February 7, 2025
In this course, you will explore and experiment with the creative and practical choices that shape lens-based narrative expression. Through a combination of in-class and out-of-class exercises, assignments, and process journaling, you will gain an understanding of the techniques used by filmmakers and visual artists. Key topics include framing and optical perspective (lenses and camera placement), lighting, shot progression, and editing, as you delve into the fundamental concepts of time, space, and action in cinema.
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May 23, 2024
As a site of post-colonial migration and settlement, Paris and its banlieues incarnate what Edouard Glissant termed the Tout-Monde. How does film reflect the experiences and realities of Paris’ multicultural, diasporic populations? What representations do minority ethnic filmmakers offer of life in Paris? How do these representations converge with, or differ from, mainstream (mis)representations of diasporic Paris, or, frequently, its lack of representation? Films to be analyzed will include: Soleil O (Med Hondo, 1973)
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May 23, 2024
Studies post-1945 Japanese cinema, including the Kurosawa epics (Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Ran, Dream). Other masters include Ozu, Mizoguchi and Oshima. Examines Indian cinema and Satyajit Ray, and his masterful Apu trilogy. Concentrates on new Asian film, with works by Chinese (including Hong Kong and Taiwan) directors such as Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Wong Kar-Wai, Tsai Ming Liang, and Ang Lee.
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May 23, 2024
Focuses on periods when Italian cinema was at the cutting edge of World Cinema. Begins with films such as Fellini’s autobiographical Amarcord. Studies silent-era spectacles (Quo Vadis, Cabiria), and Italian film under fascism and its renaissance with Rossellini and De Sica. Examines leading filmmakers including Fellini, Pasolini, Visconti, and Antonioni. Explores Italian comedy, and the links between cinema and society.
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May 23, 2024
An exploration of the Arabic-language film as entertainment, narrative and cultural event in the Arab Middle East and North Africa. Themes include cinema in the Arabophone socio-cultural context and film-producing institutions in national and pan-Arab culture. The final project is based on either visual analysis of an Arab film or an aspect of the politics of film making in the Middle East.
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May 23, 2024
Offers an overview of the ‘Iberian and Latin American New Wave’: a group of national cinemas exploring contemporary societies of Latin America and the Iberian peninsula. Assesses how films problematize political and cultural issues such as dictatorial pasts, post-modern capitalist democracy, negotiating gender, sexual and racial identities in phallocentric post-colonial societies. The course is structured around screenings and class lectures/seminars.
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May 23, 2024
We examine Brecht’s application of his theories and plays to his work in German and Hollywood cinema. We consider his collaborations with Fritz Lang, Charles Laughton, G.W. Pabst, Lotte Eisner and others. We also analyze his influence on later filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard, Hans Jurgen Syberberg and R.W. Fassbinder and his contributions to film theory.
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May 23, 2024
Shows the evolution of modern French culture in its relationship to cinema. Examines the early influence of literature and theater on cinema and its subsequent detachment, to be recognized as an art itself with its own particular form. Emphasizes the viewing and discussing of one film each week: two class meetings plus one film per week.
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May 23, 2024
Studies the numerous facets, whether real of imaginary, of the close relationship between Paris and cinema. Analyzes films made by famous directors such as Clair, Carne, Godard, Malle, Rohmer, Polanski, Collard, Kassovitz, and others.
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May 23, 2024
Examines the intricate relationship between cities and cinema in specific as well as global contexts. Paris, New York, Mexico, Dakar, Cairo, Mumbai, Moscow, Shanghai or Tokyo: how are these sophisticated urban centers portrayed in films? And in turn how is cinema shaped by the rich and multifaceted experiences offered by these metropoles?
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May 23, 2024
Examines the intricate relationship between cities and cinema in specific as well as global contexts. Paris, New York, Mexico, Dakar, Cairo, Mumbai, Moscow, Shanghai or Tokyo: how are these sophisticated urban centers portrayed in films? And in turn how is cinema shaped by the rich and multifaceted experiences offered by these metropoles?
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May 23, 2024
Indian cinema is a powerful aesthetic and cultural influence in the contemporary world, from the works of great auteurs to the cultural and industrial powerhouse of Bollywood cinema. In this course, we will look at Indian cinema from Bollywood and beyond, unpacking the ways in which cinema emerges from an exchange of cultural, national and economic constraints and conditions.
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May 23, 2024
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.
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May 23, 2024
Examines film theory with two motives: how does it help us read individual films, and what does it tell us about this medium?
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May 23, 2024
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.
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May 23, 2024
This course aims to teach the fundamentals of directing – story boarding, preparation of a shooting script, choice of camera angles and lenses, etc. – and show the relationship between the technical and creative aspects of film making. Students will analyze direction in films and work as small production teams on their own short films to illustrate the “how and why” of film technique’s influence on story-telling and character portrayal.
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May 23, 2024
Studies film history, aesthetics, and techniques of film analysis. Illustrates the basic theories of film-making with specific films of important directors such as Griffith, Einstein, Stroheim, Chaplin, Keaton, Murnau, Sternberg, Lubitsch, Renoir, Hawks, Ford, Welles, and Sturges.
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May 23, 2024
This course considers how the language of film can sometimes unlock the secrets of Shakespeare’s world and help us to understand his contribution to the evolution of art cinema as well as to blockbuster culture. Focus is given to close readings of Shakespeare’s plays, analysis of cinematic adaptations and a study of films such as Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard or Shakespeare in Love. Directors Kozintsev, Welles, Godard, Olivier and Kurosawa are also studied.
