Requirements
FILM 101 - Film History
Cross-listed: ENGL 091 - ARTH 108
This course is an introduction to the history of cinema from the late nineteenth century to the present. In demonstrating how history energizes and complicates the movies, we will examine numerous film cultures and historical periods, including Hollywood silent cinema, Italian neo-realism, the French New Wave, recent films from Iran, and a variety of other film movements from different historical epochs and cultures. Our aim is to establish a broad historical and global foundation for the understanding of film as a complex exchange between art, technology, politics, and economics.
TR 10:30 - 12:00 Lecture
M 5:00 - 7:30 Screening
DECHERNEY, Peter
FILM 102 - Film Analysis and Methods
Cross-listed: ENGL 092 - ARTH 109
This course is an introduction to the analysis of film as both a textual practice and a cultural practice. We will examine a variety of films--from Fritz Lang's M (1931) to Julia Dash's Daughters of the Dust (1991)--in order to demonstrate the tools and skills of "close reading." We will concentrate on those specifically filmic features of the movies, such as mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing and sound strategies, as well as those larger organizational forms, such as narrative and non-narrative structures and movie genres. Because our responses to the movies always extend beyond the film frame, we will additionally do "close readings" of the complex business of film distribution, promotion, and exhibition to show how the less visible machinery of the movie business also shapes our understanding and enjoyment of particular films. Along the way, we will discuss some of the most influential and productive critical schools of thought informing film analysis today, including realism, auteurism, feminism, postmodernism, and others. Screenings are mandatory.
TR 1:30 - 3:00 Lecture
T 5:00 - 7:30 Screening
CORRIGAN, Timothy
FILM 499 - THE WENDY AND LEONARD GOLDBERG SENIOR SEMINAR: Current Issues in Cinema Studies
Only graduating majors in Cinema Studies.
TR 3:00 - 4:30
CORRIGAN, Timothy
Primary Film Courses
FILM 166 - Russian and Eastern European Film
Cross-listed: RUSS 165 - SLAV 165
The purpose of this course is to present the Russian and East European contribution to the world cinema in terms of film theory, experimentation with the cinematic language, and social and political reflex. We discuss major themes and issues such as: the invention of montage, the means of visual propaganda and the cinematic component to the communist cultural revolutions, party ideology and practices of social-engineering, cinematic response to the emergence of the totalitarian state in Russia and its subsequent installation in Eastern Europe after World War II; repression, resistance and conformity under such a system; legal and illegal desires; the nature of the authoritarian personality, the mind and the body of the homo sovieticos; sexual and political transgression; treason and disgrace; public degradation and individual redemption; the profane and the sublime ends of human suffering and humiliation; the unmasking of the official "truth" as a general lie.
MW 3:00 - 4:30 Lecture
TODORV, Vladislav
FILM 201 - TOPICS IN FILM HISTORY: Documentary
Cross-listed: ENGL 291
Documentary Film will introduce students to the theory, history and ethics of the film genre corrupted by "reality television". We will explore such recent, thought provoking documentaries as "Bowling for Columbine" and "Spellbound" as well as documentaries that influenced and inspired those films. We will explore numerous issues confronted by documentary filmmakers by viewing representative films and discussing the issues each poses. These issues--including re-enactment, fair treatment of the subjects, politics and ethics--have confronted documentarians since the beginning of cinema. The themes we are studying are particularly timely against a backdrop of recent questioning of just how far members of the media can go and what they can do to get their "stories". Among the filmmakers to be considered are Robert Flaherty, Leni Riefenstahl, Jean Rouch, Alain Resnais, Fred Wiseman, the Maysles brothers, Emile de Antonio and Errol Morris. Weekly screenings are mandatory.
TR 12:00 - 1:30 Lecture
T 5:00 - 7:30 Screening
KATZ, John
FILM 202 - TOPICS IN FILM PRACTICE: Autobiographical Family Film
Cross-listed: ENGL 292
For most of us our families are both completely familiar and utterly baffling. Since the advent of the movie camera, fiction and documentary filmmakers have sought to explore the familiarity and solve the mysteries of their own and other families. These filmmakers include Woody Allen ("Annie Hall"), Ira Wohl ("Best Boy" and "Best Man"), Craig Gilbert and the Raymonds ("An American Family"), Tom Joselin ("Silverlake Life") and Ross McElwee ("Sherman's March" and "Bright Leaves"). We will view and discuss the work of some of these and other filmmakers and explore the themes, form, psychology and ethics of autobiographical and family life films. Readings will include autobiographies and film theory and criticism.
