FALL 2008 (updated 4/4/08)
Anthropology 41 Visual
Anthropology
Professor Gewertz
meeting time: TTh 11:30-12:50
Five College Film Studies Major category: 6?
This course will explore and
evaluate various visual genres, including photography, ethnographic film and
museum presentation as modes of anthropological analysis–as media of
communication facilitating cross-cultural understanding. Among the topics to be examined are the
ethics of observation, the politics of artifact collection and display, the
dilemma of representing non-Western “others” through Western media, and the
challenge of interpreting indigenously produced visual depictions of “self” and
“other.”
Limited to 20 students.
English 16 Coming to
Terms: Cinema
Professor Cameron
MW 2-3:20
Five College Film Studies Major category: 1?
An introduction to cinema
studies through consideration of a few critical and descriptive terms together
with a selection of various films (historical and contemporary, foreign and
American) for illustration and discussion.
The terms for discussion will include, among others: the moving image, montage, mise
en scPne, sound,
genre, authorship, the gaze.
Recommended:
English 19 or another college-level film course.
English 24 Screenwriting
Visiting Lecturer Johnson
Tu 2-5
Five College Film Studies Major category: 8
This course is a first
workshop in narrative screenplay writing.
The “screenplay” is a unique and ephemeral form that exists as a
blueprint for something else–a finished film.
How do you convey this audio-visual medium (movies) on the page? In order to do that, the screenwriter must
have some sense of what the “language of film” is, as well as some sense of
what kinds of stories movies–as opposed to novels, plays, or short stories–tell
well. This course will try to analyze
both the language of film and the shape of film stories, as a means toward
teaching the craft of screenwriting.
Frequent exercises, readings, and screenings.
Limited to 15 students.
Preregistration is not allowed.
Please consult the
English 82 Production Workshop in the Moving Image
Visiting Lecturer Mellis
Th 2-5 + Wed film screening
Five College Film Studies Major category: 8
The topic changes each time
the course is taught. In fall 2008 the
topic will be “Introduction to Video Production.” This introductory video production course
will emphasize documentary filmmaking from the first-person point of view. We will use our own stories as material, but
we will look beyond self-expression, using video to explore places where our
lives intersect with larger historical, economic, environmental, or social
forces. We will develop our own voices
while learning the vocabulary of moving images and gaining technical training
in production and post-production.
Through in-class critiques, screenings, readings and discussion,
students will explore the aesthetics and practice of the moving image while
developing their own original projects.
Admission with consent of the instructor. Limited to 12 students. Please complete the questionnaire at
https://cms.amherst.edu/academiclife/departments/english/events/questionnaire.
English 84-01 Topics in Film Study: Cinema and New Media
Visiting Professor Hudson.
TTh 2-3:20 + Tues film screening
Five College Film Studies Major category: 6?
Like television before it,
new media is often considered the death knell to cinema. This course complicates such assumptions,
focusing on understanding and writing about ways that new and old technologies
converge. Students will consider key
issues relating to social, philosophical, legal, geopolitical, economic, and
aesthetic implications of new media on cinema.
New media transforms production through high definition video (HD) and
computer-generated imagery (CGI) in commercial, avant-garde, and amateur film,
video, and animation, as well as transforms the immersive experience of media
in massively multiplayer online games.
New media also transforms distribution, exhibition, and reception though
lossy compression formats, broadband, and downloads. The course examines blogs and vlogs, clip
culture, machinima, social networking sites, 3D virtual worlds, culture
poaching and jamming, and tactical media in relation to both fandom and
activism. The course asks students to
consider questions about the political economies of new media in terms of
access to technologies “in real life” (IRL) through readings and documentaries
on the digital divide and racial ravine both in U.S. classrooms and in
Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as questions of copyright, piracy, and P2P file
sharing. The courses explores the
interface of technology and the environment in its broadest definition, such as
virtual migrations in information technologies (IT) and business processing
outsourcing (BPO) industries in India, digital cameras for workers’ rights in
Mexican maquilladoras, state control
of user access to content within the so-called borderless frontier of the
Internet, and digital mobilizations for environmentalism and human rights. Weekly screenings and in-class streamings
explore new media as a theme in commercial narrative filmmaking, as in The
Matrix or The Blair Witch Project, and as a practice in mashups,
mods, and open-source screen-savers. Previous course in film studies or new
media studies recommended.
English 84-02 Topics in
Film Study: The Romance
Senior Lecturer von Schmidt
TTh 11:30-12:50
Five College Film Studies Major category: 4?
The romance, and the generic
forms it has taken, in
English 95-01 National and Global Cinemas
Visiting Professor Hudson
TTh 10-11:20 + Wed film screening
Five College Film Studies Major category: 5?
Acknowledging that cinema is
always already transnational, this course explores tensions between “the
national” and “the global” in narrative, documentary, and experimental films
produced in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas in the
postcolonial era of cultural hybridity and global capitalism. The course begins by examining the
nationalist ideologies of Hollywood production in tandem with Third Cinema’s
radical decentering of the assumptions of both
Requisite: prior
courses in film studies, preferably both an introductory course and a film
history course. Open only to juniors and
seniors. Limited to 15 students.
Theater and Dance 23 Fleeting Images: Choreography on Film
Five College Dance Professor
Valis-Hill
MW 02:00PM-04:00PM
Five College Film Studies Major category: 8?
This selected survey of
choreography on film and video indulges in the purely kinesthetic experience of
watching the dancing body on film. We
will focus on works that have most successfully effected a true synthesis of
the two mediums, negotiating between the spatial freedom of film and the
time-space-energy fields of dance, the cinematic techniques of
camera-cutting-collage, and the vibrant continuity of the moving body. We will discern the roles of the
choreographer, director, and editor in shaping and controlling the moving
image, and explore
the relationship of music and
the dancing body. We will also attempt
to theorize the medium of the “moving picture dance,” and formulate a
theoretical understanding of the relationship between films and viewers and the
powerful effect of the moving/dancing image on viewers. Putting theory to practice, we will form
small group collaborations to create an original study in
choreography for the camera.
Theater and Dance 62 Performance
Studio
Professor Woodson
F 01:00PM-04:00PM
Five College Film Studies Major category: 8
An advanced course in the
techniques of creating performance. Each
student will create and rehearse a performance piece that develops and incorporates
original choreography, text, music, sound and/or video. Experimental and collaborative structures and
approaches among and within different media will be stressed. The final performance pieces and events will
be presented in the Holden Theater. Can
be taken more than once for credit.
Requisite: Theater
and Dance 35 or the equivalent and consent of the instructor.