HL414—Fall 2014
HL4014—Advanced Studies in Film: Blind Cinema
Seminar
Instructor Information:
Module Coordinator: Brian Bergen-Aurand
Office: HSS-03-60
Telephone: 6790-5381
Email: brian@ntu.edu.sg
Seven Questions Concerning Blind Cinema:
This course takes the dictum, “Seeing is believing” as a leaving off point to these
questions:
1. What is cinema? What is blind cinema? What is the relation between
cinema and blind cinema? How is cinema always about seeing/not seeing?
How is cinema about blindness/insight?
2. What is the relation among seeing, believing, truth, justice, and ethics?
How are recognition, respect, regard, and responsibility about the relation
between blindness and insight?
3. How do we see the cinema? How can one not see the cinema? How can one
who cannot see make cinema? How can the cinema make one who cannot
see? How can the cinema blind you?
4. What does it mean to testify? Who testifies? To what? How can the cinema
testify or not testify?
5. What might it mean to see seeing? Or to not see seeing? Why is blindness
something we must see in the cinema, but seeing is something to which we
must be blind?
6. What is the function of blindness in cinema? How does blindness function
in cinema? How is cinema a function of blindness? (Consider even the
shutter effect/blinking.)
7. How do questions of blind cinema intersect with questions of gender,
sexuality, and embodiment? If most art and philosophy is filled with blind
men, why is cinema strewn with the bodies of blind girls and women.
Three Hypotheses Concerning Blind Cinema:
1. Blind Cinema is Gyges and not Gyges, seeing and not-seeing. It is cinema
otherwise than reality and its shadow, otherwise than diachrony and
reprsentation.
2. Blind Cinema is the ethical aesthetic intersection between Levinas and
Derrida, where they encounter one another.
3. What we have here is a sample of Blind Cinema. It is not an exhaustive
survey.
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HL414—Fall 2014
Print Texts (excerpts available from HSS RBR books):
 Timothy Corrigan. A Short Guide to Writing about Film, Pearson (2007).
 Braudy, Leo and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism, Oxford
(2004).
 Stam, Robert. Film Theory: An Introduction, Blackwell (2000).
 Stam, Robert and Toby Miller, eds. Film and Theory: An Anthology,
Blackwell (2000).
 Hand, Sean, ed. The Levinas Reader, Blackwell (1989).
 Ulmer, Gregory L. Applied Grammatology, The Johns Hopkins UP (1985).
 Brunette, Peter and David Wills. Screen/Play, Princeton UP (1989).
 Derrida, Jacques. Memoirs of the Blind, U of Chicago P (1993).
 Derrida, Jacques. Right of Inspection, Monacelli (1998).
 Derrida, Jacques. The Truth in Painting (1987).
 Dick, Kriby and Amy Ziering Kofman, Screenplay and Essays on the film
Derrida, Manchester UP (2005).
 Cooper, Sarah, Selfless Cinema?: Ethics and French Documentary,
Legenda (2006).
 Wheatley, Catherine, Michael Haneke’s Cinema: The Ethic of the Image,
Berghahn Books (2009).
 Additional readings will be made available in the HSS Reserve Book Room
or online through EdveNTUre.

Non-Print Texts:
DVDs and Videotapes are available on reserve in the Business Library or at
the ADM library.
Evaluation:
Engagement
Project Proposal
Filmography
Argumentative Essay
20%
10%
30%
40%
100%
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HL414—Fall 2014
4. Schedule
Week
1
2
3
Topic
Introduction—What is
Blind Cinema?
