DMS 512 FILM THEORY

Staff :: M/W 11-12:50 :: CFA 112
Reg #22999 Grad

This course is an exploration of the principal theories of film through a critical reading of texts and a close examination of films. The texts to be perused comprise several groups. Classical film theory includes Munsterburg, Kuleshov, Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Balasz, Arnheim, Bazin, and Godard. The critique of classical film theory includes Burch, Perkins, and Henderson. The course will also explore semiotics, psychoanalysis, and poststructuralism, in Barthes, Eco, Metz , Pasolini, Baudry, Heath, and in feminist film theory, including Gledhill, Mulvey, Silverman, Modleski, Doane, and Studlar. A section on avant-garde theory will include Vertov, Epstein, Deren, Brakhage, Sitney, and Michelson. These topic areas will be set in interaction throughout: e.g., Soviet editing and antirealism are continued in the avant-garde; rhetorical figures such as metaphor, metonymy, ellipsis, condensation, and displacement, can be traced in very different theoretical contexts and in close readings of individual films.