FILM 150a, Introduction to Film Studies  Staff

A survey of film studies concentrating on theory, analysis, and criticism. Students learn the critical and technical vocabulary of the subject and study important films in weekly screenings. Prerequisite for the major.  WR, HU  0 Course cr
MW 1:30pm-2:20pm, M 7pm-10pm

FILM 154a / ER&M 154a / LAST 154a / PORT 154a / WGSS 154a, Advanced Studies: Women Filmmakers and Photographers of the Portuguese-Speaking World  Giseli Tordin

Women Filmmakers and Photographers of the Portuguese-Speaking World is a Portuguese advanced course that delves into the language and culture of the Lusophone world through the lens of women filmmakers and photographers. Organized into three interconnected units, namely, "Diasporas and (De)Territorialities", "Memories They Told Me", and "Reframing Other Existences", students explore how these authors bring forth other perspectives, including those of indigenous people, Afro-Lusophone women, immigrants, and LGBTQIA+ community, among others, challenging societal norms and dominant portrayals. It also explores how their films and photographs reconnect with cultural roots in Africa and Latin America, fragmented by patriarchy, colonialism, and capitalism. By exploring a variety of productions by photographers like Yassmin Forte, Madalena Schwartz, Claudia Andujar, and filmmakers like Anna Muylaert, Carolina Paiva, and Lúcia Murat, among others, students investigate links between identities, memory, and language, enabling them to describe, interpret and make inferences about how cultural environments have been historically constructed and how these artistic productions reshape perceptions of our societies. By the course's end, students have a deeper understanding of the Portuguese language and diverse cultural aspects within the Lusophone world. Conducted in Portuguese. Portuguese 140 or equivalent.  L5, HU
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

FILM 160b / ENGL 2810b, Introduction to Media  Staff

Introduction to the long history of media.  Focus on taken-for-granted infrastructures as the deep background for the digital age.  History will be our major resource for understanding the present.  We move through strategically selected case studies including technologies for controlling space and time, writing in its many forms, visual and auditory media, and digital media.  Media theory will be taught alongside case studies. Formerly ENGL 196.  WR, HU  0 Course cr
MW 10:30am-11:20am

* FILM 161a / ART 241a, Introductory Film Writing and Directing  Jonathan Andrews

Problems and aesthetics of film studied in practice as well as in theory. In addition to exploring movement, image, montage, point of view, and narrative structure, students photograph and edit their own short videotapes. Emphasis on the writing and production of short dramatic scenes. Priority to majors in Art and in Film & Media Studies.  RP
T 1:30pm-5:20pm

* FILM 162a or b / ART 142a or b, Introductory Documentary Filmmaking  Staff

The art and craft of documentary filmmaking. Basic technological and creative tools for capturing and editing moving images. The processes of research, planning, interviewing, writing, and gathering of visual elements to tell a compelling story with integrity and responsibility toward the subject. The creation of nonfiction narratives. Issues include creative discipline, ethical questions, space, the recreation of time, and how to represent "the truth."  RP
HTBA

* FILM 205a / GMAN 205a / HUMS 160a / LITR 244a, The Question of Technology in Continental Theory  Staff

In Greek mythology, Niobe is the queen of Thebes and mother of six daughters and six sons. She rebelled against the gods and was severely punished for it: her children were killed and she herself was petrified in eternal mourning. In Walter Benjamin's much-discussed essay "On the Critique of Violence", Niobe's fate is a memorial to a mythical violence that has never been overcome. According to Benjamin, this violence today is linked to an instrumental approach to technology. In the seminar, we discuss media and technology philosophical approaches by Benjamin, Heidegger, Simondon, Haraway, Chude-Sokei, among others, but also texts by Kant, in order to explore the question of how we should understand the entanglement of melancholy, violence and an instrumental understanding of technology. Furthermore, we discuss how this link between violence, technology and melancholy can be resolved from the perspective of Benjamin's critique of violence.  HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm

FILM 232b / THST 241b, Classical Hollywood Narrative 1920–1960  Staff

Survey of Classical Hollywood films. Topics include history of the studio system; origin and development of genres; the film classics of the Classical Hollywood period, and the producers, screenwriters, directors, and cinematographers who created them.   WR, HU  0 Course cr
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm, T 7pm-10pm

FILM 240b / HUMS 190b / LITR 143b, Cinema in the World  Moira Fradinger

Development of ways to engage films from around the globe productively. Close analysis of a dozen complex films, with historical contextualization of their production and cultural functions. Attention to the development of critical skills. Includes weekly screenings, each followed immediately by discussion.  HU
HTBA

* FILM 241b / PLSH 246b, Polish Communism and Postcommunism in Film  Krystyna Illakowicz

