FILM 279
FILM 279: INTRODUCTION TO FILM HISTORY
Winter 2011; TR 4:05-5:55; Burnside 1B45
INSTRUCTORS:
Thomas LAMARRE (EAS 401): W 14-16h, or appt. (thomas.lamarre@mcgill.ca)
Alanna THAIN (Arts W35): T 13-15h or by appt. (Alanna.Thain@mcgill.ca)
TEACHING ASSISTANT: Ximena ALDANA D’COSTA (Sherbrooke 688 Rm 371):
F 13:30-15:30h (x.aldanadcosta@mcgill.ca)
GRADER: Brian BERGSTROM: TBA (brian.bergstrom@mcgill.ca)
OBJECTIVES: While this course offers an introduction to ‘world cinema history,’ the course
aims to challenge both the universalizing frameworks of ‘world history’ and ‘world cinema’ as
well as the particularizing modes of national cinema. The organization of the course reflects this
challenge: the course unfolds in a roughly chronological fashion across units, and yet, to avoid
conflating chronology with history, the course presents three units — modernity, time/memory,
and genre/media — which will introduce critical debates in film historiography. In the context of
these debates, students will gain a broad introduction to film movements, styles, theories, and
practices associated with such diverse locales and production regions as contemporary
Nollywood, 1960s Bengali cinema, 1930s Shanghai, 1980s Hong Kong, contemporary Korean
cinema, early African American cinema, 1930s Mexican cinema and many others.
METHODOLOGY: The course will alternate between film screenings and discussions of the
films within film history frameworks. Attendance at lectures and screenings is mandatory. While
we will sometimes have lectures on Tuesdays and films on Thursdays, and instruction will
consist largely of lectures, we chose a two-hour slot in order to intersperse screening and
discussion. Students are expected to read the materials before class and to be prepared to discuss
them, because the lectures will directly address those readings. The readings and lectures also
will provide the basis for the three essays.
READINGS: The reader will be at COPIE 2000 (NW corner of Peel and Sherbrooke).
EVALUATION: There will be three papers, the first worth 30%, and the other two worth 35%
each. The papers are to be five pages in length, that is, NO MORE THAN 1,500 WORDS. The
first essay will deal with cinema and modernity; the second with cinematic temporality, history
and memory; and the third with genre and/or media. Details will be given in class. Prior to the
due date for the paper, we will offer consultation sessions, date and location to be announced.
COMMUNICATIONS POLICY: For materials distributed in class, such as the syllabus or
handouts, go to: http://web.me.com/lamarre_mediaken/Site/Courses.html and click on FILM 279.
We will set up WebCT for student-student discussions but would like to encourage questions and
comments in class as well as face-to-face communication. We’ll try to answer email promptly
but don’t expect immediate responses. As a general policy, to assure quality of communication,
we would like you to speak with us in person during our office hours, rather than flooding us
with email. Please do not send a last-minute email requesting extensions. These will be ignored.
NOTE: (1) McGill University values academic integrity. Therefore all students must understand the meaning and
consequences of cheating, plagiarism and other academic offences under the Code of Student Conduct and
Disciplinary Procedures (see www.mcgill.ca/integrity for more information). (2) In accord with McGill University’s
Charter of Students’ Rights, students in this course have the right to submit in English or in French any written work
that is to be graded. (3) In the event of extraordinary circumstances beyond the University’s control, the content
and/or evaluation scheme in this course is subject to change.
FILM 279
SCHEDULE
UNIT 1: MODERNITY
Week 1: January 4 & 6: Cinema and Modernity, One and Many
Readings:
—Timothy Mitchell, “The Stage of Modernity,” in Questions of Modernity, ed.
Timothy Mitchell (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 1-34.
— Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, “On Alternative Modernities,” Public Culture
11.1 (Winter 1999): 1-18.
—Miriam Hansen, “Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as
Vernacular Modernism,” Modernism/Modernity 6.2 (1999): 59-77.
Week 2: January 11 & 13: Modernity, Modernism, Counterculture
Film:
Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal, Nollywood Babylon (2008)
Readings:
—Onookome Okome, “Nollywood: Spectatorship, Audience and the Sites of
Consumption,” Postcolonial Text 3.2 (2007): 1-21.
—Philip Cartelli, “Nollywood Comes to the Caribbean,” Film International 28,
4.5 (August 2007): 112-114.
—Paul Gilroy, “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity,” from The
Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1993), 1-40.
—John C. McCall, “The Pan-Africanism We Have,” Film International 28, 4.5
(August 2007): 92-97.
Week 3: January 18 & 20: Sense and Sensation
Film:
Oscar Michaeux, Within Our Gates (1920) and selected shorts
Readings:
—Jacqueline Stewart, “Negroes Laughing at Themselves” and “‘We Were Never
Immigrants’: Oscar Micheaux and the Reconstruction of Black American
Identity,” from Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 93-113, 219-244.
—Jane Gaines, “Fire and Desire: Race, Melodrama and Oscar Micheaux,” from
Fire and Desire: Mixed Race Movies in the Silent Era (Berkeley: University of
Chicago Press, 2001), 161-184.
—Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, its Spectator and the
Avant-Garde,” in Early Cinema: Space Frame Narrative, ed. Thomas Elsaesser
(London: British Film Institute, 1990) 56-62.
—Jonathan Auerbach, “Bodies in Space,” from Body Shots: Early Cinema’s
Incarnations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007) 85-123.**Note: will
be available on the course website
FILM 279
Week 4: January 25 & 27: Star Systems, Extraordinary Bodies, Race and Gender
Film:
Wu Yonggang, Shénnü (The Goddess, 1934)
Readings:
—Zhang Zhen, “Introduction” and “Fighting Over the Modern Girl,” from An
Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896-1937 (University
of Chicago Press, 2006), xiii-xxxiii, 244-297.
—Weihong Bao, “From Pearl White to White Rose Woo: Tracing the Vernacular
Body of Nüxia in Chinese Silent Cinema, 1927-1931,” Camera Obscura 20, 3:60
(2005): 193-231.
Recommended:
—Yiman Wang, “The Art of Screen Passing: Anna May Wong’s Yellow
Yellowface Performance in the Art Deco Era,” Camera Obscura 20, 3:60 (2005):
159-191.
Week 5: February 1 & 3: Modernity, Mobility and Melodrama
Film:
Arcady Boytler, La Mujer del Puerto (The Woman of the Port, 1934)
Readings:
—Sergei Eisenstein, “Dickens, Griffith and the Film Today” and “The Cinematic
Principle and the Ideogram,” in Film Theory and Criticism, ed. Gerald Mast and
Marshall Cohen, 3rd Edition (New York: Oxford UP, 1985) 370-380, 90-102.
— Ana M. Lopez, “Early Cinema and Modernity in Latin America,” Screen 40.1
(Fall 2000), 48-78.
—Andrea Noble, “Remaking Mexican Cinema,” from Mexican National Cinema
(New York: Routledge, 2005), 25-47, 178-180.
—Carlos Monsivais, “All the People Came and Did Not Fit on the Screen: Notes
on the Cinema Audience in Mexico,” in Mexican Cinema, ed. Paolo Paranagua
(London: BFI, 1995) 145-152.
PAPER ONE DUE: February 8
UNIT 2: TIME/MEMORY
Week 6: February 8 & 10: Still/ Moving Pictures
Film:
Andrei Tarkovsky, Zerkalo (The Mirror, 1975)
Readings:
—Ronald Bogue, “Hyalosigns: Crystals of Time” and “Chronosigns: The Order of
Time and Time as a Series,” from Deleuze on Cinema (New York: Routledge,
2003), 107-164.
— Gilles Deleuze, Excerpt from “The Crystals of Time” (Chapter 4), from
Cinema 2: The Time-Image (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989),
76-94.
—Andrei Tarkovsky, “The Film Image,” in Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the
Image (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), 104-163.
FILM 279
— Jodi Brooks, “Between Contemplation and Distraction: Cinema, Obsession and
Involuntary Memory,” in Kiss Me Deadly: Feminism and Cinema for the Moment,
ed. Laleen Jayamanne (Sydney: Power Institute, 1995), 77-90.
Week 7: February 15 & 17: National History and Cinema, “The People Are Missing”
Film:
Ritwik Ghatak, Komal Gandhar (A Soft Note on a Sharp Scale, 1961)
Readings:
—Bhaskar Sarkar, “Cinema’s Project of Nationhood” and “Ghatak, Melodrama,
and the Restitution of Experience,” from Mourning the Nation: Indian Cinema in
the Wake of Partition (Duke University Press, 2009), 1-43, 200-229.
—Gilles Deleuze, Excerpt from Cinema 2: The Time-Image (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1989), 215-224 (Chapter 8 section 3).
—Ritwik Ghatak, “Two Aspects of Cinema” and “Sound in Cinema,” in Rows and
Rows of Fences (Seagull Books, 2000), 57-80.
Recommended:
—Ashish Rajadhyaksha, “Indian Cinema: Origins to Independence” and “India:
Filming the Nation,” from Oxford History of World Cinema (ebook available
through McGill library)
Feb 21 & 23 Study Week
Week 8: March 1 & 3: Fast and Slow Cinema
Film:
Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Loong Boonmee raleuk chat (Uncle Boonmee Who
Can Recall His Past Lives, 2010)
Readings:
—Jihoon Kim, “Between Audiotorium and Gallery: Perception in Apichatpong
Weerasethekul’s Films and Installations,” in Global Art Cinema, eds. Rosalind
Galt and Karl Schoonover (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 125-141.
—Laura Marks, “The Memory of Touch,” from The Skin of the Film (Durham:
Duke University Press, 2000), 127-193, 254-256.
—Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Observations on the Long Take,” October 13 (1980) 3-6.
