Film and Video - Spring 1998

This class is designed to be a survey of international cinema from the advent of sound technology in the late 1920s to the start of the French New Wave around 1959. (International Cinema from 1959 to the present is taught as Film and Video 132B.) As with any survey class, the compression is severe, but the course will attempt to explore the differing inter/national contexts, theoretical movements, and technological innovations which helped shape film history during these most important years. Major movements and directors will be studied and some of the most important films of world cinema will be screened. Readings will include a comprehensive film history textbook, as well as a reader comprised of seminal theoretical essays which also helped to shape the evolution of international film history.

• Thompson and Bordwell, Film History: An Introduction
• Course Reader of Miscellaneous Essays

• Attendance and Participation in Class Sessions
• Completion of All Reading Assignments
• One Midterm Exam
• One Final Exam
• One Short Paper (5-6 pages)
• One Longer Paper (10-12 pages)

This course is designed to examine an undertheorized area of film studies, the exploitation film. Blurring into other filmic categories such as the horror film, the Rteenpic,S the art film, pornography, RraceS movies and the B film, exactly how one defines the exploitation film is open to considerable debate. Most will agree that exploitation films are usually created to make a quick profit by shocking and titillating audiences with sensational topics; in our culture this usually means the presentation of violence and/or sexual content which could not otherwise be presented under the various historical film censoring agencies. And while the popularity of such films has waxed and waned, the critical opprobrium attached to many of them remains fairly constant, and should be a major point of investigation: what are the hierarchies of significance embedded in popular cultural artifacts and how do they help to structure and define 20th-century American society? Towards that end, the exploitation film will be addressed in terms of its historical significance. Topics of discussion will include important exploitation filmmakers and movements, questions of censorship, genre and boundaries, pornography and horror, camp, the RartS film, changing modes of spectatorship and exhibition, etc. Readings will include filmmakersU personal memoirs, surveys of specific movements and figures, and theoretical treatises on the nature of sexuality and violence in Western culture.

• John Waters, Shock Value
• David F. Friedman, A Youth in Babylon
• Course Reader of Miscellaneous Articles

• Completion of all Reading Assignments
• Participation in Class
• One Mid-Term Exam
• One Final Exam
• One Short Paper (5-6 pages)
• One Longer Paper (10-12 pages)

Revised 7/13/04.