|
Click here to view the Smith online course catalog.
200 Introduction to Film Studies
This course offers an overview of cinema as an artistic, industrial, ideological and social force. Students will become familiar with the aesthetic elements of cinema (visual style, editing, cinematography, sound, performance, narration and formal structure, etc.), the terminology of film production, and the relations among industrial, ideological, artistic, and social issues. Films (both classic and contemporary) will be discussed from aesthetic, historical and social perspectives, enabling students to approach films as informed and critical viewers. Enrollment limited to 60. Priority given to Smith College Film Studies Minors and Five College Film Studies Majors. {A} 4 credits
Alexandra Keller
Offered Fall 2008
241 Genre/Period: American Cinema and Culture from the Depression to the Sixties
This course explores the relationship between film and culture during some of the most crucial decades of “The American Century.” It looks at the evolving connection between films and their audiences, the extent to which films are symptomatic of as well as influential on historical periods, major events and social movements, and the ways in which film genres evolve in relation to both cultural change and the rise and fall of the Hollywood studio system. Among the questions we’ll consider: How did the Depression have an impact on Hollywood film style and form? How were evolving ideas about American motherhood puzzled out in American cinema of the period? What were some of the important differences between the way mainstream U.S. cinema and European film represented World War II? How did Civil Rights and the Red Scare become appropriate topics for Westerns? Did the lighthearted veneer of the fluffy sex comedies of the sixties actually hide some serious questions about labor, independent female subjectivity and heteronormativity? Particular and sustained attention will be paid to relations among gender, genre, race and class. {A/H} 4 credits
Alexandra Keller
Offered Spring 2009
241 Genre/Period: Screwball Comedy
Classic screwball comedies were produced in a ten year period, from Capra's It Happened One Night (1934) to Sturges's Miracle at Morgan's Creek (1944). The class will screen 20 films from these years, although it will include a few later films: Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959), Mann's Lover Come Back (1962), and the Coen Brothers' Intolerable Cruelty (2003). We will examine the genre in its historical context and examine elements of the system -- studios, writers, producers, clothes and set designers, actors -- that produced this astonishingly witty and short-lived film genre.
(E) {A} 4 credits
Margaret Bruzelius
Offered Spring 2009
280 Introduction to Video Production
This course involves both an introduction to the history and contemporary practice of experimental video and video art, as well as the acquisition of the technical, analytical and conceptual skills to complete individual video projects. Students will be engaged in screenings and discussion and class exercises, and will produce three to four (short) individual video projects. Projects are designed to develop basic technical proficiency in the video medium as well as practical skills for the completion of the video projects. This is a beginning course that will cover the basics of shooting, lighting, audio, and digital editing. Prerequisite: 200 (which may be taken concurrently). Priority given to Smith College Film Studies Minors and Five College Film Studies Majors. Enrollment by permission of Instructor. Enrollment limited to 13. {A} 4 credits
Lucretia Knapp
Offered Fall 2008, Spring 2009
282:Advanced Video Seminar
Topic: Duration, Space, and Memory-Advanced Production
According to Henri Bergson, duration, not time, best describes how we experience the world. Duration is a continuous flow stretching and contracting. Time, on the other hand, is an artificial construction, measured and formal. Duration will be the focus of this advanced production seminar. Screenings/viewings will include works by Akerman, Atget, Douglas, Export, Huyghe, Jarman, Jonas, Kentridge, Kiarostami, Lockhart, Lumiere Brothers, Marker, Nauman, Porter, Sander, Snow, Warhol, Weerasethakul, Vertov, and more. Readings will come from: Benjamin, Bergson, Borges, Chion, Davis, Deleuze, Doane, Proust, Smithson, Stein, and more. This course is an advanced production seminar and requires a commitment to the work both in and outside of class time. Students may work towards final projects in film, video, installation, new media, and other forms. In addition to the final project, readings, screenings, presentations, papers, and collaborative assignments are required. Students must have prior experience in film/video production and digital video editing. Registration by application to the Film Studies Office. {A} 4 credits
