Gertrud Koch, Professor of Film Studies at the Free University of Berlin, will be the Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor in UC Berkeley’s German Department in Fall 2011. Koch will teach a Compact Seminar (German 204) on “Space and Time in Cinema.” The course meets for four Friday sessions from September 9–30, 1-4pm, and will be given in English. Although examples will be taken from German cinema (with subtitles), your research paper is not limited to German films. 2 credits are given if you write a paper by the end of the semester.
A professor at the Free University of Berlin for two decades, Professor Koch is the preeminent film scholar in the German-speaking world. Her contributions to the academic study of cinema since the 1960s have shaped the field. She has published influential books on Siegfried Kracauer (Siegfried Kracauer zur Einführung, 1996; also published in English translation by Princeton University Press), Herbert Marcuse (Herbert Marcuse zur Einführung, 1987), the visual construction of Judaism (Die Einstellung ist die Einstellung. Zur visuellen Konstruktion des Judentums, 1992), and the representation of gender difference in film (“Was ich erbeute, sind Bilder”. Zur filmischen Repräsentation der Geschlechterdifferenz, 1988). Her recent articles include: “Carnivore or Chameleon: The Fate of Cinema Studies” (Critical Inquiry) and “Face and Mass: Towards an Aesthetic of the Cross-Cut in Film” (New German Critique).
Professor Koch’s course description for the compact seminar (German 204):
This seminar will take an interdisciplinary approach to the topic of “Space and Time in Cinema.” We will discuss philosophical positions and comparative texts addressing media-specific registers of space and time, with a focus on film. In this context, we will explore the relationship between narrativity, historical and media-specific time, as well as the construction of urban, global, and heterotopic space in film.
Film & Media Commencement
May 20, 2:00p.m.
Zellerbach Auditorium
April 7, 5 pm: Alison Griffiths, Baruch College, CUNY
Topic: TBA
Location: 142 Dwinelle
March 29, 4 PM: Raymond Bellour, Paris
Topic: Film and Hypnosis
Location: 226 Dwinelle
March 17, 5 pm: Anne Nesbet, UC Berkeley
Topic: Staircaseness and the Work of Credulity in Soviet Films of the 1920s
Location: 142 Dwinelle
The Department of Film & Media presents an international, interdisciplinary conference on silent cinema, Cinema Across Media: The 1920s. The conference will be held from February 24-26, 2011, at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and will include plenary speeches, roundtables, concurrent panels, and a series of silent film screenings with live musical accompaniment at the Pacific Film Archive.
The Modern Language Association of America today announced it is awarding its ninth Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Studies in Germanic Languages and Literatures to Anton Kaes, of the University of California, Berkeley, for Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War, published by Princeton University Press. The prize is awarded biennially for an outstanding scholarly work on the linguistics or literatures of the Germanic languages, including Danish, Dutch, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and Yiddish.
The UC Berkeley campus recently approved the formation of a new academic department of instruction. The former undergraduate program major in Film officially became the Department of Film & Media on July 1, 2010. The undergraduate degree will continue to be called the “Film” major, but will now be administered by the new department. See the Daily Cal article and the College of Letters & Science announcement for more information.
All courses are 4 units unless otherwise noted.
Film 201
Film Historiography
Instructor: Tony Kaes
The seminar’s main goal is to acquaint students with ways of thinking and writing “historically” about cinema. Exploring theories of history ranging from Walter Benjamin to Michel Foucault, from Hermeneutics to the Frankfurt School and New Historicism, the seminar is meant to complicate naïve notions about representing the past. Although we will examine classic work of film historians, we will look at alternative ways to write film history and ask new questions. Is the status of national film history changing in the era of world cinema? What is function of the archive in the age of new media? How has film technology shaped our senses? Most examples will be drawn from the silent era (also in preparation for the International Berkeley Silent Film Conference in February), but our discussions will always be attuned to present-day concerns. There will be a two-part conference at the end of the semester in which students will present their papers.
No prerequisites; requirements will include full participation and a research paper.
Film 220
Curating
Instructors: Kathy Geritz & Steve Seid
Film 240.001
Homocinema
Instructor: D. A. Miller
Film 240.003
World and Time: Serial Television and the case of The Wire
(Cross-Listed as Rhetoric 243).
Instructor: Linda Williams
But to tell the truth, I no longer watch many films, only those by friends or curiosities that an American acquaintance tapes for me on TCM… I feed my hunger for fiction with what is by far the most accomplished source: those terrific American TV series like Deadwood, Firefly, or The Wire…There is a knowledge in them, a sense of story and economy, of ellipses, a science of framing and of cutting, a dramaturgy, and an acting style that has no equal anywhere, and certainly not in Hollywood.