TR 3:00 - 4:30 Lecture
T 5:00 - 7:30 Screening
KATZ, John
FILM 206 - Horror Cinema
Cross-listed: FREN 382 - COML 372
Previous versions of this course (NOT a prerequisite) have offered a historical survey of the genre and a look at lesser-known cult classics of horror cinema in an international context. This time around the focus will be on two national cinemas: France (with, after a detour via Georges Franju's 1959 masterpiece Les Yeux sans visage , an emphasis on the contemporary period which has been witnessing an unprecedented revival in horror) and Italy (with an emphasis on the 1960s-1970s, i.e. the Golden Age of Gothic horror and the giallo headed by the likes of Bava and Argento, and a few incursions into more recent fare). Issues of ethics, gender, sexuality, violence, spectatorship will be examined through a variety of critical lenses (psychoanalysis, socio-historical and cultural context, aesthetics, politics, gender...). The class will be conducted in English.
T 1:30 - 4:30 Lecture and Screening
R 1:30 - 3:00 Lecture
MET, Philippe
FILM 209 - TOPICS IN FILM GENRE: The Road Movie
Cross-listed: ARTH 291
This course will allow us to study the changing shape of the road movie genre from Bonnie and Clyde (1967) to the French feminist revenge narrative, Baise-moi (Rape me), (2000). In addition to considering the possibilities and limits of genre as a category of analysis, we will grapple with a number of questions that will persist throughout the course: What is the relationship between cinema and the automobile? Is the road trip a particularly American fantasy, and if so, what does it mean when non-U.S. filmmakers adopt the road-movie genre? Is the road movie a “masculine” genre? What role do urban and rural spaces play in the development of this genre? What happens to race/gender/sexuality/national identity in the road movie? What kinds of borders does this genre dream of crossing? Do the radical fantasies of characters within the road movie genre necessarily translate into films with radical politics?
TR 12:00 - 1:30 Lecture
BECKMAN, Karen
FILM 210 - TOPICS IN NARRATIVE CINEMA: Detective/Mystery/Thriller Film
The course will focus on the whodunit--the detective/mystery/thriller film--from the hardboiled detective film, like THE BIG SLEEP; to "film noir" (KISS ME DEADLY); and modernist "detection" films (BLOW-UP; MULHOLLAND DRIVE) that attempt to interpret the "mysterious" and the unknowable. Besides the thorougly entertainment factor, there is also the important premise of the genre, its grounding in the basic principles of narrative film--the impulse to observe, continue, connect, infer, solve and complete.
M 2:00 - 5:00 Lecture and Screening
W 3:00 - 4:30 Lecture
PERLMUTTER, Ruth
FILM 222 - Japanese Cinema
Cross-listed: AMES 396
Japanese film is almost as old as the genre itself. This course will focus on comparisons between what we know about Japan and its world in the 20th century and how that history is reflected, avoided, or absorbed in Japanese films. Imperialism, rediscovery of the samurai ideal, war, the atomic bomb, pacifism, politics, etc. are explored in depth.
R 4:30 - 7:30 Lecture
LAFLEUR, William
FILM 224 - Cinema of Satyajit Ray
Cross-listed: SAST 224/624
(Description)
M 3:00 - 6:00 Lecture
HARIHARAN, Hari
FILM 225 - TOPICS IN THEATER & CINEMA: East and West on Stage and Screen
Cross-listed: THAR 275 - ASAM 275 - COML 267
East and West share traditions of mythmaking and storytelling in live performances and, during more recent human history, in films. Theatre and cinema uniquely represent conflicts of social interaction in ways that please us. We like to watch shows, to engage with stories, and even--or especially--to learn from what we see and hear. East meets West in English-language plays and films by writers and directors of Asian and Middle Eastern heritage. They dramatize the lives of 19 th -century Chinese railroad laborers; WWII internment of Japanese Americans; war brides from Japan, Korea, and Vietnam; South Asian immigrants' struggles to maintain traditions despite the forces of assimilation; and prejudice and discrimination faced by those of Middle Eastern descent. Students will finish this course with a firm understanding of just how diverse are the experiences and attitudes of Asian and Middle Eastern communities in the English-speaking world. Through shorter and longer papers, exams, and oral presentations, students will summarize and analyze selected works from social and historical perspectives. Texts/films may include David Henry Hwang's Broadway adaptation of Flower Drum Song , Ang Lee's film The Wedding Banquet , Wakako Yamauchi's play 12-1-A , Nagisa Oshima's film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence , Yun-ah Hong's documentary Memory all/echo based on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's poetic book Dictee , Ralph Pena's play Flipzoids , Oliver Stone's film Heaven and Earth adapted from the memoirs of Le Ly Hayslip, Mira Nair's controversial movie Mississippi Masala , and Fatimah Tobing Rony's documentary On Cannibalism --as well as Ayub Khan-Din's play and film East Is East , Aladdin Ullah's play The Halal Brothers , Layla Dowlatshahi's play The Waiting Room , Mustapha Akkad's film Lion of the Desert , Betty Shamieh's play Roar , and Hesham Issawi's avant-garde film T for Terrorist.
