21 - 30 of 99 results for: FILMSTUD

When Mary Shelley bid [her] hideous progeny go forth and prosper in the 1831 introduction to the revised edition of her novel, she could scarcely have imagined how successful her tale would be in reproducing itself. It is estimated that over 200 film adaptations of Frankenstein have been produced, spanning from Thomas Edison's 1910 single-reel silent film to digitally-enhanced CGI spectacles like Van Helsing (2004) and I, Frankenstein (2014). The films seldom fail to say something about the social settings in which they were produced, and quite often they comment reflexively on the medium of film itself. The monsters depicted can thus be interrogated in terms of the social-semiotic processes by which certain subjectivities and bodies are constituted as the normative ideals of humanity while others are excluded as aberrations. On the other hand, the films offer a register of the historically contingent relations between humans and their technologies not least among them, the relation of the spectator to the cinematic medium and apparatus. nIn this lecture-based course, we shall therefore investigate monstrosity on a number of levels: from the social level at which people are defined on the basis of gender, race, class, or disability in relation to privileged forms of embodiment and subjectivity, all the way up to the technological level at which human beings are arguably being reconfigured at present into cyborgs or human-technological hybrids. We will approach these and other questions by way of a selection of Frankenstein films, which we will view, read about, and discuss in detail. It will be important, though, that we not lose sight of the filmic nature of our texts; one objective of the course should therefore be a better understanding of the formal properties of the medium of film how things are depicted, not just what is thematized.

The fantasy of an image coming to life is ancient, but not until the cinema was this fantasy actualized. The history of the movies begins with optical toys, and contemporary cinema is dominated by films that rely on computer animation. This course considers the underlying fantasies of animation in art and lit, its phenomenologies, its relation to the uncanny, its status as a pure cinema, and its place in film theory. Different modes of production and style to be explored include realist animation, abstract animation; animistic animation; animated drawings, objects, and puppets; CGI, motion capture, and live/animation hybrids.

The term cinematography, which literally means "inscribing motion," tends to lose the "graphic" part in modern use. However, several influential film-makers not only practiced the art of "inscribing motion" but also wrote texts discussing the aesthetic premises of cinematographic art. This course explores theories of cinema as propagated by the following film-makers: Vertov, Eisenstein, Godard, Bresson, Antonioni, Pasolini, Tarkovsky, Greenaway, and Lynch. Selected key texts will be supplemented by screenings of classic films, indicative of each director's work.

This course will provide an overview of cinema from India, the world's largest producer of films. We will trace the history of Indian cinema from the silent era, through the studio period, to state-funded art filmmaking to the contemporary production of Bollywood films as well as the more unconventional multiplex cinema. We will examine narrative conventions, stylistic techniques, and film production and consumption practices in popular Hindi language films from the Bombay film industry as well as commercial and art films in other languages. This outline of different cinematic modes will throw light on the social, political, and economic transformations in the nation-state over the last century.

New film cultures and movements in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China in the 80s. Key directors including Jia Zhangke, Wu Wenguang, Tsai Ming-liang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wong Kar-wai, Ann Hui. Topics include national cinema in the age of globalization, the evolving parameters of art cinema, and authorship.

Representations of gender and sexuality in the cinemas of China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, covering key periods and genres such as the golden age of Shanghai film, Hong Kong action pictures, opera films, post-socialist art films, and new queer cinema. Historical and contemporary perspectives on cinematic constructions of femininity, masculinity, and sexuality as they relate to issues of nationalism, modernity, globalization, and feminist and queer politics. Weekly screening required.

Practical and theoretical approaches to editing and montage. The role of editing in film meaning, and cognitive and emotional impact on the viewer. Developments in the history and theory of cinema including continuity system, Soviet montage, French new wave, postwar and American avant garde. Aesthetic functions, spectatorial effects, and ideological implications of montage. Film makers include Eisenstein, Godard, and Conner.

What makes music videos, YouTube clips and musical numbers in today's films engaging? What makes them tick? Emphasis is on aesthetics and close reading. How music videos and its related forms work. Uses of the body, how visual iconography operates, what lyrics and dialogue can do, how and what music can say, and how it can work with other media. Questions of representation such as how class, ethnicity, gender, race, and nationality function. Viewership and industry practices.

From 1945 to the mid-80s, emphasizing Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, and Yugoslav contexts. The relationship between art and politics; postwar establishment of film industries; and emergence of national film movements such as the Polish school, Czech new wave, and new Yugoslav film. Thematic and aesthetic preoccupations of filmmakers such as Wajda, Jancso, Forman, and Kusturica.