Course Catalog

Over the past twenty years, Granada, HBO, and the BBC have been creating series such as The Singing Detective, Cracker, MI5, The Sopranos, and The Wire that are much darker and more persuasive and perverse than anything else on television or on the big screen. Students will examine these 'visual texts,' and will also outline one or two series of their own, working on individual scenes that will be dramatized in class.

In Art of Screenwriting students consider the elements necessary for successful screenwriting practices, with close attention to the theory of screenwriting as influenced by other arts. In particular, a close emphasis of the course is on the art of narrative and the central role played by adaptation of novels in screenwriting practice. Character development, structure, dialogue and conflict are analyzed through exemplary scripting such as in the works of Jane Campion, Roman Polanski and others. The course culminates in a hands-on guided approach to scriptwriting by students.

Cinema always raises questions about its times -- the silent era from 1895-1930 is no exception. This course looks at silent cinema through a global lens, tracing a range of influences in the development of film language from early film experiments, the rise of narrative, the work of early film pioneers, German and Soviet film explorations of mise-en-scene and montage, consolidation of the film industry and challenges from avant-garde cinema. The films we screen from Europe and the US,along with key works from Latin American, African and Asian cinema, reflect at a time of social and political upheaval and dazzling cinematic invention.

Studies Welles' chaotic film career - his spectacular rise and fall, quest for a total cinema, exile, frustrations and triumphs, both as actor and filmmaker - and his place in American cinema. Films include: Citizen Kane, The agnificent Ambersons, Journey Into Fear, The Lady From Shanghai, Macbeth, The Third Man, Mr. Arkadin, Touch of Evil, and The Trial.

The course analyzes the work of one of the greatest, most influential film directors in the history of cinema, whose prodigious career spanned the silent and sound eras. Hitchcock made major contributions first to British film, then to the classic Hollywood style. Students begin by establishing Hitchcock’s concept of pure cinema, and then trace the biographical origins of his fascination with “fright”. They also explore the major influences in his work. The director’s move to American cinema focuses on his volatile work relationship with his producer, David Selznick, in films like Rebecca and Spellbound. A study of this transition culminates in an in-depth analysis of Hitchcock’s debt to the Surrealists, the subsequent fascination of the French New Wave for his works and his role as an inaugural auteur. Hitchcock’s command of his craft and his technical innovation to create masterpieces of suspense transformed modern cinema.

Quentin Tarantino once said, “I steal from every movie I see.” How does his passion for cinema, sampling, cannibalizing, transforming and creating new cinematic approaches raise questions around violence, gender, globalism and cultural performance? Looking at films from Reservoir Dogs to Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Django and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and the films of influences Woo, Leone, Godard, and others.

This course explores the cinema of Agnès Varda, one of the world’s great filmmakers. To study Varda’s work over is to engage important cinematic questions around politics, marginality and community while also engaging critical shifts in form. The course additionally sharpens skills in close analysis, critical review, writing, curatorial and presentational skills in film studies.

From its earliest inceptions, cinema has been built out of and nurtured by the Science Fiction which dominated the end of the 19th Century. Fantasy, a brainchild of the Enlightenment, has also had a profound impact on the early directions of cinema, notably with the work of Méliès. Cinema has equally been fueled by rapid transitions in early 20th century developments in psychology, notably the Freudian concept of the uncanny. Technological progress, the urban alienation associated with the Modernist aesthetic and the advent of wars fought through technologically advanced weaponry have contributed to a long-standing fascination with these cinematic genres. This fascination is informed by these genres’ simultaneous escapist tendencies and their abilities to create striking allegories for the disturbing trends of the cinematic age. In this course, students explore the themes of both fantasy and science fiction cinema, such as the dichotomy of utopias and dystopias; the “trucage” of the early screen and the eminent fear of apocalypse which pervades much of these genres’ canons throughout their evolutions. Pivotal theorists such as Gerard Genette, Tzevetan Todorov, Susan Sontag and others are considered in order to provide the intellectual backdrop for these genres’ progressive move into central cinematic areas of study. The origins of the genres and the principal film directors who have shaped the genre are also analyzed in depth.