MWF 12:00 - 1:00 Lecture
M 2:00 - 5:00 Screening
MOORE, Mera
FILM 231 - Mexican Cinema (IN SPANISH)
Cross-listed: SPAN 396 - LTAM 397
An overview of Mexican Cinema from its roots in the late 19 th century to the present. Feature-length screenings include: Vámonos con Pancho Villa (Fernando de Fuentes, 1935), María Candelaria (Emilio Fernández, 1943), Los olvidados (Luis Buñuel, 1950) La pasión según Berenice (Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, 1975), El Topo (Alexandro Jodorowsky 1969) El lugar sin límites (Arturo Ripstein , 1977) Cronos (Guillermo del Toro 1992), Y tu mamá también (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001) de Japón (Carlos Reygadas , 2003). In addition to mainstream Mexican cinema, a portion of the course will be dedicated to popular paracinema such as Mexican horror film, narcocinema, and wrestling films (El Santo). For additional information see the course webpage <Mexican Cinema>.
TR 10:30 - 12:00 Lecture
T 4:00 - 6:00 Screening
SOLOMON, Michael
FILM 232 - Luso-Brazilian Film
Cross-listed: PRTG 240 - LTAM 240
This course will survey films from different Portuguese-speaking countries. Still unknown to many viewers, Luso & Brazilian films include a variety of genres and styles. We will explore films from the cultural perspective of Portugal, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Brazil. The first segment of this course will expose students to theoretical approaches to the study of film. The second segment of the course will focus on Portugal and Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa. We will also discuss emblematic Portuguese filmmakers such as Manuel de Oliveira and African writers whose work has been translated to the screen such as Mia Couto and Germano de Almeida. The third segment will focus on Brazilian films produced since the mid 1990’s. In the early 1990s, there was a virtual collapse of Embrafilme (the state agency that funds most Brazilian films). Brazilian cinematic production only resumed around 1995. Throughout the last 8 years numerous quality films have been released, many of them directed by a new generation of filmmakers. Films like Cidade de Deus, Carandiru, Onibus 174 present a critical view of political, social and economic issues in post-dictatorial Brazil. Most of the films also provide commentaries on (and are themselves part of) the effects of economic and cultural globalization. Inequality, corruption, poverty, violence, crime, drugs, and prejudice are themes that permeate all of these films. The course will be conducted in English.
TR 1:30 - 3:00 Lecture
GOUVEIA, Saulo
FILM 240 - ITALIAN CINEMA: Films of Fellini
Cross-listed: ITAL 322
When Fellini died on October 31, l993, he was given a funeral equal in scale and solemnity to those reserved for religious leaders and heads of state. "Fellini was one of those extraordinary artists who created our second Renaissance: the great Italian cinema of the postwar era" claimed screenwriter and author Tonino Guerra. According to journalist Alan Cowell, "what he gave Italy, people said, was the sum of their dreams and fantasies and sins, encased in an artistry that helped define the nation's self-image, at home and abroad." In this course, we will consider Fellini's entire cinematic production in the following terms: 1. as a progressive autobiographical account of one idiosyncratic life, raised to the level of allegorical significance by virtue of its universal concerns and its stylistic virtuosity; 2. as a critical reflection of, and causal factor in, the creation of an Italian national identity, both for domestic and international consumption; 3. as a summa of postwar Italian filmmaking, from neorealism (he collaborated in Rossellini's ground-breaking Città aperta in l945) to postmodernism (as exemplified by his last film, La voce della luna in l990). The course will involve a chronological study of Fellini's production, beginning with his apprenticeship as cartoonist and gag writer for humor magazines and radio shows before he began to collaborate on screenplays for the pre-eminent neorealist filmmakers. We will then study a film a week (screened outside class time) and will devote our class periods to in-depth analysis of the works and their critical reception. The films will all be in Italian with English subtitles and the classes will be conducted in English. Students with expertise in Italian are expected to write their essays in the language, and are encouraged to read and share with the class important secondary source material emanating from Italy that is not yet available in translation.
