English 190: Introduction to Film Study

Transcription

1 English 190: Introduction to Film Study (3 credit hours) William Yarrow See Lessons in ANGEL for weekly assignments. Texts: Gerald Mast and Bruce F. Kawin: A Short History of the Movies (10 th edition) [Chapters 14 and 16 on National Cinemas now included. Discussion throughout the course of the international popularity (rivaling Hollywood itself) of Indian cinema, particularly Bollywood films.] Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics [Though ostensibly about comic books, this is an excellent text for understanding mise-enscene, cinematography, editing and juxtaposition, camera angles camera distance, and narrative construction in films.] Pauline Kael: 5001 Nights at the Movies [consulting this text throughout the semester will greatly improve your understanding and appreciation of many films we will watch this semester as well as improving your understanding and appreciation of the film directors and film actors and actresses you will be exposed to in this class.] [Entries on films of Satyajit Ray now assigned.] Course Objectives: 1. To learn about the history and development of film in America and the world. 2. To learn about the elements of film criticism and to master the vocabulary of discussing and analyzing film 3. To have students create original stills from public domain films 4. To have students practice film analysis in class and on group Discussion Forums 5. To have students write and record an audio commentary for a PhotoStory 3 presentation of a film using original stills they have made 6. To expose students to a number of different genres of film (comedy, romance, documentary, Western, musical, film noir, etc.)

2 7. To expose students to a wide range of films by different directors (Griffith, Eisenstein, Sjostrom, Murnau, Hitchcock, Welles, Scorsese, etc.) 8. To expose students to a wide range of film styles (slapstick comedy, German Expressionism, Italian Neo Realism, New Wave, etc.) 9. To expose students to films from different countries (America, England, Spain, France, Sweden, Germany, Italy, India, and U.S.S.R.) 10. To expose students to and have students study a film trilogy [Satyajit Ray s Apu Trilogy all three films viewable over two class periods. The second paper in the class will be an analysis of the trilogy.] 11. To expose students to films from different time periods (1890s, 1920 s, 1930 s, 1960s, etc.) 12. To compare and contrast elements of specific films, specific kinds of films, the styles of specific directors, the acting of specific actors, etc. [To emphasize the international breadth of films viewed in English 190, the organization of class is now by country/countries of films studied] WEEK ONE: AMERICA, FRANCE (Silent Films) (Lumiere Brothers, Melies, Edison, Chaplin, Keaton, Browning, etc.) WEEK TWO: AMERICA, SWEDEN, GERMANY (Silent Films) (Griffith, Murnau, Sjostrom, Flaherty) WEEK THREE: U.S.S.R. (Soviet Montage) (Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, Vertov, etc.) WEEK FOUR: GERMAY (German Expressionism) (Wiene, Murnau, Von Sternberg, Ruttmann, etc.) WEEK FIVE: AMERICA (Hollywood Genre Films) (Mamoulian, Freund, Cromwell, Enright, Wellman, etc.) WEEK SIX: AMERICA (Westerns) (Ford, Grant, Brando, Petroni) WEEK SEVEN: AMERICA, SLOVENIA (Auteur) (Welles, Silovic) WEEK EIGHT: ENGLAND AND AMERICA (Auteur) (Hitchcock) WEEK NINE: ENGLAND AND AMERICA (Film Noir Stylistics) (Reed, Lang, Werker, Mate) WEEK TEN: AMERICA (Film Noir Criminal Activity) (Walsh, Nosseck, Karlson, Lupino, Allen) WEEK ELEVEN: AMERICA (Film Noir Femmes Fatale) (Wilder, Ulmer, Lubin, Milestone, Haskin) WEEK TWELVE: ITALY (Neo-Realism) (Fellini, Rosselini, De Sica)

3 WEEK THIRTEEN: INDIA [Affinities with Italian Neo-Realism, the art film, the nature of a trilogy] (Satyajit Ray) WEEK FOURTEEN: INDIA [Affinities with Italian Neo-Realism, the art film, the nature of a trilogy] (Satyajit Ray) WEEK FIFTEEN: FRANCE (Avant-garde, New Wave) (Clair, Cocteau, Vigo, Godard, Truffaut) WEEK SIXTEEN: AMERICA (Auteur) (Scorsese) Assignments: Polls/Quizzes/Assignments on readings and films: 10% Stills Class Archive: 10% Discussion Board Postings 25% Papers: 20% Photo Story 3 Project: 15% Final Objective Exam 20% Policies: To be successful in this class, you should be prepared to spend 2 to 3 hours outside of class for every hour you spend in class. That means, to be successful in English 190, you should be prepared to spend 5 to 8 hours outside of class doing reading assignments, taking online quizzes, viewing assigned public domain films on the computer, and posting to Discussion Boards. All the work for a particular week is due by 12:00 PM on the day of class. No quizzes, discussion boards, papers, or other assignments will be accepted after that deadline. Students who don t complete an assignment by that time will receive a zero for that assignment. Only one absence allowed during semester. Students who are absent must view on their own the films they missed. Better to arrive late than not to come at all. Just come in and take your seat quietly even if a film is being shown. No talking or distractions while films are being shown in class. *********Plagiarism even in part (of work, words, or ideas) will receive a zero as a grade plus a penalty of zero for 10% of your class grade. A second instance of plagiarism results in automatic failure in the course. If you consult outside sources, make sure you identify all

4 sources. If you have any questions about plagiarism or what might be considered plagiarism, please see me. ********* This syllabus may be modified by addition, deletion, or substitution at the instructor's discretion at any time during the semester.

