Join the audience of students, faculty, and area community at the annual Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival with films and directors from around the world introduced by leading scholars and filmmakers. This season's theme, "Imagine Better," gathers films from around the world with creative, often startlingly original visions for the future, works that rethink approaches to myriad environmental and cultural challenges, and films that imagine alternatives to familiar patterns of thinking and being.

Explores modern origin of film experimentation in avant-garde modes such as Expressionism, Surrealism and contemporary results of this heritage. Trying to determine if film is the most resolutely modern of the media, we'll look at cinema as the result of two obsessive concerns: 1) the poetic, dreamlike and fantastic, 2) the factual, realistic and socially critical or anarchistic.

Explores modern origin of film experimentation in avant-garde modes such as Expressionism, Surrealism and contemporary results of this heritage. Trying to determine if film is the most resolutely modern of the media, we'll look at cinema as the result of two obsessive concerns: 1) the poetic, dreamlike and fantastic, 2) the factual, realistic and socially critical or anarchistic.

Explores modern origin of film experimentation in avant-garde modes such as Expressionism, Surrealism and contemporary results of this heritage. Trying to determine if film is the most resolutely modern of the media, we'll look at cinema as the result of two obsessive concerns: 1) the poetic, dreamlike and fantastic, 2) the factual, realistic and socially critical or anarchistic.

Often referred to as the only indigenous American film style, "film noir" in its very appellation reveals that its major effects (for certain modern conceptions of cinema) lay elsewhere. We will examine film noir in its American heyday (1945-1957) and how it came to be a major propelling force in the new European cinema of the 1960's (Godard, and the Cahiers du cinema).

Could extraterrestrial life exist in the cosmos? Scientists say yes, possibly on billions of planets in our galaxy alone. In this class, we will examine the international cinema of alien encounters and explore how these films envision the alien other. How do these films both reflect and shape our own experience of "the alien" or the unknown "other"? Since the beginning of cinema, the figure of the alien has visited the big screen with its promise of otherworldly wonders and its threat of unthinkable perils.

The course is designed to introduce students to the cinematic work of some of the most important Latin American directors. The course will center on a variety of topics that are vital to the understanding of the most significant political, historical, social and cultural events that have shaped Latin America. UMass Amherst Undergraduate Certificate Categories: III, V

Could extraterrestrial life exist in the cosmos? Scientists say yes, possibly on billions of planets in our galaxy alone. In this class, we will examine the international cinema of alien encounters and explore how these films envision the alien other. How do these films both reflect and shape our own experience of "the alien" or the unknown "other"? Since the beginning of cinema, the figure of the alien has visited the big screen with its promise of otherworldly wonders and its threat of unthinkable perils.

This course provides an introduction to science fiction cinema from the end of the nineteenth century to today. Beginning with the experiments of the Melies Brothers and the importance of German Expressionist films like Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the course considers technological prognostication from Destination Moon to 2001: A Space Odyssey, adventure and science fiction in films like Forbidden Planet and Star Wars, and the dystopian imagination from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to District 9.