MW 3:00 - 4:30 Lecture
T 5:00 - 7:30 Screening
MARCUS, Millicent
FILM 272 - Asians in Hollywood
Cross-listed: ENGL 272 - ASAM 202
This course will track the appearance of Asians in the grand Hollywood picture. We will open with DeMille's The Cheat and Griffith's Broken Blossoms as foundations for sinister and sympathetic representations. From these early portraits, we will go on to consider the curiously absent presence of Asians in the practice of yellowface. We will then examine a range of evocations of absence and presence from the crucially missing Japanese in Bad Day at Black Rock to the song-and-dance heralding of Chinese Americans in Flower Drum Song . We will watch some later controversial portrayals as well, including Cimino's Year of the Dragon and Stone's Heaven on Earth . The course will close with an escape from Hollywood with one experimental Asian American film. To accompany each of the films, we will read critical essays in order to inquire into the significance of a persistent absence and the perils of representing Asian American presences in American cinema. Course requirements: short response papers, in-class presentation, and a final research paper.
TR 10:30 - 12:00 Lecture
T 7:00 - 8:30 Screening
PARK, Josephine
FILM 295 - TOPICS IN CULTURAL STUDIES: Copyright and Culture
Cross-listed: ENGL 266
Copyright is the law of art, originality, and monopolies on expression. In this course, we will look at the history of copyright law and explore the ways that copyright has both responded to new media and driven art and entertainment. How, for example, is a new medium (photography, film, etc.) defined in relation to existing media? What constitutes originality in collage painting, revisionist novels, or rap music? When can you sing “Happy Birthday” or watch a television show? And how have artists and creative industries responded to various changes in copyright law? A major focus of the course will be the lessons of history for the current copyright debates over file sharing, term limits, and other laws that determine the way we experience and create culture.
TR 3:00 - 4:30 Lecture
DECHERNEY, Peter
Interdisciplinary Film Courses
FILM 115 - Jane Austen and Popular Culture
Cross-listed: ENGL 101 - WSTD 101
This course provides students with an introduction to English and film Adaptation through the study of a single author: Jane Austen. At once acutely aware of popular culture and a product of it, Austen read and wrote in popular forms, from Gothic horror to raucous satire to popular theater. During the semester, we'll read four or five of Austen's novels, certainly Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. While the first few weeks of the course will look at Austen through the popular culture of her own time, we'll turn quickly to Austen as contemporary pop phenomenon through the many films made of her works. >From Bollywood remakes to Clueless to more faithful adapations, we'll talk about at least 9 films. In addition, we'll read of the soldiers during the first world war who read her obsessively in the trenches, as well as of the fans who have made the Austen film industry possible. Required work: three responses, two essays, and a final examination.
MWF 1:00 - 2:00 Lecture
T 6:00 - 9:00 Screening
GAMER, Michael
FILM 125 - Dreams and Nightmare in Fiction and Film
Cross-listed: RUSS 185 - COML185
The course cross-examines some of the most compelling modern fiction and film from Russia, Eastern and Western Europe, Latin and North America, focusing on the relation between dream, delirium, death, displacement, deviance, dissent and creativity. We delve into the Gogolian and Dostoevskian underground to recover eccentric underpinnings for the modernist consciousness, emerging into Bely's nightmarish Petersburg, Kafka's Prague, Machado de Assiss and Mario de Andrades hallucinated Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Proust's liminal Paris, Woolf's disconcerted London, Pessoa's disquieted Lisbon. Taking an interdisciplinary as well as cross-culturally comparative approach to these critical modernist writers, we consider the dreamed city and delirious consciousness that structures much of modernist fiction in relation to other arts, particularly film.
TR 3:00 - 4:30 pm Lecture
ALLEN, Sharon
FILM 300 - CINEMA & THE OTHER ARTS: ICA Seminar
Cross-listed: ARTH 301
A two-semester course, taught in conjunction with the Institute of Contemporary Art. The fall semester provides an intensive introduction to the major issues and movements in contemporary art, focusing this year on film and electronic media, and an overview of contemporary museum and exhibition practices. Frequent field trips to galleries, museums, and private collections. By midyear, participants will have designed an exhibition for installation at the ICA, and they will work in collaboration with the ICA's curatorial staff throughout the spring on every aspect of the show. Registration requires the approval of the instructor, who will interview interested students on Monday, May 3. Preference given to History of Art, Visual Studies, and Cinema Studies majors and minors.