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May 23, 2024
Analyzes classical Hollywood style from the 1940s onwards, looking at the work of some of the masters of the American system including Welles, Wyler, and Hitchcock. Studies postwar Hollywood genres including: film noir, the musical, the comedy, the Western, the gangster film, and sci-fi films. Traces important directions of postwar European Art Cinema (in particular Italian Neo-Realism and the Italian and French NewWaves) and offers a brief overview of new’ cinemas worldwide.
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May 23, 2024
In this workshop students will be introduced to a range of documentary film and video practices. Along the way they will be introduced and build skills in research, interview, editing, sound, and camera. We will explore how form contributes to content, and explore issues in contemporary documentary practice from the avant-garde to commercial production.
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May 23, 2024
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 Magnificent Ambersons, Journey Into Fear, The Lady From Shanghai, Macbeth, The Third Man, Mr. Arkadin, Touch of Evil, and The Trial.
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May 23, 2024
Examines works of modernist fiction writers Faulkner, Joyce, Proust, Kafka, Hemingway, Nabokov. Studies works of a second literary revolution that included Hammett, Greene, Highsmith, Himes. Other readings are Babel, Carver, Carter, Sciascia, and Daeninckx. Also studies the relationship between the best crime fiction and innovative crime films such as The Killing, Chinatown, Le Samourai, Prizzis Honor, and Pulp Fiction.
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May 23, 2024
This course studies the most influential filmmaker of the past 20 years, and his quirky, exciting, bewildering narrative, ‘cannibalizing’ other directors to produce a highly original vision. Films include: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, and films of Kubrick, Melville, Godard, and others which can be seen as influential for Tarantino’s provocative art.
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May 23, 2024
Who could have imagined the innovative and prolonged career of Martin Scorsese, especially when weighed against the parsimonious production of one of Scorseses major influences, Stanley Kubrick? This course focuses on these two maverick New York directors, Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese; one starting out in the last years of the American studio system, the other part of the American New Wave.
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May 23, 2024
Studies America’s cinematic myth: Film Noir, a pessimistic style appearing in Hollywood in the 1940s. Films include: The Maltese Falcon, Shadow of a Doubt, The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Touch of Evil, Out of the Past, The Woman in the Window, Murder My Sweet, Force of Evil, Pickup on South Street, and Kiss Me Deadly.
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May 23, 2024
The lavish imaginary worlds that cinematic technology made it possible to create became part of the earliest film-making endeavors in both America and Europe. In this course, students overview the roots of science fiction and fantastic cinema, from early experimental filming to short fiction to the Freudian concept of the uncanny. They analyse how these early developments have shaped the film-making decisions of directors such as Lynch, Gilliam, Kurosawa and others.
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May 23, 2024
Courses on different topics in the discipline, enriching the present course offerings. These classes are taught by permanent or visiting faculty. Topics vary each semester.
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May 23, 2024
Attempts to understand Hollywood’s ambiguous attitude toward women during and after the studio system. What roles played by women tell us about American culture and its fear of women? Also investigates women’s roles in Fellini, Antonioni, Godard, and Truffaut, and the female image presented on the screen by directors such as Jane Campion, Diane Kurys, and Agnes Varda.
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May 23, 2024
Teaches how to analyze cinematic language and films critically by focusing on the work of four modern European film directors, beginning with Pasolini in 1965 and his contemporaries, followed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Examines how the critical concepts learned can be applied to the work of other directors–taking as representative examples the works of Bergman and Kieslowski.
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May 23, 2024
Course description coming soon.
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May 23, 2024
This course examines the intricate relationship existing between cinema and the body. How is cinematographic art able to represent the creative faculties but also the dark sides of the body : its gestures, desires, needs and pulsions (in sexuality and gender identity) ? How can it account for the cognitive, cultural, political and technological revolutions associated with the body throughout European history (such as the Body Politics or the Technological Body) ?
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May 23, 2024
Students begin with an analysis of basic elements of film language (signs, codes, syntax). They study the technology, economics and politics of the film industry as it has developed in the United States and Europe. In the latter half of the course they will investigate the impact of television, video, computers and digital media in the history of cinema. This course is a complex introduction to the ever-evolving art form that is cinema.
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May 23, 2024
Studies the intricate relationship between politics and cinema : how films represent, document but also problematize the political dimension of cultures, societies and individual experience. Both content of films (themes, plot, contexts) and their forms (narrative structures, mise en scene, cinematography, editing) are analyzed to understand how ideological messages are put together and communicated to the spectator.
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May 23, 2024
This course is designed to give students strong technical and conceptual skills in video production. This course will prepare students for future video work in film, journalism, media and communications, studio art, and can be useful across many other disciplines. Students will learn to create several complete film and audio projects, each challenging them to explore new skills. Class time will be divided into lectures, screenings, and mostly in-class labs and critique.
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May 23, 2024
Courses will be developed from time to time which examine various aspects of film studies, focusing on different problems, phenomena, practices and personalities. These are taught by permanent or visiting faculty, and will be generally specific to their specialization.
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May 23, 2024
Courses on different topics in the discipline, enriching the present course offerings. These classes are taught by permanent or visiting faculty. Topics vary each semester.
Read Full Article
May 23, 2024
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.
Read Full Article
May 23, 2024
Courses on different topics in the discipline, enriching the present course offerings. These classes are taught by permanent or visiting faculty. Topics vary each semester.
Read Full Article
May 23, 2024
Paris has always been a fertile meeting ground for artists and stimulates the imaginations of newcomers and natives alike. Writers, artists andin the 20th centuryfilmmakers have come together in this magical space and shared their fascination with a city of lights, communally recognizing its potential to become home to their fantasies and at times, their despair. Students consider how the Parisian urban landscape is imagined differently by French native vs.
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