Film Studies 236 - LIFE & DEATH OF SILENT CINEMA

This course charts the life and death of silent cinema from the beginnings of film to the coming of sound (and after). We exhume the cinema's prehistory in motion studies, optical toys, and popular entertainments such as magic lantern shows and wax museums; then survey the critical reception of early cinema and major theoretical debates about the specificity of the film medium. The second half of the course addresses reception in more depth. Topics may include non-Western exhibition practices; African-American filmmaking and spectatorship; gender, sex and censorship; historical and contemporary practices of silent film music; and the afterlife of silent cinema in contemporary art.