Jenny Perlin, Five College Visiting Artist in Film Studies
Offered Fall 2008
282:Advanced Video Seminar
Topic: Smoke and Mirrors, Paper Plates and Dry Ice: Special Effects in Film and Video Production
This advanced video seminar focuses on the moving image as it relates to illusion, special effects and their antecedents. We will screen films that are low budget, as well as those that are high-end and effects-driven. Discussion and screenings will include early in-camera effects, stop-motion animation, chroma-keying and present-day digital compositing, including the films A Trip to the Moon, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jason and the Argonauts, Eraserhead, Ed Wood, Waking Life and The Science of Sleep. In addition to his narrative film work, we will consider the music videos of Michel Gondry and the compressed world of visual shorts. (In addition we will briefly engage with the virtual landscape of New Media.) Readings will examine the relationship between the development of selected imagery/special effects and contemporaneous historical or political events. This course also involves hands-on examination of visual manipulation. There will be group exercises as well as individual experimentation, and projects. A significant part of the class will involve shooting and editing, animating and compositing in Final Cut Pro. Prerequisite: FLS 280 or an equivalent video production class or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 13. {A} 4 credits
Lucretia Knapp
Offered Spring 2009
351 Film Theory
This seminar will explore central currents in film theory, including formalist, realist, auteurist, structuralist, psychoanalytic, feminist, poststructuralist, genre studies, queer studies and cultural studies approaches to questions regarding the nature, function, and possibilities of cinema. Film theory readings will be understood through the socio-cultural context in which they are developed. Particular attention will also be given to the history of film theory: how theories exist in conversation with each other, as well as how other intellectual and cultural theories influence the development, nature and mission of theories of the moving image. We will emphasize written texts (Bazin, Eisenstein, Kracauer, Vertov, Metz, Mulvey, DeLauretis, Doty, Hall, Cahiers du Cinema, the Dogme Collective, etc.), but will also look at instantiations of film theory that are themselves acts of cinema (Man with a Movie Camera, Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, The Meeting of Two Queens). The course is designed as an advanced introduction and assumes no prior exposure to film theory. Fulfills film theory requirement for the major and minor. Enrollment limited to 12. Prerequisite: 200 or the equivalent. Priority given to Smith College Film Studies Minors and Five College Film Studies Majors. Priority given to seniors, then juniors. {A} 4 credits
Alexandra Keller
Offered Spring 2009
400 Special Studies
1-4 credits
Offered both semesters each year
ARH 280 South Asian Film & Art History
Topic: Bollywood: Cinema of Interruptions
Ajay Sinha
Offered Spring 2009
ENG 333 Seminar: A Major British or American Author
Topic: Stoppard and Bennett
Jefferson Hunter
Fall 2008
FRN 244 French Cinema
Topic: “On The Move:” Restlessness in French Cinema.
Martine Gantrel
Offered Spring 2009
FYS 127 Adaptation
Jefferson Hunter
Offered Fall 2008
GER 230 Topics in German Cinema
Topic: Weimar Film
Joel Westerdale
Offered Fall 2008
ITL 280 Italian Cinema
Topic: Style Matters: The Power of the Aesthetic in Italian Cinema
Anna Botta
Offered Spring 2009
ITL 281 Italian Cinema (Discussion Session in Italian)
Topic: Style Matters: The Power of the Aesthetic in Italian Cinema
Anna Botta
Offered Spring 2009
POR 221: Topics in Portuguese and Brazilian Literature and Culture
Topic: Envisioning Lusofonia: A Focus on Film from the Portuguese-Speaking World
Malcolm K. McNee
Offered Spring 2009
SPN 245 Topics in Latin American and Peninsular Studies
Topic: Teledictadura: Historical Narrative and Spanish TV
Reyes Lázaro
Offered Fall 2008
THE 261 Writing for the Theatre
Leonard Berkman, Andrea Hairston
Offered Fall 2008
Leonard Berkman
Offered Spring 2009
THE 262 Writing for the Theatre
Leonard Berkman, Andrea Hairston
Offered Fall 2008
Leonard Berkman
|
