no soretsu, Matsumoto Toshio, 1969 [Funeral Parade of Roses]
Selected clip from Shura, Matsumoto Toshio, 1971
Selected clip from Dogura magura, Matsumoto Toshio, 1988
Selected clip from Hiroshima mon amour, Alain Resnais, 1959

Reading:
Unpublished interview with Toshio Matsumoto conducted by Miyo Inoue and Aaron Kerner

Session 17 December 16th

NO CLASS – Final’s Week