The Polish film school of the 1950s and the Polish New Wave of the 1960s. Pressures of politics, ideology, and censorship on cinema. Topics include gender roles in historical and contemporary narratives, identity, ethos of struggle, ethical dilemmas, and issues of power, status, and idealism. Films by Wajda, Munk, Polanski, Skolimowski, Kieslowski, Holland, and Kedzierzawska, as well as selected documentaries. Readings by Milosz, Andrzejewski, Mickiewicz, Maslowska, Haltoff, and others. Readings and discussion in English.  HU
MW 1pm-2:15pm

* FILM 263a, The Movie Memory Project  Camille Thomasson

This course is an interdisciplinary offering for students of film and media, American studies, architecture, history of art, data science, East Asian studies, economics, history, psychology, and theater studies to participate in a class focused on the Movie Memory Project. For seven years, my students in Classical Hollywood Narrative have collected interviews from their elders about early movie memories. We have 500 interviews from around the world. I'm looking for self-motivated students who want to delve into the Movie Memory archive to research a topic of their choice. Students should be passionate about research, self-directed, and willing to work collaboratively to share findings with a community of scholars. Please go to the syllabus to apply.  WR, HU
T 1:30pm-3:20pm

* FILM 307a / EALL 280a / EAST 260a, East Asian Martial Arts Film  Staff

The martial arts film has not only been a central genre for many East Asian cinemas, it has been the cinematic form that has most defined those cinemas for others. Domestically, martial arts films have served to promote the nation, while on the international arena, they have been one of the primary conduits of transnational cinematic interaction, as kung-fu or samurai films have influenced films inside and outside East Asia, from The Matrix to Kill Bill. Martial arts cinema has become a crucial means for thinking through such issues as nation, ethnicity, history, East vs. West, the body, gender, sexuality, stardom, industry, spirituality, philosophy, and mediality, from modernity to postmodernity. It is thus not surprising that martial arts films have also attracted some of the world’s best filmmakers, ranging from Kurosawa Akira to Wong Kar Wai. This course focuses on films from Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea—as well as on works from other countries influenced by them—covering such martial arts genres such as the samurai film, kung-fu, karate, wuxia, and related historical epics. It provides a historical survey of each nation and genre, while connecting them to other genres, countries, and media.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* FILM 310a / GMAN 331a / HUMS 281a / LITR 416a, Paper: Material and Medium  Austen Hinkley

Paper is one of the most ubiquitous and indispensable media of the modern era.  Although we are (still) surrounded by it, paper tends to recede into the background, working best when we do not notice it at all. This course sets out to challenge our understanding of paper as a neutral or passive bearer of inscriptions by foregrounding its material quality. Our focus rests in equal parts on the media history of paper and paper works of art–among them many literary texts–that reflect or take advantage of their medium. Studying materials and histories from the early modern period to the present, we uncover paper’s status as a commodity bound up in a complex web of economic processes, as an instrument of political power, as a gendered and racialized object, and as a material that can be cut, shuffled, and even eaten. Ultimately, we investigate how paper is still central to our lives, even in the age of tablets and PDFs. Readings include Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems, Robert Walser’s “Microscripts,” and M. NourbeSe Philip’s “Zong!” The class makes several visits to the Beinecke Library for hands-on work with paper materials.  WR, HU
Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

* FILM 320b / HSAR 490b, Close Analysis of Film  Oksana Chefranova

Close study of a range of major films from a variety of periods and places. Apart from developing tools for the close analysis of film, we consider such topics as genre and mode; the role of sound; cinema as a structure of gazes; remakes and adaptations; approaches to realism; narration and resistance to narration; film in relation to other moving image media; and the relationship of close analysis to historical contextualization and interpretation more generally. Prerequisite: FILM 150.  WR, HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm, M 7pm-9pm

* FILM 325a / GMAN 379a / LITR 374a, German Cinema 1918–1933  Jan Hagens

The years between 1918 and 1933 are the Golden Age of German film. In its development from Expressionism to Social Realism, this German cinema produced works of great variety, many of them in the international avantgarde. This introductory seminar gives an overview of the silent movies and sound films made during the Weimar Republic and situate them in their artistic, cultural, social, and political context between WWI and WWII, between the Kaiser’s German Empire and the Nazis’ Third Reich. Further objectives include: familiarizing students with basic categories of film studies and film analysis; showing how these films have shaped the history and the language of film; discussing topic-oriented and methodological issues such as: film genres (horror film, film noir, science fiction, street film, documentary film); set design, camera work, acting styles; narration in film; avantgarde cinema; the advent and use of sound in film; Realism versus Expressionism; film and popular mythology; melodrama; representation of women; modern urban life as spectacle; film and politics. Directors studied include: Grune, Lang, Lubitsch, Murnau, Pabst, Richter, Ruttmann, Sagan, von Sternberg, Wiene, et al.
   WR, HU
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

