HUMA 1200 Film Art and Cinema Culture
Summer 2015
Instructor: Dr. Nga Li LAM
This course introduces students to the form, history and meaning of cinema through a selected reading of canonical texts, ranging from early silent films to contemporary movies and from the avant-garde to Hollywood blockbusters. Key theoretical concepts, historical movements and analytical methods would be surveyed. By the end of the course, students are expected to be familiarised with a few film classics, be aware of the main agendas of film studies, and attain a high level of media literacy.
Course intended learning outcomes:
To familiarize students with the canonical texts of world cinema;
To help students understand the major scholarly discussion in film studies;
To help students attain a high level of media literacy which would enable them to analyze an audio-visual text independently and critically.
Topics:
Lecture One: Introduction: Early Cinema and Modernity
Introduce students to the class with a survey on the early cinema
Screening: The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter, US, 1903) ; City Lights
(Charlie Chaplin, US, 1931) and various film clips
Required Readings :
Ben Singer, ‘Sensationalism and the World of Modernity,’ in
Melodrama and Modernity ; Tom Gunning, ‘Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its
Spectator and the Avant-Garde,’
Lecture Two: Hollywood I: The Studio System and Beyond
A survey on the studio system, continuity editing and Orson Welles
Screening: Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, US, 1940)
Required Readings: Janet Stagier, ‘The Continuity System,’ in The Classical
Hollywood Cinema ; James Naremore, ‘Style and Meaning in Citizen Kane ,’
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Lecture Three: Genre Theory and Genre Films Q1
A survey on genre theory and various popular genres
Screening:
Singin’ in the Rain
(Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, US, 1952)
Required Readings: Jane Feuer, ‘Mass Art as Folk Art’ in The Hollywood Musical ;
Rick Altman, Film/ Genre , 30-48
Lecture Four: Italian Neorealism T1
A survey on Italian Neorealism and the Realist tradition
Screening: Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, Italy, 1948)
Required Readings: André Bazin, ‘Bicycle Thief,’ in What is Cinema?; Pam Cook and Meike Bernink, ‘Italian Neorealism,’ in The Cinema Book
Lecture Five: French New Wave T2
On French New Wave
Screening: Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1960)
Required Readings: ‘ Jean-Luc Godard: “From Critic to Film-maker”: Godard in interview’ in Cahiers du Cinéma
; David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, ‘
Breathless
,’ in Film Art: An Introduction
Lecture Six: Auteur Theory, Hitchcock and Psychoanalysis
Consider film authorship and psychoanalysis through the case of Hitchcock
Screening: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, US, 1958)
Required Readings: Andrew Sarris, ‘Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962’; Kriss
Ravetto-Biagioli, ‘ Vertigo and the Vertiginous History of Film Theory,’
Lecture Seven: Mid-term Exam T3 T4
Lecture Eight: The Soviet Montage T5
A survey on soviet montage as a style and an ideology
Screening: Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1925) ; excerpt from Street
Angels (Yuan Muzhi, China, 1937)
Required Readings: Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, ‘Soviet montage form and style’ in Film History: An Introduction ; Sergei Eisenstein, ‘Eisenstein on
Eisenstein, the Director of Potemkin
’
Lecture Nine: Post-modern: Aesthetics and Ideology Q2
A survey on postmodernism and post-modern film
Screening: Chungking Express (Wong Kar-Wai, HK, 1995)
Required Readings: Fredric Jameson, ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society.’; Yeh
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Yue-Yu, ‘A life of Its Own: Musical Discourse in Wong Kar-Wai’s Films.’
Lecture Ten: Hollywood II: Popular Films and Politics T6
On the popularization of Guy Fawkes Mask and the politics of Hollywood
Screening : V for Vendetta (James McTeigue, US, 2006)
Required Readings : Maltby, Richard,
‘Taking Hollywood Seriously,’
in Hollywood
Cinema ; Lewis Call, ‘A is for Anarchy, V is for Vendetta: Images of Guy Fawkes and the Creation of Postmodern Anarchism’ in Anarchist Studies
Lecture Eleven: Documentary : Theories and Practices T7
On various traditions or schools of documentary film-making
Screening: Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, USSR, 1929) ; Night and Fog
(Alain Resnais, France, 1955)
Required Readings: Dziga Vertov, ‘The Man with a Movie Camera,’; Sandy
Flitterman-Lewis, ‘Documenting the ineffable: terror and memory in Alain Resnais’
Night and Fog ,’
Lecture Twelve: Special Meeting T8 T9 T10
Lecture Thirteen: Presentation and Essay Submission T11 T12 T13
Assessments:
Attendance and Participation (10%): Film-viewing is essential to this course.
Students would be asked to respond to film-related questions after screenings, which will be counted towards their participation marks.
Quizzes (5%): Two quizzes on the required readings of the week. See Q1 & Q2.
Midterm Exam (20%): On lectures, films and required readings.
Group Presentation and Discussion (25%): Discussion during tutorials and a presentation on a selected film topic.
Final Exam (40%): A take home essay, to be submitted at the last lecture.
Reference books:
David Bordwell, The McGraw-Hill Film Viewer’s Guide (McGraw Hill: 2004)
Pam Cook and Mieke Bernink, The Cinema Book (BFI Publishing, 1999)
This course outline is tentative and is subjected to revision.
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