Film & Media Studies 218 - Introduction to Film Theory

(Offered as ENGL 288 and FAMS 218) This course will offer a historical survey of debates that attempt to understand what makes film film. Indeed, from nearly its inception as an aesthetic and cultural form over 125 years ago, film has incited on-going debates about its definition as a medium and as a cultural phenomenon. Throughout the course, we will therefore ask: how does film invite us to see? And how does it invite us to think, to feel, to communicate, to gather together? Or, as twentieth-century French film critic André Bazin asked, we will also pose: “What is cinema?” Drawing on formalist, phenomenological, psychoanalytic, ideological, cultural, experiential, and other approaches, we will attempt to answer not only what cinema is but also why we continue to be drawn to it as an expressive form. The class will include lectures on particular schools of thought and discussions about debates within and between those schools, as well as weekly screenings. Students will produce regular reading summaries, textual analyses, and two formal essays. Screenings may include (but not be limited to): The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928), Old and New/The General Line (Sergei Eisenstein, 1929), Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956), Losing Ground (Kathleen Collins, 1982), Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989), After Life (Hirokazu Koreeda, 1998), Velvet Goldmine (Todd Haynes, 1998), Leave No Trace (Debra Granik, 2018).

Limited to 35 students. First years admitted by permission of the instructor. Fall semester. Professor Hastie.

How to handle overenrollment: Preference given to English and FAMS majors.

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: attentive reading of theoretical and critical materials, cinematic analysis, applied theoretical work in writing assignments.