* FILM 327a / AMST 395a, Studies in Documentary Film  Charles Musser

This course examines key works, crucial texts, and fundamental concepts in the critical study of non-fiction cinema, exploring the participant-observer dialectic, the performative, and changing ideas of truth in documentary forms.  HU  RP
T 3:30pm-5:20pm, M 7pm-10pm

* FILM 333a / HUMS 422a / LITR 351a, Early Film Theory and Modernity  Francesco Casetti

For a long time, early film theory and criticism have been overlooked and underestimated. However, their recent rediscovery has highlighted their crucial role in framing film as a "modern" invention. While discussing what then was a recent invention, early film theory and criticism tackled some of the main characteristic of modern life: speed, excitation, contingency, openness, subjectivity, circulation, etc. By doing so, they underscored the parallel between modern experience and filmic representations. On the screen –they claimed– spectators do not only see the world in which they live, but also the effects of the political, industrial, and social revolutions on this world. At the same time, early film theory and criticism developed an ideal of “modern” art and “modern” language, through a systematic exploration of filmic style and iconography. According to them, film was the epitome of a “new art” for “new times.” The course explores the idea of modernity as it developed in the Western world between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Despite this limitation, we do not meet a uniform landscape; on the contrary, ideological differences and national identities played a major role in defining the perspectives forged by film theorists and critics. While considering texts from France (Delluc, Epstein), Germany (Arnheim, Kracauer), Middle-Europe (Bálazs, Lukács, Tille), Italy (Papini, Thovez), Soviet Union (Eisenstein, Vertov, Pudovkin) and USA (Lindsay, Freeburg, Münsterberg), the course systematically and critically compares them and their traditions. Every week there is a screening with films representative of the time. When possible, we use original prints.  HU
MW 9am-10:15am

* FILM 341a / MGRK 238a / WGSS 233a, Weird Greek Wave Cinema  George Syrimis

The course examines the cinematic production of Greece in the last fifteen years or so and looks critically at the popular term “weird Greek wave” applied to it. Noted for their absurd tropes, bizarre narratives, and quirky characters, the films question and disturb traditional gender and social roles, as well as international viewers’ expectations of national stereotypes of classical luminosity–the proverbial “Greek light”–Dionysian exuberance, or touristic leisure. Instead, these works frustrate not only a wholistic reading of Greece as a unified and coherent social construct, but also the physical or aesthetic pleasure of its landscape and its ‘quaint’ people with their insistence on grotesque, violent, or otherwise disturbing images or themes (incest, sexual otherness and violence, aggression, corporeality, and xenophobia). The course also pays particular attention on the economic and political climate of the Greek financial crisis during which these films are produced and consumed and to which they partake.  HU
HTBA

FILM 342a / EALL 297a / EAST 300a, Global Korean Cinema  Tian Li

In recent times, world cinema has witnessed the rise of South Korean cinema as an alternative to Hollywood and includes many distinguished directors such as Park Chan-wook, Lee Chang-dong, Kim Ki-duk, and Bong Joon-ho. This course explores the Korean film history and aesthetics from its colonial days (1910-1945) to the hallyu era (2001-present), and also analyzes several key texts that are critical for understanding this field of study. How is Korean cinema shaped by (re)interpretations of history and society? How do we understand Korean cinema vis-à-vis the public memories of the Korean War, industrialization, social movements, economic development, and globalization? And how do aesthetics and storytelling in Korean cinema contribute to its popularity among local spectators and to its globality in shaping the contours of world cinema? By deeply inquiring into such questions, students learn how to critically view, think about, and write about film. Primary texts include literature and film. All films are screened with English subtitles.  HU
M 3:30pm-5:20pm, M 6pm-9pm

* FILM 344a / GMAN 344a, Landscape, Film, Architecture  Fatima Naqvi

Movement through post-1945 landscapes and cityscapes as a key to understanding them. The use of cameras and other visual-verbal means as a way to expand historical, aesthetic, and sociological inquiries into how these places are inhabited and experienced. Exploration of both real and imaginary spaces in works by filmmakers (Wenders, Herzog, Ottinger, Geyrhalter, Seidl, Ade, Grisebach), architects and sculptors (e.g. Rudofsky, Neutra, Abraham, Hollein, Pichler, Smithson, Wurm, Kienast), photographers (Sander, B. and H. Becher, Gursky, Höfer), and writers (Bachmann, Handke, Bernhard, Jelinek). Additional readings by Certeau, Freytag, J.B. Jackson, L. Burckhardt.  HU
Th 9:25am-11:15am, W 6pm-8pm