R 1:30 - 4:30 Lecture
BECKMAN, Karen
FILM 302 - Tolstoy and Film
Cross-listed: RUSS 202
At the turn of the twentieth century, when film was just emerging on the cultural scene, Leo Tolstoy predicted that his fledging art form would have a great future. Since then Tolstoy’s fiction has inspired over a hundred film adaptations around the world; virtually every year a new rendition of one of Tolstoy’s literary works appears on the screen. In this course we will read novels and short stories by Tolstoy and watch their adaptations on film. Viewing films made in the US, Great Britain, Russia, France, Italy, Sri Lanka, and Japan, we will study the reception of Tolstoy’s art and philosophy throughout the twentieth century. We will ponder reasons for the enduring cinematic appeal of Tolstoy’s classics and discuss challenges of translating literary texts into film, in general, and Tolstoy’s works, in particular. We will analyze various directors’ attempts – sometimes successful, sometimes not – to offer radical interpretations of Tolstoy’s timeless and universal themes. Readings will include War and Peace, Anna Karenina, “The Death of Ivan Iliich”, “The Forged Coupon”, “Father Sergius”, “The Prisoner of the Caucasus”, and Resurrection. Screenings will include film adaptations, interpretations, and homages by Robert Bresson, King Vidor, Yakov Protazanov, Sergei Bodrov, Akira Kurosawa, Paolo Taviani, Woody Allen, Sergei Bondarchuk, and Prasanna Vithanage. All readings, films, and lectures in English.
MW 3:00 – 4:30 Lecture
VAINGURT, Julia
FILM 321 - Indian Cinema and Society
Cross-listed: SAST 221/621
This course will meet for three hours to view and discuss a variety of films/videos in Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Urdu (with English subtitles), and English, which bring up issues of social, political, and cultural significance. Readings for the course will include articles in various fields ranging from film studies and communication to sociolinguistics and women's studies. Discussions will focus on cinema as a means of expression and as an instrument for social change, examining the various ways in which films both reflect and influence contemporary culture.
TR 12:00 - 1:30 Lecture
HARIHARAN, Hari
FILM 322 - Media and Religion in India
Cross-listed: SAST 208/608 - RELS 268/568
In this course we will explore how religious life and ideals are expressed through various media, and how these media have affected cultural life in India. Our aim is two-fold: to acquire a familiarity with a variety of intriguing media forms-including traditional architecture, devotional poetry-music, visual-sensorial worship, modern film, recorded music, and television-and to situate these media within important cultural fields-religion, primarily, but also politics, popular culture, and global culture. Though much of our study will immerse us in India's past, our aim is to understand contemporary India and its religious culture through media.
TR 10:30 - 12:00 Lecture
NOVETZKE, Christian
FILM 324 - Modern Korean Literature and Film
Cross-listed: AMES 194
This course is a survey of modern and contemporary Korean literature and media culture. In this course, students will be introduced to the majors writers and directors and their works in order to examine the development of Korean literature and cinema from 1905 to the present. Throughout the course, we will be mindful of how these literary and cinematic representations show a complex relationship between Korean culture, history and politics. Of specific interest to us is the question of the canonization and how a text or a film comes to occupy the position of being a "classic". Readings will include both literary works in translation and critical writings on selected topics in Korean literary and film history and theory. All readings are in English and films have English subtitles. Previous coursework in Korean language, literature and history are helpful but not required and will not be assumed.
TR 12:00 - 1:30 Lecture
KIM, Jina
FILM 325 - Adultery Novel and Film Adaptation
Cross-listed: RUSS 125 - COML 127 - WSTD 125
The course examines a series of 19C and 20C novels (and a few short stories) about adultery, film adaptations of several of these novels, and several adultery films in their own right. Our reading will teach us about novelistic traditions of the period in question, about the relationship of Russian literature to the European models to which it responded. about adaptation and the implications of filmic vs. literary representation. Course readings include: Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons, Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and other works. Films include: Frears' Dangerous Liaisons, Vadim's Dangerous Liaisons, Nichols' The Graduate, Mikhalkov's Dark Eyes, and others. Students will apply various critical approaches in order to place adultery into its aesthetic, social and cultural context, including: sociological descriptions of modernity, Marxist examinations of family as a social and economic institution, Freudian/ Psychoanalytic interpretations of family life and transgressive sexuality, and Feminist work on the construction of gender.
