FI101 Autumn Term DISCOVERING CINEMA Day Module Module Tutor: Louis Bayman (Rm A0.15 Millburn House) AIMS OF THE MODULE 1. This module aims to introduce you to the close analysis of film texts. 2. It will also ask you to consider a number of key developments in film history and some of the different examples of film internationally. 3. You will explore some of the main critical debates that have shaped Film Studies as an academic discipline. 4. It aims to progress from examining the formal properties of film to considering its cultural importance and artistic relevance. It will introduce questions regarding the political and social functions of cinema and the intellectual frameworks that have been used to explain it. Weeks 1-5 Film Form: Basic procedures and language of film analysis Week 1 Screening Lecture Reading Introduction and Mise-en-scène Changing Lanes (Roger Michell, USA 2002) Introductory remarks and understanding mise-en-scène **Film Art (10th Ed) Chap 4 (“The Shot: Mise en Scene”) A Taste of Honey (Dir: Tony Richardson; UK, 1961) WEEK 2 Screening Lecture Reading Editing Onibaba/The Hole (Kaneto Shindo, Japan, 1964) Editing and continuity: the relation of shot to shot Film Art (10th Ed) Chap 6 (“The Relation of Shot to Shot: Editing”) WEEK 3 Screening The camera La Grande illusion (Jean Renoir, France, 1937) Lecture Reading Composition, camera movement and lighting Film Art (10th Ed) Chap 5 (“The Shot: Cinematography”) WEEK 4 Screening Lecture Reading Sound Calvary (John Michael McDonagh, Ireland/UK 2014) Sound: Music, voice and soundscape Film Art (10th Ed.) Chap 7 (“Sound in the Cinema”) WEEK 5 Style and tone in film Screening Ostre sledované vlaky/Closely Observed Trains (Dir: Jirí Menzel; Czechoslovakia 1966) Lecture Review of work so far: Making the invisible visible. Reading **Douglas Pye “Movies and Tone” in Close Up No. 2 (2007) pp. 5-31 Film Art (10th Ed.) Chap 8 (“Summary: Style and Film Form”) **Peter Hames ‘Jirí Menzel’ in The Czechoslovak New Wave 2nd edition Wallflower, London 2005 151-59 Weeks 7-10 The relation of "Narrative" to "Spectacle" WEEK 7 Screening Lecture Reading: Classical Hollywood cinema The Shop around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, USA 1940) The conventions of Classical Hollywood **Richard Maltby Hollywood Cinema Chapter 15 WEEK 8 Screening Lecture Reading Entertainment and the musical film Orfeu negro/Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus; Brazil/France/Italy 1959) Music in cinema: Spectacle and performance **Robert Stam, ‘The Favela: From Rio 40 Graus to Black Orpheus, 1954-1959’ in Tropical Multiculturalism Durham, Duke University Press, 1997, 166-177 WEEK 9 A special case: New Iranian cinema Screening Roozi ke zan shodam/The Day I Became a Woman (Marzieh Meshkini; Iran, 2000) Lecture International art cinema, censorship and the case of Iranian cinema Reading **Michelle Langford ‘Allegory and the Aesthetics of BecomingWoman in Marziyeh Meshkini’s The Day I Became a Woman’ in Camera Obscura (2007), 22 (1 64): 1-41 WEEK 10 Blockbusters and contemporary Hollywood style Screening Gravity (Alfonso Cuaròn, USA, 2013) Lecture Blockbusters, attractions and intensified continuity Reading **Jose Arroyo Action Spectacle (p. vii-xv) **David Bordwell “Intensified Continuity : Visual Style in Contemporary American Film” in Film Quarterly Vol 55 No. 3 Spring 2002 pp. 16-28