* FILM 350a or b, Screenwriting  Shakti Bhagchandani

A beginning course in screenplay writing. Foundations of the craft introduced through the reading of professional scripts and the analysis of classic films. A series of classroom exercises culminates in intensive scene work. Prerequisite: FILM 150. Not open to first-year students.
HTBA

FILM 355b / ART 341b, Intermediate Film Writing and Directing  Jonathan Andrews

In the first half of the term, students write three-scene short films and learn the tools and techniques of staging, lighting, and capturing and editing the dramatic scene. In the second half of the term, students work collaboratively to produce their films. Focus on using the tools of cinema to tell meaningful dramatic stories. Priority to majors in Art and in Film & Media Studies. Prerequisites: ART 241.  RP
T 1:30pm-5:20pm

FILM 356b / ART 342b, Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking  Michel Auder

Students explore the storytelling potential of the film medium by making documentaries an art form. The class concentrates on finding and capturing intriguing, complex scenarios in the world and then adapting them to the film form. Questions of truth, objectivity, style, and the filmmaker's ethics are considered by using examples of students' work. Exercises in storytelling principles and screenings of a vast array of films mostly made by independent filmmakers from now to the beginning of the last century. Limited enrollment. Priority to majors in Art and in Film & Media Studies. Prerequisites: ART 141 or 142.  HU  RP
W 8:25am-12:20pm

* FILM 360a / LITR 301a / RSEE 380a / RUSS 380a, Putin's Russia and Protest Culture  Staff

Survey of Russian literature and culture since the fall of communism. The chaos of the 1990s; the solidification of power in Putin's Russia; the recent rise of protest culture. Sources include literature, film, and performances by art collectives. Readings and discussion in English; texts available in Russian.  WR, HU
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

FILM 362a / FREN 384a / ITAL 384a / JDST 289a / LITR 338a, Representing the Holocaust  Maurice Samuels and Millicent Marcus

The Holocaust as it has been depicted in books and films, and as written and recorded by survivors in different languages including French and Italian. Questions of aesthetics and authority, language and its limits, ethical engagement, metaphors and memory, and narrative adequacy to record historical truth. Interactive discussions about films (Life Is Beautiful, Schindler's List, Shoah), novels, memoirs (Primo Levi, Charlotte Delbo, Art Spiegelman), commentaries, theoretical writings, and testimonies from Yale's Fortunoff Video Archive.  WR, HU
TTh 2:30pm-3:45pm

* FILM 363a / LAST 360a / LITR 360a, Radical Cinemas of Latin America  Staff

Introduction to the radical New Latin American Cinema movement that started in the sixties, with an emphasis on manifestos that conceived the relation between art and politics for social change and with a corpus of films produced in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Haiti and Mexico. Examination of films in their historical and aesthetic aspects, and in light of questions concerning national cinema, "militant cinema," "political cinema" and "third cinema." Discussions about the global sixties at large, and about some Latin American texts that were read globally. Conducted in English; knowledge of Spanish and Portuguese helpful but not required.  HU  0 Course cr
HTBA

* FILM 369a / HUMS 186a / RSEE 244a / RUSS 222a, War Games  Staff

Dismissed, mocked, feared or loved for decades, video games have become a staple of contemporary media, art, and popular culture, studied alongside traditional print media and film. They eclipse the global yearly revenue of both film and music industries combined, leaving their financial significance undeniable. What remains understudied, however, is the political and cultural significance of the medium. War Games is a seminar dedicated to the intersection of video games and political violence (both real and imaginary) in a global and particularly post-Cold War context. Students learn to recognize patterns of ideological communication in video games while developing close reading skills of literature and digital media alike. We combine the study of video games with broader inquires into the media that circulate through the game mediaverse, including literature, social and news media, and film. Playing games and reading books, we pose the following questions: How do players “perform” war in games, and how might they resist or subvert expected performances? How indeed are we as readers and players affected by the type of media we consume? What is an adaptation? How do adaptations influence or potentially reshape our relationships with the source material? What themes and ideas are revealed effectively through one medium versus another? Why do certain literary traditions (such as classical Russian literature) provide such fruitful ground for video game adaptation? What are the political implications for the ideologies present in a video game given the globalized position of the medium? Assigned readings include novels, short stories, news media, and internet forums alongside a range of secondary materials, including film and media theory, intellectual and media histories, digital anthropology, reception studies, and interviews.  HU  Tr
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm, W 7pm-8pm

