CINE 200: Introduction to Film Studies
Summer 2008
Tuesday and Thursday 9:00 to 1:00
Office: FA 536
Email: amkerner@sfsu.edu
Website: http://online.sfsu.edu/~amkerner/index.html
Office Hours: Tuesday 1:00 - 2:00
Course Description: This course is a survey of the discipline of Film Studies, its methodologies, genres and histories. Through an examination of various cinematic forms, styles, and genres, roughly following a historical chronology, the course aims to develop the critical skills crucial to the discourse of Film Studies. Such a critical evaluation of cinema demands an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from such disparate sources as: Aesthetics, Art History, Cultural Studies, Feminism, and Postcolonial Studies. In addition to developing an understanding of the critical tools available to us, the course is designed to provide a wide survey of the world's classic cinema.
This course is designed for prospective film majors. If you wish to continue in the film major, you must receive a grade of 'C' or higher in this course and in Cinema 202.
Summer Session: Please note that this is will be a highly demanding course and because the Summer Session is designed to fit a semester's worth of work into a month, falling behind in the course reading will have grave consequences. Moreover, missing a class is tantamount to missing approximately two week's of classes during the course of a regular semester. Because our actual scheduled class time during the Summer Session is limited, which will ultimately curtail our screening time, all the films that are subject to examination will be available at the Media Access Center on the 3rd floor of the library. Even if class time does not permit the screening of a film in its entirety, it will be assumed that the student watched the scheduled film outside of class. The films listed in red on the syllabus are required viewing beginning to end regardless if they are screened during class or not.
Course
Requirements:
1. Attend all class meetings
2. Readings must be completed by the assigned dates
3. All written work must be submitted on time
Course Assessment: Accompanying each examination (the two midterms and the final) there will be a short paper assignment. Prompts/questions will be posted online prior to each exam. These should be typed and submitted on the day of the exam.
|
Midterm One |
15% |
|
Take Home One |
10% |
|
Midterm Two |
15% |
|
Take Home Two |
10% |
|
Final Examination |
25% |
|
Final Take Home |
15% |
|
Attendance/Participation |
10% |
Plagiarism and other issues concerning academic integrity will not be tolerated, and is grounds for an automatic 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 - Chicago Manual of Style:
For assistance with citations see the online version of Diana Hacker's A Pocket Style Manual.
Course Text:
1. Bordwell,
David
and Thompson, Kristin. Film Art:
An Introduction Eighth Edition. New York: McGraw Hill, 2001.
Films:
All the films listed below are available at the Media Access Center located on the 3rd floor of the library. Because class time is limited it might be necessary to watch the films outside of class. I have provided call numbers.
Film Form
Session 1 June 10th: Course Introduction (PPT) and Early Film (PPT)
Screening:
1. Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, Fax Bahr with George Hickenlooper; documentary footage directed by Eleanor Coppola, 1991 SFSU AV# 61466
2. The Lumière Brothers' First Films, 1895-97/1996 SFSU AV# 65186
Reading:
1. Film Art "Chapter One - Film As Art: Creativity, Technology, and Business."
2. Film Art, "Chapter Twelve - Film Art and Film History"
Session 2 June 12th: Developing Cinematic Form (PPT)Screening:
1. Selections from Lumie�re and Company, 1995 SFSU AV#66977
2. Chinpokomon, South Park, 2000 REQUEST AT THE MEDIA ACCESS CENTER
3. The Wizard of Oz, Victor Fleminng, 1939 SFSU AV# 65264
Reading:
1. Film Art, "Chapter Two - The Significance of Film Form."
Session 3 June 17th: Standardizing the Cinema (PPT)
Screening:
1. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1919 SFSU AV# 84904
2. Rebel Without a Cause, Nicholas Ray, 1955 SFSU AV# 65474
Reading:
1. Film Art, "Chapter Four - The Shot: Mise-en-Scene."
2. Film Art, "Chapter Five - The Shot: Cinematography."
Session 4 June 19th: (The Effects of) Sound in Cinema (PPT)
Screening:
1. Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola, 1979 SFSU AV# 65276
2. What's Up Tiger Lily, Wood Allen, 1964 SFSU AV# 60521
Reading:
1. Film Art, "Chapter Seven - Sound in Cinema"
On June 26th Midterm One on Film
Form
from 9:00 - 11:00
Narrative Structure
Session 5 June 24th: Cinema in Bits and Pieces… (PPT)
Screening:
1. Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein, 1925 SFSU AV# 84885
2. The Man With a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov, 1929 SFSU AV# 87783
3. Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock, 1960 SFSU AV# 65295
4. The Maltese Falcon, John Huston, 1941 SFSU AV# 65288
5. The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock, 1963 SFSU AV# 65940
Reading:
1. Film Art, "Chapter Six - The Relation of Shot to Shot: Editing"
Session 6 June 26th: Narrative and
Style (PPT)
Screening:
1. Citizen Kane, Orson Welles, 1941 SFSU AV# 84086
2. Rashomon, Akira Kurosawa, 1950 SFSU AV# 87267
3. Ghost Dog, Jim Jarmusch, 1999 REQUEST AT THE MEDIA ACCESS CENTER
4. Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters, Paul Schrader, 1985 SFSU AV# 80936
Reading:
1. Film Art, "Chapter Eight - Summary: Style as a Formal System"
2. Film Art, "Chapter Three - Narrative as a Formal System"
Session 7 July 1st: Documentary - just the facts please… (PPT)
Screening:
1. Triumph of the Will Leni Riefenstahl, 1935 SFSU AV# 87124
2. Shoah, Claude Lanzmann, 1985 SFSU AV# 87211
3.
Mr. Death, Errol Morris, 1999 REQUEST AT THE MEDIA
ACCESS
CENTER
Reading:
1. Film Art, "Chapter Ten - Documentary, Experimental, and Animated Films"
On July 3rd Midterm Two on
Narrative Structures
from 9:00 - 11:00
Film Theory and Criticism
Session 8 July 3rd: Feminist Criticism (PPT) and Black Spectatorship (PPT)
Screening:
1.
Peeping Tom Michael Powell, 1960 REQUEST AT THE MEDIA
ACCESS CENTER
2. Birth of a Nation, D. W. Griffith, 1915 SFSU AV# 84361
3. Baadasssss, Mario Van Peebles, 2004 REQUEST AT THE MEDIA ACCESS CENTER
Reading:
1. Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," in Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 14 - 26. On e-reserve
2. Manthia Diawara, "Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance," in Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings Fifth Edition Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 845 - 853. On e-reserve.
Session 9 July 8 th: The Tradition
of
Realism
(PPT)
Screening:
1. The Bicycle Thief, Vittorio De Sica, 1948 SFSU AV# 65286
2. Kids, Larry Clark, 1995 SFSU AV# 65030
3.
The Blair Witch Project, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, 1999
SFSU
AV# 65156
Reading:
1. Susan Hayward, "Realism," Key Concepts in Cinema Studies (New York: Routledge, 1996), 298 - 300. On e-reserve
2. André Bazin, "An Aesthetic of Reality: Cinematic Realism and the Italian School of Liberation," What Is Cinema? Volume II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971): 16 - 40. On e-reserve
Session 10 July 10 th
Final Exam