5 Bibliography of Works on Indian Film Banerjee, Shampa and Anil Srivastava. One Hundred Indian Feature Films: An Annotated Filmography. New York: Garland, Barnouw, Erik and Subrahmanya Krishnaswamy. Indian Film. New York: Oxford UP, Cooper, Darius. The Cinema of Satyajit Ray: Between Tradition And Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, Das Gupta, Chidananda. The Cinema Of Satyajit Ray. Ghaziabad, India: Vikas Publishing House, Devraj, Rajesh, Edo Bouman, and Paul Duncan. The Art of Bollywood. Hong Kong: Taschen, Dissanayake, Wimal. Vision, and Culture: Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy Revisited, East-West Film Journal (1986 Dec.); 1 (1): Dudrah, Rajinder Kumar. Bollywood: Sociology Goes To The Movies. New Delhi: Sage, Dudrah, Rajinder Kumar, and Desai Jigna, eds. The Bollywood Reader. Maidenhead, Berkshire, England: McGraw-Hill : Ganguly, Keya. Cinema, Emergence, and The Films of Satyajit Ray. Berkeley: U of California P, Jigna Desai. Beyond Bollywood: the Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film. Routledge, John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson, eds. World Cinema: Critical Approaches. Oxford: Oxford UP, John Hood, The Essential Mystery: Major Filmmakers of Indian Art Cinema Orient Longmam, 2000.

6 Kabir, Nasreen. Bollywood: The Indian Cinema Story. London : Channel 4 Books, Linda Badley, R. Barton Palmer, and Steven Jay Schneider, eds. Traditions in World Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2005). Majunath, Pendakur. Indian Popular Cinema: Industry, Ideology and Consciousness. Hampton Press, Narwekar, Sanjit. Directory of Indian Film-makers And Films. Westport, Greenwood Press, Nataša Ďurovičová and Kathleen Newman, eds. World cinemas, Transnational Perspectives. New York: Routledge, Nyce, Ben. Satyajit Ray: A Study of His Films. New York: Praeger, Purohit, Vinayak. Some Aspects of Sociology of Indian Films and Profile of the Hindi Hit Movie, Bombay: Indian Institute of Social Research, Dwyer, Rachel and Divia Patel, Cinema India: the Visual Culture of Hindi Film. London: Reaction Books, Rajagopalan, Sudha. Indian Films In Soviet Cinema: The Culture of Moviegoing After Stalin. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, Rangoonwalla, Firoze. Satyajit Ray's Art. Delhi: Clarion, Ravi Vasudevan, ed. Making Meaning in Indian Cinema. New Delhi: OUP, 2000 Ravinder Kaur and Ajay Sinha, eds. Bollyworld: Popular Indian Cinema Through a Transnational Lens. New Delhi: Sage, Ray, Satyajit, and Bert Cardullo. Satyajit Ray: Interviews. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, Ray, Satyajit,eds. Satyajit Ray: An Anthology Of Statements On Ray And By

7 Ray. New Delhi: Directorate ff Film Festivals, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Ray, Satyajit. My Years With Apu London: Faber, Ray, Satyajit. Our Films, Their Films. Bombay: Orient Longman, Robinson, Andrew and Nemai Ghosh. Satyajit,Satyajit Ray: A Vision Of Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris, Robinson, Andrew. Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye : The Biography of a Master Film-maker. London: I.B. Tauris, Roy Armes. Third World Film Making and the West. Berkeley: U of California P, Schriever-Klassen, Silja. Bollywood: The Passion of Indian Film and Music. Hamburg: Ear-Books, Shohini Chaudhuri. Contemporary World Cinema: Europe, the Middle East, East Asia and South Asia. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, Tejaswini Ganti, Bollywood: a Guidebook to Popular Indian Cinema. London: Routledge, Vinay Lal and Ashish Nandy, eds. Fingerprinting Popular Culture: the Mythic and Iconic in Indian Cinema. OUP India, Virdi, Jyotika. The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popular Films as Social History. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2003.

8 Pre/Post-Test on international content for ENG 190 (circle if this is a pre or post-test) Student name or ID number: Date: Name a director from Germany. Name a German film. Name a director from Spain. Name a Spanish film. Name a director from Italy. Name an Italian film. Name a director from the Soviet Union or Russia. Name a Soviet or Russian film. Name a director from Sweden. Name a Swedish film. Name a director from Japan. Name a Japanese film. Name a director from France. Name a French film. Name a director from the Middle East. Name a Middle Eastern film. Name a director from India. Name an Indian film. Name a director from Britain or Ireland. Name a British or Irish film. Name a director from China. Name a Chinese film. Name a director from Eastern Europe. Name an Eastern European film. Name a director from South America. Name a South American film. Name a director from Hong Kong. Name a Hong Kong film. Name a director from Australia or New Zealand. Name an Australian or New Zealand film.