* FILM 371a, Migration, Exile, and Diasporic Cinema  Staff

World cinema has been affected by various waves of voluntary and forced migrations during the 20th and 21st centuries. This course investigates the constitutive influence of diasporas, of émigrés artistic networks, of exile, and more generally of artists' transnational movements in the making of films and in the writing of film history. What would characterize, and would distinguish, migration, diaspora, and exile cinemas? What are the artistic and mediatic outcomes of constant movements due to economic, cultural, political or humanitarian needs? And reversely, how do cinema reflect these issues? What do films made in a context of migrations expose of the most “sweeping transformation of collective historical experience since WWII” (Burgoyne & Bayrakdar, 2022)? The circulations of artists from countries and continents goes hand in hand with the circulation of practices and ideas that influence in return the representations and the art works. We detail numerous processes revealing the central influence played by migrations in the making of films and the mixing of cultural references. But beyond cultural hybridization, exiles and émigrés artists also promote the expression of political ideas. Each week, we analyze one or two influential essays (Flusser, Bhabha, Nacif, etc.) to explore how crossings and diasporas have affected modern societies, and how cinematic dynamics testify from it.  HU
HTBA

* FILM 372a, What is Television?  Staff

Television, as an experience, a spectatorial mode, and a medium, entered our lives in the 1950s. This mass medium has since proved to be surprisingly shape-shifting, moving from public, linear broadcasting to cable TV to, now, streaming platforms. This course employs a keywords approach to offer a historical, albeit nonlinear, account of domestic spectatorship. Built around a set of theoretical debates and watershed moments--from black-and-white to color, analog to digital, standard to high-definition, and broadcast to cable--we explore how people have engaged with television in a variety of ways. Who is the imaginary spectator? Is it the distracted suburban housewife, the child subjected to an “electronic babysitter,” or, more recently, the early adopter of new technologies? Who has been historically excluded from domestic and public rituals of spectatorship? Drawing on a variety of readings, screenings, podcast episodes, and assignments, we will engage with these questions and other aspects of television as a medium in order to rethink not only how but why we (still) watch TV.  HU
W 3:30pm-5:20pm

* FILM 382a, Cinema as Room for Play  Staff

In 1936, Walter Benjamin observed that the loss of the aura was compensated by an enormous gain in “room-for-play” (Spiel-Raum), which, as he claimed, was the widest in film. What is left of this Spiel-Raum in cinema today? And how was it explored in the past decades? Was it limited to avant-garde practices or did it also expand to mainstream cinema? And what about the spectators? Is Benjamin’s notion turning them into players? This seminar proposes to rethink cinema as a form of play and to make connections, throughout history, with other playful media practices. Can for instance the Internet with its numerous GIF makers and social media platforms be considered as the new Spiel-Raum? How are contemporary online loops related to 19th-century optical toys and proto-cinematic slot machines? What made cinema the medium of “suspension of disbelief,” which is a form of pretend play? These and other questions are addressed to get to a better understanding of what cinema was and still is today. Therefore, the seminar revisits classical theories of play (Huizinga, Caillois, Winnicott) as well as contemporary game theories, which students are invited to apply to various film practices, ranging from avant-garde films to Nouvelle Vague productions and mind-game movies to selfie videos and playful recordings made with smartphones and other mobile devices.  HU  Tr
TTh 1pm-2:15pm

* FILM 390a, Media, AI and Algorithmic Bias  Staff

Algorithms, a systematic way to perform a task in a finite number of steps, existed long before the computer was invented. In the digital age, algorithms are chains of actions or steps that define how software will perform and react. As such they condition, shape, and transform our daily lives: Algorithms play a crucial role in deciding which clothes we buy, which songs we listen to, which books we read, who we might date, and how much we would pay for a flight ticket. They help shift political opinions and shape cultural tastes. However, the logic on which algorithmic systems are based and the infrastructures that sustain them are still largely unknown to their users (and, increasingly, to their developers). This course explores several case studies – from Netflix’s recommendation system to Google’s autocomplete – in order to demystify the logic of algorithms and map the understudied ways in which they paradoxically decrease diversity of tastes, opinions, and experiences despite the techno-utopian promise of endless choice. This process of “un-black boxing” will emphasize “the implantation gap” in algorithmic systems and the ways in which they give birth to new systems of control, surveillance, and biopower.      WR, HU
TTh 11:35am-12:50pm

* FILM 395b, Intermediate Screenwriting  Shakti Bhagchandani

A workshop in writing short screenplays. Frequent revisions of each student's script focus on uniting narrative, well-delineated characters, dramatic action, tone, and dialogue into a polished final screenplay. Prerequisite: FILM 350. Priority to majors in Film & Media Studies.
HTBA

