Summer 2022
Session 1
FILM-ST 170 – Intro/FilmAnalysis:TimeTravel
Instructor: Barry Spence
Credits: 4
This is an introduction to film studies and to the analysis of film. The course explores the complex nature and cultural function of cinema by focusing on time travel as both a central theme of a wide range of films and as a way of understanding how cinema works as a time-based medium. By studying films from various points in the global history of cinema - including films from nine countries and five continents - this course performs a transcultural introduction to the formal and stylistic aspects of cinematic storytelling. (Gen. Ed. AT)
UNDERGRADUATE FILM STUDIES CERTIFICATE CATEGORY: I, V
FILM STUDIES MAJOR CATEGORY: N/A
FILM-ST 360 – Music, Culture, Moving Image
Instructor: Kevin Anderson
Credits: 4
This course explores the relationship between music and the moving image across multiple forms of media, including Film and Television, Documentaries, Music Videos, Video Games, Commercials, Broadcasts (e.g. news, sports), and Social Media (e.g. TikTok). The scope of the material studied includes examples from multiple cultures and points in the history of the moving image, paying particular attention to hybrid and cross-cultural blends of image and music, and the ways in which this marriage of image and sound service cultural and emotional meanings.
Students will be exposed to a wide variety of international, cultural, and historic pairings of music with moving images, and will emerge from the course with a thorough foundation in the following: how and why music pairs with the moving image; how and why the relationship between music and images has varied across time and culture; and the ways in which psychological states, cultural-historical markers, and emotional appeal are targeted through the pairing of sonic and visual stimuli. (Gen. Ed. SB, DU)
UNDERGRADUATE FILM STUDIES CERTIFICATE CATEGORY: II, V
FILM STUDIES MAJOR CATEGORY: E
FILM-ST 397GW – Grant Writing for Filmmakers
Instructor: Anthony Collins
Credits: 3
Fundamental practices of proposal development and grant writing; applicable to all professions. Hands-on activities as grantee and grantor. Emphasis on post-graduation grant writing. Includes working with a fiscal agent. Successful grant writing entails having a vision you can articulate; strong critical thinking and writing skills; an unwavering attention to details; motivation and perseverance; and an understanding of the philanthropic and proposal process. Students have the opportunity to develop their skills and ideas through experiential activities, in-class workshops, and assignments that mirror professional world activities. Emphasis is on project-based proposals and post-graduation funding needs. Students experience both sides of the requesting and giving process to strengthen one's ability to write competitive proposals.
UNDERGRADUATE FILM STUDIES CERTIFICATE CATEGORY: V
FILM STUDIES MAJOR CATEGORY: E
FILM-ST 397J – Film Production
Instructor: Nefeli Forni Zervoudaki
Credits: 3
This course will focus on a diversity of challenges in the art of film production. It will cover the phases of project development, financing, pre-production, production design, and executive production, together with post-production and distribution/commercialization. You will have the chance to interact with each other, making the course both practical and dynamic. You will also have the opportunity to assess and exchange the issues you encountered - or may encounter! - on your own work and the projects you have worked on or will work on in the future, receiving personalized feedback.
UNDERGRADUATE FILM STUDIES CERTIFICATE CATEGORY: V
FILM STUDIES MAJOR CATEGORY: E
Session 2
FILM-ST 284 – The Undead Souths
Instructor: Patrick Mensah
Credits: 4
This course will explore themes of the Southern Gothic in works of Cinema and popular Televisual narratives. We will study the development of the lurid motifs of the Gothic that works affiliated with this genre often deploy to invoke a sense of horror and dread, moral corruption, and psychological abjection, all seemingly meant to assimilate the South and its citizens to the category of a degenerate and menacing otherness. The imagery of dismal landscapes, dark swamps, decaying architecture, fanatical and occult religious practices, and the often grotesque or monstrous figures and cultural tropes that aspire to associate the South with an imaginary medieval past, will be examined mostly as marks of an ambivalent ideological struggle surrounding the self-identity of America. Thanks to this regime of gothic tropes and insignia, America, on the one hand, heralds its own self-identity as culturally rich and historically continuous, and yet, it is, at least partly thanks to this same regimen of gothic tropes (understood as figures of otherness), on the other hand, that America also typically (or stereotypically) deals with anxieties arising from its attempts to define its own modern identity, and its identity as modern and exceptional. Such anxieties give rise to instances of negative stereotyping, and practices of cultural exclusion that the course critically interrogates. We also study several important ways in which the Gothic serves as an important voice for the marginalized, while enabling critical reflections on the social and cultural practices of exclusion we have alluded to. The history of slavery, the civil war, and its aftermath, as well as literature produced by certain Southern writers (such as William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Carson McCullers, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Katherine Anne Porter, and others) since the late 19th century, will be identified as important defining contexts of emergence for the Southern gothic, and as the indispensable conditions that have made its deployment into 20th century film and television possible. Due attention will also be paid to the influence of French colonial adventures and interventions in shaping cultures and "gothic" mythologies of the American South, and the Caribbean, as well as the role played by America's own efforts to secure and maintain hegemonic influences on the region.
