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This course will introduce you to formal, historical, and cultural issues in the study of film. We will study the technological and social history of cinema and engage with philosophical and theoretical questions pertaining to film as a medium and as a cultural product, even as we undertake the formal analysis of fiction, documentary, and experimental films.

This course familiarizes students with various elements of film language (cinematography, editing, sound, etc.) and introduces them to a range of approaches to cinematic analysis (authorship, genre, close formal reading, socio-historical considerations). Different types of films (narrative, documentary, and experimental) will be surveyed. Classical narrative cinema will be compared with alternative modes of story-telling.

What is a medium? This course starts from the assumption that the answer to this question is not as obvious as it might at first appear. Clearly, we know some media when we see them: radio, film, and television are in many ways paradigmatic media of the twentieth century. But what about the computational, networked media of the twenty-first century? Are these still media in the same sense, or has the nature of media changed with the emergence of digital technologies? And what, for that matter, about pre-technical media? Is painting a medium in the same sense that oil or acrylic are media, or in the sense that we speak of ¿mixed media¿? Is language a medium? Are numbers? Is the body? As we shall see, the question of what a medium is raises a number of other questions of a theoretical or even philosophical nature. How is our experience of the world affected or shaped by media? Are knowledge and perception possible apart from media, or are they always mediated by the apparatuses, instruments, or assemblages of media? What is the relation between the forms and the contents of media, and how does this relation bear on questions of aesthetics, science, technology, or politics? The lecture-based course addresses these and other questions and seeks in this way to introduce a way of thinking about media that goes beyond taken-for-granted ideas and assumptions, and that has a potentially transformative effect on a wide range of theoretical and practical interests.

Television is arguably the most influential and ubiquitous mass medium of the last half century. Because of its familiarity and popularity, it is also often the medium most overlooked, dismissed, and maligned. Drawing from the history of television and of television scholarship, this course builds a theoretical framework for understanding this pivotal cultural form. Course covers interdisciplinary approaches to studying TV texts, TV audiences, and TV industries, including questions of the boundaries of television (from independent and avant-garde video to convergence). In the process students develop methodological tools as critical television viewers.

From cinema's precursors to the advent of synchronized sound.

The impact of sound to the dissolution of Hollywood's studio system.

This course will provide an overview of cinema from around the world since 1960, highlighting the cultural, political, and economic forces that have shaped various film movements over the last six decades. We will study some key film movements and national cinemas towards developing a historical appreciation of a variety of commercial and art film traditions. Through an exploration of films from Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, we shall examine the industrial histories of non-Hollywood film production and exhibition practices that produce the particular cinematic cultures of each region.

The close analysis of film. Emphasis is on formal and narrative techniques in structure and style, and detailed readings of brief sequences. Elements such as cinematography, mise-en-scène, composition, sound, and performance. Films from various historical periods, national cinemas, directors, and genres. Prerequisite: FILMSTUD 4 or equivalent. Recommended: ARTHIST 1 or FILMSTUD 102. Course can be repeated twice for a max of 8 units.

Major theoretical arguments and debates about cinema: realism,formalism, poststructuralism, feminism, postmodernism, and phenomenology. Prerequisites: FILMSTUD 4. WIM at 4 units only.