* FILM 417a, Experimental Multimodal Videomaking and Exhibition  Leighton Pierce

In this course we make ten prompt driven one-minute video projects specifically designed to increase fluidity of thinking-through-videomaking. Some of the projects happen in class. Most are out-of-class assignments for which I give specific problems to solve or parameters to work within. Some assignments we design as a class. When we are not shooting or editing in class we exercise our critical skills by screening projects and discussing them. We take experimental approaches to the process of making these 10 videos as we glance toward the standard cinematic categories of drama, documentary, experimental film, and animation as we glide past. These categories are familiar, but not always productive, divisions among modes of production since none of these categories defines clear boundaries between practices. Instead, this class leads us closer to understanding the complex array of contingencies impinging on all filmmaking processes. We take an ecologically based, transdisciplinary attitude rather than a categorized genre-based categorization. We continually ask, how do the various aspects and approaches to a filmmaking environment  interact and modify each other? Through weekly prompt based video-making exercises, we navigate through a topography of filmmaking and exhibition practices.   HU
HTBA

* FILM 422a / ENGL 343a / HUMS 445a, Modernities: The Aesthetics of Adaptation  Katja Lindskog

Adaptations of literary texts are the bread and butter of visual narrative media like TV and film. Adaptations of certain authors and texts have given rise to entire sub-genres and cottage industries. We consider what adaptations of literary texts, particularly very famous and beloved texts, might help us understand better about the texts themselves, and about the needs and expectations of the audiences of their adaptations. To that purpose, this course explores the purposes and effects of adaptation through a study of a variety of screen versions of adapted texts by authors including Jane Austen, Emily St. John Mandel, and Geoffrey Chaucer. Assigned readings include both literary texts and screen adaptations.  HU
MW 2:30pm-3:45pm

* FILM 424a or b, What Is or Was an Image?  Staff

How can we define the image in the digital age? Vilém Flusser once remarked that the composite essence of digital technology was already embedded in photography because the photographic image is an image composed of points, which the human eye synthesizes into an image. This seminar proposes not only to revisit Flusser’s notion of the “technical image” in light of today’s changes in visual culture but also to rethink the history of image technologies beyond (or beneath) their visual dimensions. Starting with 15th- and 16th-century perspectival images and drawing tools—from Alberti’s “veil” to Dürer’s grid—, we trace the origins of the digital image with detours in the history of textile and the invention of the Jacquard loom, patented in 1804. Subsequently, the course analyzes 19th-century optical devices and so-called philosophical toys that required manual operation to produce the illusion of a moving image, fooling the human eye. Moving into the 20th century, Vertov’s “kino-eye” is reread as an early theory of machine vision. Other topics are: the indexicality of the photographic image, the haptic quality of the video image, the operational image of surveillance and warfare, the history of 3D images, CGIs, and GIFs. What is or was there to see? Do we (still) need to believe our eyes? Lastly, we study the non-visual dimension of the screenic image and the emergence of AI generated images.  HU
HTBA

* FILM 425b / GMAN 275b / LITR 358b, East German Literature and Film  Katie Trumpener

The German Democratic Republic (1949-1989) was a political and aesthetic experiment that failed, buffeted by external pressures, and eroded by internal contradictions. For forty years, in fact, its most ambitious literary texts and films (some suppressed, others widely popular) explored such contradictions, often in a vigilant, Brechtian spirit of irony and dialectics. This course examines key texts both as aesthetic experiments and as critiques of the country’s emerging cultural institutions and state censorship, recurrent political debates and pressing social issues. Texts by Brecht, Uwe Johnson, Heiner Müller, Christa Wolf, Johannes Bobrowski, Franz Fühmann, Wolf Biermann, Thomas Brasch, Christoph Hein; films by Slatan Dudow, Kurt Maetzig, Konrad Wolf, Heiner Carow, Frank Beyer, Jürgen Böttcher, Volker Koepp.   Knowledge of German desirable but not crucial; all texts available in English.  WR, HU
HTBA