The course is conducted in English, and requires no prior knowledge of the field. All films are streamed to your computer from the UMass library on demand. Required readings are provided online, and no book purchases are necessary. (Gen. Ed. AT, DU)
UNDERGRADUATE FILM STUDIES CERTIFICATE CATEGORY: III, V
FILM STUDIES MAJOR CATEGORY: N/A
FILM-ST 353 – African Film
Instructor: Patrick Mensah
Credits: 4
This course offers an introduction to African film as an aesthetic and cultural practice. Students should expect to be familiarized with the key ideas and objectives that have inspired and driven that practice since the early 1960s, and be furnished with the technical tools and methodological skills that would permit them to understand, analyze, and think critically about the artistic and thematic aspects of the films that are screened. They should also expect the course to provide them with a critical peek into several cardinal issues of social and cultural relevance in contemporary Africa and its history. Issues of interest typically include, the nationstate and its declining status, imperatives of decolonization, economic dependency and structural adjustment programs, orality and changing traditional cultures, diasporic migrations, urbanization and its problems, gender relations, civil wars, child soldiers, gangs, and related themes. Filmmakers studied include, but are not limited to, Abderrahmane Sissako, Gillo Pontecorvo, Ousmane Sembene, Raoul Peck, Jean-Marie Teno, Dani Kouyate, Mweze Ngangura, Gavin Hood, Neill Blomkamp, Moufida Tlatli, Djibril Diop Mambety (please note that this list is subject to change, and shall be updated as future changes are made). The course is conducted in English, and requires no prior knowledge of the field. All films are streamed to your computer from the UMass library on demand. Required readings are provided online, and no book purchases are necessary. (Gen.Ed. AT, DG)
UNDERGRADUATE FILM STUDIES CERTIFICATE CATEGORY: III, V
FILM STUDIES MAJOR CATEGORY: N, E
FILM-ST 387 – The Western in Transnational Cinema
Instructor: Barry Spence
Credits: 4
The Western is one of the oldest of film genres. Usually considered the first Western movie, The Great Train Robbery, released in 1903, is arguably the film that established cinema as a commercial industry of formidable potential. From its earliest instances the Western has been a key cultural expression of the American mythos and has played an integral role in the formation of American identity. We can look at the Western as a cultural form rich in themes concerning: the construction of gender identity; racial politics; the establishment of social order in conflict with the lure of frontier self-determination; the romance of the outlaw; narratives of redemption; vigilante retribution versus the rule of law; human resiliency in and conquest of the natural world; the subjugation (or extermination) of indigenous peoples' and this is to name only an obvious few. But the Western has also been a pivotal form in the history of storytelling media in a very diverse range of nations and cultural contexts, from Japan to India to Italy to Germany to Australia to South Africa to Brazil to Mexico.
This course will, on the one hand, examine the cultural history and legacy of the Western genre in the cinema of the United States. We will study iconic and revisionist examples, looking at both formal and thematic aspects of this cinema as well as its historical relationship to American identity and its social policies and politics. On the other hand, a large part of this course will focus on the Western in relation to a highly diverse range of cinema cultures throughout the world. In particular, we will study the genre's impact on, but also its inheritance from, the cinema traditions of Italy, Japan, China, India, South Korea, and nations of the Global South. This course is designed to challenge conventional understanding of the Western genre by exposing students to interdisciplinary theories oriented toward comprehending the diverse cultural, social, and political perspectives embodied by the transnational engagement with the Western. (Gen. Ed. AT, DG)
UNDERGRADUATE FILM STUDIES CERTIFICATE CATEGORY: III, V
FILM STUDIES MAJOR CATEGORY: D&G, E
FILM-ST 397SS – Steven Spielberg: Success With Sensitivity
Instructor: Jill Franks
Credits: 3
As the most successful director of the last fifty years and one of the few surviving founders of the New Hollywood, Steven Spielberg merits study as an auteur director whose work is so distinctive that he is considered its author. Spielberg's work spans many genres, including science fiction, adventure, and historical thrillers. In all of these forms, he consistently provokes our deepest emotions: awe, sorrow, and a deep belief in the possibility of redemption.We will study the combination of narrative style, ethos, camera work, and mise-en-scene that gives Spielberg films their unique quality.
UNDERGRADUATE FILM STUDIES CERTIFICATE CATEGORY: III, V
FILM STUDIES MAJOR CATEGORY: D&G, E
FILM-ST 397WR – Writers Room Workshop
Instructor: Tom Benedek
Credits: 3
Through lectures, script readings and Zoom discussions with visiting TV professionals, class members will acquire understanding of pilot script story structure, character development and future episode/season/series necessities. They will develop and workshop their own original TV/Streaming series project outlines/pilot scripts and participate in group writing process as generally practiced in TV/Streaming series production. Breaking out into Writers Rooms, class members will collaborate in small groups - brainstorming episodes for the ongoing student created series, Tech Show.
UNDERGRADUATE FILM STUDIES CERTIFICATE CATEGORY: V
FILM STUDIES MAJOR CATEGORY: E
FILM-ST 397MK/597MK – Film Marketing
Instructor: Thomas Brashear-Alejandro
Credits: 3
Film marketing is a highly interactive course designed to give students an overview and understanding of all aspects of film marketing strategy and campaign implementation. The central focus will be on marketing mix decisions and marketing mix analytics. A key component is to delve into the broad range of the film offerings and their revenue streams from launch, theatrical life and beyond. The course will include various forms of films to explore concepts, processes and different strategic approaches used by today's distributors. The class will rely on lectures, case studies, and heavy classroom discussion to dissect current and past marketing practices.
UNDERGRADUATE FILM STUDIES CERTIFICATE CATEGORY: V (or IV if registered as 597MK)
FILM STUDIES MAJOR CATEGORY: E