Описание:The course provides an introduction to cinema’s history as technology, commodity, and cultural form from cinema’s birth till the rise of television in the 1960s. The primary texts of this course are individual films. Hence, this course involves intensive viewing and discussing of the films and has a limited, though rigorous, reading component.
We will concentrate primarily on fictional, live-action, narrative cinema. However, we will also examine some documentary, animated and experimental films. While the course is structured chronologically, we will articulate a set of conceptual questions as we move from early cinema to the new waves of the 1950s and 60s and these questions will animate our twice-weekly meetings as well as your essay topics on the midterm and final exams.
The major objective of this course is to explore the conjunction between the film form and historical/cultural context asking why and to what effect a particular form of cinema responds to its time and place. By the end of the course you will be able to
(1) Identify the key characteristics of film art as a transnational cultural institution.
(2) Understand the historical development of cinema as a cultural institution.
(3) Identify the distinctive characteristics of films’ form and these characteristics’ role in the development of American and representative national cinemas.
(4) Discuss and write critically about representative films and their cultural-historical context.
(5) Examine representative American, French, British, German, Russian, Soviet, Italian, Japanese, Senegalese films within the mainstay categories of film studies, including national tradition, genre, industrial organization, third cinema, and individual auteurs,
(6) Develop the conceptual vocabulary for the future independent research and analysis of international cinema.