* FILM 426a / GMAN 426a, Cinema of Crisis  Fatima Naqvi

This course looks at European films dealing with various crises since 1945. The legacy of National Socialism, the rise of domestic and international terrorism (both before and after 9/11), the vast migrations of peoples, an increase in precarity, racism, and populism, the critique of capitalism, and the degradation of the environment—we examine these issues in films made after the end of World War II. Some of the questions that guide our inquiry are: When does violence seem like a legitimate answer to political, economic, and social pressures and the legacies of fascism and colonialism? Where and how do environmental issues come to the fore in an increasingly global Europe? How does cinema depict today’s multicultural societies in conflict? And how do gender issues inflect the precarious economic conditions shown in the films? Does the rise of digital technology inflect the way in which films portray history and memory? In directors’ varied aesthetic responses to death, displacement, and destruction, we find a growing consciousness of the social contradictions that lead to violence. This course seeks to define key words of cultural study such as public sphere, populism, precarity, neoliberalism, Anthropocene. It also seeks to give students insight into central concepts of film analysis (genre, spectatorship, point-of-view, audience, slow cinema). We take our case studies largely from Germany, Austria, France, and Italy. Films by Wolfgang Staudte, Alain Resnais, Alexander Kluge, Jean-Marie Straub, Volker Schlöndorff, Chris Marker, Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Harun Farocki, Michael Haneke, Christian Petzold, Jessica Hausner, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Julian Radlmaier, Hubert Sauper, Sudabeh Mortezai, Ruth Beckermann, among others. Readings and discussion are in English; all films are with subtitles. Students are encouraged to read the texts in the original where possible. The use of ChatGPT only with explicit instructor permission.  HU
HTBA

* FILM 431a, The Other Side of French and Francophone Cinema

What is the story of French and Francophone Cinema if told by other countries? May an external point of view engender a new interpretative move towards familiar topics and subjects? If French cinematography and its historical, aesthetical, and political evolutions has mainly unfolded from an internal and national standpoint, studies in transnational cinema demonstrate the impact of cultural circulations on the making of films and on the evolution of artistic movements. By examining how French and Francophone Cinema is seen and commented on from abroad--whether in the context of collaborations between countries or the way films and filmmakers are exposed, valorized, or on the contrary, silenced--this course puts into perspective the decisive role of external influences. We revisit early French films, canonical art works and different film productions from French-speaking countries while challenging monocultural interpretative paradigms. Such an approach underlies our critical examination of The Lumière Brother's world expeditions, Méliès's film subsidiary in the US, French artists in exile, the New Wave’s connections with other countries, and Jean Rouch’s cinema. Our focus on transnational perspectives sheds light on the links between cultural circulations, the postcolonial discourse and the politicizing of art, especially in North African French-speaking film productions. Spanning early to contemporary cinema, this course illuminates the local and global dimensions of French and Francophone cinema, as well as their intricate interconnections.  HU
HTBA

* FILM 433a / AFAM 216a, Family Narratives/Cultural Shifts  Thomas Harris

This course looks at films that are redefining ideas around family and family narratives in relation to larger social movements. We focus on personal films by filmmakers who consider themselves artists, activists, or agents of change but are united in their use of the nonfiction format to speak truth to power. In different ways, these films use media to build community and build family and ultimately, to build family albums and archives that future generations can use to build their own practices. Just as the family album seeks to unite people across time, space, and difference, the films and texts explored in this course are also journeys that culminate in linkages, helping us understand nuances of identity while illuminating personal relationships to larger cultural, social, and historical movements.  HU
T 3:30pm-5:20pm

* FILM 434b / AFAM 220b, Archive Aesthetics and Community Storytelling  Thomas Harris

This production course explores strategies of archive aesthetics and community storytelling in film and media. It allows students to create projects that draw from archives—including news sources, personal narratives, and found archives—to produce collaborative community storytelling. Conducted as a production workshop, the course explores the use of archives in constructing real and fictive narratives across a variety of disciplines, such as—participants create and develop autobiographies, biographies, or fiction-based projects, tailored to their own work in film/new media around Natalie Goldberg’s concept that “our lives are at once ordinary and mythical.”  HU
HTBA

* FILM 438b, Media Anxieties  Staff

This seminar delves into the multifaceted anxieties entwined with our always-connected lives. In an era where the digital permeates every aspect of our daily experience, from communication to identity formation, understanding the complex emotions it generates is paramount. Drawing from diverse methodologies such as film history, German media theory, affect theory, critical data studies, gender studies, and disability studies, this seminar provides a comprehensive examination of the intersection between media as technological dispositifs and the human psyche. Drawing on a plethora of thinkers, students explore how black box technologies produce and sustain regimes of anxiety, fear and dependency. Students critically analyze how ubiquitous technologies shape our perceptions, behaviors, and anxieties. Through examining historical and contemporary media artifacts, theoretical frameworks, and interdisciplinary perspectives, participants explore topics including cinephilia/cinephobia, surveillance culture, algorithmic biases, addiction, and the politics of representation in digital spaces. This seminar encourages interdisciplinary dialogue and fosters critical thinking skills necessary for navigating the evolving digital landscape in an informed and ethically conscious manner.  HU
HTBA

* FILM 448b / EALL 271b, Japanese Cinema after 1960  Aaron Gerow

The development of Japanese cinema after the breakdown of the studio system, through the revival of the late 1990s, and to the present. No knowledge of Japanese required.  HU  Tr
MW 11:35am-12:50pm, T 7pm-10pm