TR 3:00 - 4:30 Lecture
PLATT, Kevin
FILM 352 - Devil's Pact in Literature and Film
Cross-listed: GRMN 256 - COML 241 - RELS 236
For centuries the pact with the devil has signified humankind's desire to surpass the limits of human knowledge and power. From the reformation chap book to the rock lyrics of Randy Newman's Faust, from Marlowe and Goethe to key Hollywood films, the legend of the devil's pact continues to be useful for exploring our fascination with forbidden powers.
TR 3:00 - 4:30 Lecture
RICHTER, Simon
FILM 432 - Fate and Chance in Literature and Film
Cross-listed: RUSS 432
Be a winner - manage all your situations and don't let a pure chance to govern your life! With a chain of literary characters as a vivid illustration, you will explore a mysterious world of fate and chance and learn about various interpretations of the forces ruling human life. Slavic and Greek mythology, as well as folklore and modern literary works of Russian and Western writers and cinematographers will assist you in your journey to the world of supernatural. Screenings will include Zeffirelli's and Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet.
T 5:30 - 8:30 Lecture
ZUBAREV, Vera
FILM 436 - Film and Art of Russian Revolution
Cross-listed: RUSS 436
This course examines cutting edge trends and artistic experimentation in Russian film, theater, visual arts, and architecture in the context of the October Revolution (1917). Themes include: inventing the Kino-eye; reflexology, bio-mechanics and performance theory; staging the revolution; proletarian culture and sexuality; social-engineering of the new man; bodies and machines; cosmism, rocketry and the emergence of the Soviet outer-space doctrine; city-planning and constructivist design of the new social condensers; Lenin's mummy and the communist psyche; the Mausoleum and symbolic system of the Red Square. All lectures and course work is in English.
M 5:30 8:40
TODORV, Vladislav
Film production courses, related courses, and graduate courses
FILM 009 - WRITING SEMINAR IN FILM: Race & Popular Cinema
Cross-listed: ASAM 009
From the mainstreaming of performers such as Eddie Murphy and Ice Cube to the recent fixation on Japan, American cinema would seem to have become truly multicultural. By examining films across a spectrum of genres and from a range of time periods, we will explore film as a medium for reflecting and constructing attitudes about racial difference and related social issues such as the value of tradition, the defining of national character, and anxieties about sex and sexuality.
TR 1:30 - 3:00 Lecture
SADASHIGE, Jacqui
FILM 116 - Screenwriting Workshop
Cross-listed: ENGL 116
This course will look at the screenplay as both a literary text and a blue print for production. Several classic screenplay texts will be critically analyzed (REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, PSYCHO, etc.) Students will then embark on writing their own scripts. We will intensively focus on: character enhancement, creating "believable" cinematic dialogue, plot development and story structure, conflict, pacing, dramatic foreshadowing, the element of surprise, text and subtext and visual story-telling. Class attendance is mandatory. Students will submit their works-in-progress to the workshop for discussion.
M 2:00 - 5:00 Lecture
LAPADULA, Marc
FILM 544 - Holocaust in Italian Literature and Film (IN ITALIAN)
Cross-listed: ITAL680
Though Italy's Jewish population had the highest rate of survival of any Nazi-occupied country in Western Europe, the Holocaust has continued to haunt the Italian literary and cinematic imagination in ways that warrant close critical scrutiny. The aesthetic and moral problem of how to represent this event in art gains special urgency in the Italian context, where a realist tradition dating back to Dante and Giotto joins forces with a postwar neorealist impulse to create a series of compelling literary and cinematic works. In keeping with the Holocaust's invitation to interdisciplinary study, the course will examine the intersection of a number of discourses: historical, literary, cinematic--viewed from a variety of perspectives--feminist, generic, philosophical, theological, and historiographic. Since a good portion of the authors will be women, the question of the "voce femminile" and its creation of an alternative, or anti-history, will also be raised. The purpose of the course will be three-fold: 1. to examine what the specificity of Italian cultural traditions brings to bear on our understanding of Holocaust history; 2. to examine what effect, in turn, the Holocaust, as problematic object of representation, has on the literary and cinematic means of expression; 3. to continue, through this study, the authors' and filmmakers' own commitment to bear witness to what Primo Levi called "the stain, the central fact" of our times. To be conducted in Italian.
T 2:00 - 5:00 Lecture
M 5:00 - 7:30 Screening
MARCUS, Millicent