&
Image, Sign Trace
Seeing and Believing
among the Shadows
or
Blindness and Insight
Seeing Differently
Reading
“The Trace”
“Myth of Gyges”
Levinas, “Reality
and Its Shadow”
Levinas, “Truth
of Disclosure and
Truth of
Testimony”
“Film & Ethics”
“The Occluded
Relation”
Brakhage, from
Screening
Un chien Andalou
Rashomon
Selections from By
Brakhage: An
Anthology
Metaphors on
Vision
8
9
Cooper, “Chris
San Soleil
Marker: Love,
&
Death and
La jetee
Documentary”
Surveillance
Wheatley,
Caché (Hidden)
“Shame and
Guilt: Caché”
Seeing, Believing,
Brunette,
Blow-Up
Knowing, Recognizing, “Poststructuralism
and Responding
& Deconstruction”
Brunette, “BlowUp”
Seeing without Eyes
Drabiski, from
The Birds
“Introduction” &
Derrida, “The
Parergon”
Reading & Screening Week
Blindness and Insight
Derrida, from
City Lights
10
Eyes and Hands
Derrida, from
Happy Times
11
The Fantasy of Justice
Derrida, from
Dancer in the Dark
12
Draw what you see /
Draw what you know
Derrida, from
The Draughtsman’s
Contract
4
5
6
7
Sunless Cinema
Memoirs of the
Blind
Memoirs of the
Blind
Memoirs of the
Blind
Memoirs of the
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HL414—Fall 2014
Blind
13
14
15
Blind Cinema
“Blind Cinema”
Review Week
Essays Due
4
Derrida
HL414—Fall 2014
Blind Cinema, A Filmography
Allou To Oniro Ki Allou To Thavma / Two Apaches from Peiraia (Greece,
Dimitris Loukakos & Petros Yiannakos, 1957)
Belle de jour (France/Italy, Luis Buñuel, 1967)
Be With Me (Singapore, Eric Khoo, 2005)
Bis ans Ende der Welt / Until the End of the World (Germany/Australia/France,
Wim Wenders, 1991)
Blind Beast
Blind Dating (USA, Kames Keach, 2006)
Blindness (1998)
Blindness (Fernando Meirelles, 2008)
Blind Trilogy, The (Singapore, Royston Tan, 2005)
Blink (USA, Michael Apted, 1994)
Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993)
Blue Velvet (USA, David Lynch, 1986)
Bushi no Ichibun (Love and Honor, 2006)
Chelovek kino-apparatom / Man with a Movie Camera (USSR, Dziga Vertov,
1929)
Colors of the Blind (1997)
Fanaa ()
Gin gwai / The Eye (Singapore/Hong Kong, Oxide Pang Chun / Danny Pang,
2002)
L’homme qui rit (The Man Who Laughs)
Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
Hollywood Ending (UK, Woody Allen, 2002)
Ibu Mertuaku (My Mother-in-Law, 1962)
Julien Donkey-Boy (USA, Harmony Korine, 1999)
Karanlik dünya (Turkey, Metin Erksan, 1953)
Kaasi (India, Vinayan, 2001)
Love is Not Blind (South Africa, Beathur Baker, 2001)
Magnificent Obsession (USA, Douglas Sirk, 1954)
Memorias de subdesarrollo / Memories of Underdevelopment (Cuba, Tomás
Gutiérrez Ales, 1968)
The Man Who Laughs ()
Môjû (Japan, Yasuzo Masumura, 1969)
Mullholland Drive (USA/France, David Lynch, 2001)
Nuit et brouillard / Night and Fog (France, Alain Resnais, 1955)
North by Northwest (USA, Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)
Oedipus Rex (Italy, Pier Paolo Passolini, 1967)
Oktyabr / October / Ten Days that Shook the World (USSR, Sergei Eisenstein,
1928)
Palindromes (USA, Todd Solondz, 2004)
A Patch of Blue ()
Peeping Tom (UK, Michael Powell, 1960)
La pianiste (2001, Michael Haneke)
Ran (Japan/France, Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
The Road Home (2000)
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HL414—Fall 2014
Saboteur (USA, Alfred Hitchcock, 1942)
The Thief of Bagdad (UK, Michael Powell, 1940)
Tommy (UK, Ken Russell, 1975)
Wait Until Dark (USA, Terence Young, 1967)
The White Countess (UK / USA / Germany / China, James Ivory, 2005)
Zatoichi (2003)
by Zaim???
by Rosenblatt???
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