Recommended:
—Readings on the current slow versus fast cinema debate (see website for links)
PAPER TWO DUE: March 8
UNIT 3: FROM GENRE TO MEDIA
Week 9: March 8 & 10: The Relation of Genre and History
Film:
Kim Ji-woon, Joheunnom, nabbeunnom isanghannom (The Good, the Bad, the
Weird, 2008)
FILM 279
Readings:
—Raphaëlle Moine, “What is the Purpose of Genres?” and “How to
Conceptualize the History of a Genre?” from Cinema Genre (London: Blackwell
Publishing, 2008), 63-95, 131-168.
—Darcy Paquet, “The Korean Film Industry: 1992 to the Present,” in The New
Korean Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 32-50.
—Christina Klein, “Why American Studies Needs to Think about Korean
Cinema” American Quarterly 60.4 (December 2008): 871-898.
Recommended:
—Peter Limbrick, “The Australian Western,” Cinema Journal 46.4 (2007) 68-95.
—Daniel Fried, “Riding into the Sunrise: Genre Contingency and the Origin of the
Chinese Western,” PMLA 122.5 (October 2007): 1482–1498.
Week 10: March 15 & 17: Art Cinema, Trash Cinema
Film:
Vera Chytilová, Sedmikrásky (Daisies, 1966)
Jorge Furtado, Ilha das flores (Isle of Flowers, 1989)
Readings:
—Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover, “The Impurity of Art Cinema,” in Global
Art Cinema, eds. Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 3-30.
—Gregory Nowell Smith, “From Polish Cinema to Czech New Waves and
Beyond” and “Latin America,” from Making Waves: New Cinemas of the 1960s
(Continuum, 2007).** Will be available on website.
—Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, “Narrativizing Visual Culture: Towards a
Polycentric Visual Culture,” in The Visual Culture Reader (New York: Routledge,
2002) 37-59.
—Glauber Rocha “An Esthetic of Hunger,” in New Latin American Cinema, ed.
Michael Martin (Wayne State University Press, 1997) 59-61.
—Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino “Some Notes on the Concept of a Third
Cinema,” in New Latin American Cinema, 99-107.
Week 11: March 22 & 24: Slapstick History and Transnational Embodiment
Film:
Tsui Hark, Do ma daan (Pekin Opera Blues, 1986)
Readings:
—David Bordwell, “Motion Emotion,” from Planet Hong Kong: Popular Cinema
and the Art of Entertainment (Harvard University Press, 2000), 199-260.
—Laleen Jayamanne, ‘A Slapstick Time: Mimetic Convulsion, Convulsive
Knowing,’ from Toward Cinema and Its Double: Cross-Cultural Mimesis
(Indiana University Press, 2001), 181-205.
—Vijay Prashad, “Kung Fusion: Organize the ’Hood Under I-Ching Banners,”
from Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting (Beacon Press, 2001), 126-149.
Recommended:
—James Tobias, “Cinema, Scored,” Film Quarterly 57.2 (Winter 2003-4): 26-36.
—Kwai-Cheung Lo, “Knocking off Nationalism in Hong Kong Cinema,”
Camera Obscura 21, 3.63 (2006): 37-61.
FILM 279
Week 12: March 29 & 31:
Film:
—Raúl Ruiz, Trois vies et une seule morte (Three Lives and Only One Death,
1997)
Readings:
— Raul Ruiz, “Chapter One,” from Poetics of Cinema (Paris: Editions Dis-Voir,
1995).
— Thomas Elsaesser, “The Mind-Game Film,” in Puzzle Films: Complex
Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, ed. Warren Buckland (Oxford: Blackwell,
2010), 13-41.
— Marsha Kinder, “Hot Spots, Avatars, and Narrative Fields Forever: Bunuel's
Legacy for New Digital Media and Interactive Database Narrative,” Film
Quarterly 55.4 (2002): 2-15.
— Julie Codell, “Genres: Ever Changing Hybrids,” Genre, Gender, Race and
World Cinema, ed. Julie Codell (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 5-11.
Week 13A: April 5: The “Work” of Animation: from Cels and Puppets to Machinima
Films:
TBA
Readings:
—David Callahan, “Cel Animation: Mass Production and Marginalization in the
Animated Film Industry,” Film History 2.3 (Sept-Oct 1988): 223-228.
—Lucie Joschko and Michael Morgan, “Learning from the Golden Age of
Czechoslovak Animation,” animation: an interdisciplinary journal 3.1 (March
2008): 66-84.
—Tiziana Terranova, “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy,”
Social Text 63 18:2 (2000): 33-58.
—Barbara Klinger, “To Infinity and Beyond: The Web Short, Parody, and
Remediation,” from Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the
Home (University of California Press, 2006), 191-238.
Week 13B: April 7: Remixing Cinema
Films:
TBA
Readings:
—Anne Friedberg, “The End of Cinema: Multimedia and Technological Change,”
in Reinventing Cinema Studies, eds. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams
(London: Arnold, 2000), 438-452.
—Dale Hudson and Patricia Zimmerman, “Cinephilia, Technophilia and
Collaborative Remix Zones,” Screen 50.1 (Spring 2009): 135-146.
—Jean Luc Godard, “How Video Made the History of Cinema Possible” and
“Only Cinema Can Narrate Its Own History,” in Cinema (Oxford: Berg, 2005) 3144.
PAPER 3 DUE: April 15