Home > Five College Course Catalog > Contemporary Filmmakers

Contemporary Filmmakers
Course Number	ENGL 84-01
Course Title	Contemporary Filmmakers
Department	English
Campus	Amherst College
Course Description	The topic changes each time the course is taught.  In spring 2010 the topic will be “Cinema and Everyday Life.”  Film theorist Siegfried Kracauer declared that some of the first films showed “life at its least controllable and most unconscious moments, a jumble of transient, forever dissolving patterns accessible only to the camera.”  This course will explore the ways contemporary narrative films aesthetically represent everyday life–capturing both its transience and our everyday ruminations.  We will further consider the ways we incorporate film into our everyday lives through various modes of viewings (the arthouse, the multiplex, the DVD, the mp3), our means of perception, and in the kinds of souvenirs we keep.  We will look at films by Chantal Akerman, Robert Altman, Marleen Gorris, Hirokazu Koreeda, Marzieh Makhmalbaf, Terrence Malick, Lynne Ramsay, Tsai Ming-liang, Agnès Varda, Wong Kar-wai, and Andy Warhol.  Readings will include work by Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Marlene Dietrich, Sigmund Freud, and various works in film and media studies.  Two class meetings and one screening per week. Not open to first-year students.  Limited to 30 students.  Spring semester.  Professor Hastie.

Reg #	Section	Credits	Instructors	Meeting Times	Location	Notes
ENGL-84-01	01	4	John Cameron	MW 02:00PM-03:20PM

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