* FILM 455a and FILM 456b / AMST 463a and AMST 464b / EVST 463a and EVST 464b / THST 457a and THST 458b, Documentary Film Workshop  Staff

A yearlong workshop designed primarily for majors in Film and Media Studies or American Studies who are making documentaries as senior projects. Seniors in other majors admitted as space permits.  RP
W 3:30pm-5:20pm, T 7pm-10pm

* FILM 460a, Sound/Image Practice  Leighton Pierce

We start from the assumption that sound is actually the ‘secret-sauce’ in the film/videomaking process. Often overlooked–or at least neglected, sound is a potent tool to advance the logic of a film or video and even more, to enhance the emotional patina and immersive engagement of a film or video. Sound becomes an accessible portal to the perhaps overlooked not-quite-conscious realm of the film/video experience. While we certainly read some theory/history of sound, this is primarily a class of making. The first 7 weeks include videomaking exercises designed to highlight specific challenges in sound for picture. The core concern is with conceptual development in the myriad ways that sound and picture work together. There is no genre or mode preference in this class. Fiction, non-fiction, experimental, animation, game, tiktok, anything is okay. For the second half of the semester, each student (or collaborative small group–with permission) design, shoot, edit, and mix a short (3-5min) video of their own design–a video that demonstrates attention and developing sophistication in the use of sound with picture, as well as in how to design visual shots and temporal structures (editing) with sound in mind. The visual and auditory aspects of any video are entangled in such a way that contribute (when blended with the audience’s imagination and memory) to the formation of the Sound/Image in the audience member’s minds.
T 1pm-4pm

* FILM 461a / ENGL 384a / LITR 364a / THST 416a, British Cinema  Katie Trumpener

Survey of the British film tradition, emphasizing overlap with literature, drama, and art; visual modernism; documentary's role in defining national identity; "heritage" filmmaking and alternative approaches to tradition; and auteur and actors' cinema.  HU  RP
T 1:30pm-3:20pm, M 7pm-10pm

* FILM 471a or b, Independent Directed Study  Staff

For students who wish to explore an aspect of film and media studies not covered by existing courses. The course may be used for research or directed readings and should include one lengthy essay or several short ones as well as regular meetings with the adviser. To apply, students should present a prospectus, a bibliography for the work proposed, and a letter of support from the adviser to the director of undergraduate studies. Term credit for independent research or reading may be granted and applied to any of the requisite areas upon application and approval by the director of undergraduate studies.
HTBA

* FILM 474b / FREN 396b, World War II in French Cinema  Alice Kaplan

A study of French films dealing with everyday life in France during the Nazi occupation (1940–44). Close analysis of scenes and cinematic techniques, historical readings, and film criticism.  HU
W 1:30pm-3:20pm, T 7pm-9pm

* FILM 483a and FILM 484b / ART 442a and ART 443b, Advanced Film Writing and Directing  Jonathan Andrews

A yearlong workshop designed primarily for majors in Art and in Film & Media Studies making senior projects. Each student writes and directs a short fiction film. The first term focuses on the screenplay, production schedule, storyboards, casting, budget, and locations. In the second term students rehearse, shoot, edit, and screen the film. Priority to majors in Art and in Film & Media Studies. Prerequisite: ART 341.
W 8:25am-12:20pm

* FILM 487a and FILM 488b, Advanced Screenwriting  Shakti Bhagchandani

Students write a feature-length screenplay. Emphasis on multiple drafts and revision. Admission in the fall term based on acceptance of a complete step-sheet outline for the story to be written during the coming year. Primarily for Film & Media Studies majors working on senior projects. Prerequisite: FILM 395 or permission of instructor.
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm

* FILM 491a and FILM 492b, The Senior Essay  Marta Figlerowicz

An independent writing and research project. A prospectus signed by the student's adviser must be submitted to the director of undergraduate studies by the end of the second week of the term in which the essay project is to commence. A rough draft must be submitted to the adviser and the director of undergraduate studies approximately one month before the final draft is due. Essays are normally thirty-five pages long (one term) or fifty pages (two terms).
HTBA

* FILM 493a and FILM 494b, The Senior Project  Marta Figlerowicz

For students making a film or video, either fiction or nonfiction, as their senior project. Senior projects require the approval of the Film and Media Studies Committee and are based on proposals submitted at the end of the junior year. An interim project review takes place at the end of the fall term, and permission to complete the senior project can be withdrawn if satisfactory progress has not been made. For guidelines, consult the director of undergraduate studies. Does not count toward the fourteen courses required for the major when taken in conjunction with FILM 455, 456 or FILM 483, 484.
HTBA