—Chris Marker
What it is about the long form of the serial drama that has so hooked television viewers? Why do some claim, like the great avant-garde filmmaker Chris Marker above, that the long television serial is now the best place to feed our “hunger for fiction”? This course will presume, for one semester, that there is “world enough and time” to study long form televisual drama through the example of one exceptionally well-crafted series. Because this department has not previously offered a graduate seminar on either television or serials, we will start with some basics: What is television? What is serial television? What is serial drama’s relation to earlier serialized literature and to the earlier daytime, and then prime time “soaps”? Why has this once-derided but also much-loved serialized form become such an important aspect of television? Our primary case study will be the five seasons of David Simon’s The Wire. What is it? How did it grow? What is its relation to themes of surveillance, urban decay, politics, education and media? Is it serial melodrama or high tragedy, as Simon claims? Although I encourage students to research and write about other series as well, this will be our “lingua franca”–the one work we will have in common. We will view all 60 plus hours of it–the first two seasons will be necessary pre-viewing to enter the seminar. We will then watch all of seasons 3, 4 and 5 together. Each of us will write a 20 page paper on some aspect of serial television. There will be open screening time for you to show us examples of other series in the last 4 weeks of class.
Screenings: Mondays 5-9; Seminar: Wednesdays 10-1.
All courses are 4 units unless otherwise noted.
Film R1A.001
The Craft of Writing
(Satisfies reading and composition requirement).
CANCELLED.
Film R1B.001
The Craft of Writing
(Satisfies reading and composition requirement).
Instructor: Rielle Navitski & Luis Cordero-Sanchez
What is a nation? In an era defined by ever-increasing traffic of people, goods, and money across national borders, has the nation as an entity all but disappeared? Or is it still valid as a basis for political action and personal identity? With the aim of improving analytical reading and writing skills, we will collectively investigate the fate of the nation in a globalized era, focusing on the contemporary Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world.
In this course, we will view films and read critical essays and literary texts that focus on national identity and trans-national traffic as articulated between Latin America, Europe, and the United States. In formulating written analyses of these diverse texts, students will hone writing skills developed in R1A, applying these skills to longer essays incorporating secondary research. Students will develop their capacities to understand and interpret critical essays, literary texts, and films; to craft elegant and persuasive written arguments about these texts; and to find, evaluate and integrate appropriate sources into their essays.
Critical essays about national, trans-national and post-national culture will provide valuable theoretical tools for our investigation of contemporary Latin American and peninsular narratives. Through attentive reading and careful consideration of critical debates, students will develop persuasive written hypotheses about how attempts to re-imagine or contest national identity in an era of globalization have informed contemporary Ibero-American films and fictions. Knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese is not a requirement for this course.
Film R1B.002
The Craft of Writing
(Satisfies reading and composition requirement).
Instructor: Jen Malkowski & Munira Lokhandwala
The focus of this course is to help students improve their writing skills, emphasizing clarity, precision, and organization. The course aims to prepare students for academic writing while helping them maintain a lively and individual style. The many essay assignments that structure the class will draw on films and television series organized around the theme of nostalgia.
“You can’t take a picture of this; it’s already gone.”
– Nate Fisher, Six Feet Under
Nostalgia is one of our most emotionally powerful modes of engaging with the past, a feeling of yearning that brings both pleasure and pain: the pleasure of remembering old times fondly, and the pain of our utter inability to return to them. That pain can be alleviated or made still sharper by the partial return that cinema and television’s sounds and images offer. But what does it mean to consider nostalgia through a medium said to embalm time – a medium that produces vivid records of moments that nevertheless disappear the instant after those records are made?
As represented in film and television, nostalgia can be a complex way of memorializing and/or deconstructing the receding past; or it can be a more superficial and narcissistic mode of recall (for example, VH1’s I Love the New Millenium series). While the most direct link these technologies provide is footage recorded in the past itself, this course will focus on films and series that thematize nostalgia rather than simply causing it in the viewer – films and series about the past and even about our nostalgic relation to it. We will also consider the relatively new wrinkle that digital technologies have added to cinematic nostalgia: the nostalgia for film itself. In an age when audiences are increasingly watching movies at home and in high-definition digital formats, this type of nostalgia is often applied to both production (on-location shooting; practical effects) and exhibition (theatrical movie-going; the grain, scratches, and visible splices of projected celluloid).
Film R1B.003
The Craft of Writing
(Satisfies reading and composition requirement).
Instructor: Sanjay Hukku & Robert Alford
No description available.
Film 25B
The History of Sound Film
(Fulfills film major lower division history requirement).
Instructors: Eileen Jones
In this introductory survey course we will examine the history of cinema from the silent-to-sound revolution of the late 1920s through the international development of film as a transformative technology, art form, and commercial medium up to the present time. Our main textbook is Flashback: A Brief History of Film by Louis Giannetti and Scott Eyman. But we will also draw on material from The Oxford History of World Cinema edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Film History: An Introduction, by Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, and Wheeler Winston Dixon and Gwendolyn Audrey Foster’s A Short History of Film, as well as the scholarship of such film historians/theorists as Tom Gunning, Charles Musser, Miriam Hansen, John Belton, Hamid Naficy, Thomas Elsaesser, Henry Jenkins, and many others, in discussing the way certain landmark short and feature films reflect social, political, and ideological changes through the decades. The objectives of this course are to:
1. familiarize the students with the major technological and aesthetic innovations of the past 80 years which have given rise to the cinema as we know it today;
2. foster students’ awareness of the economic, social and political contexts in which sound cinema developed and the impact which cinema had, in turn, on nations, cultures, and historical events; and
3. give students a clear sense of the major movements in sound cinema (including classical and post-classical Hollywood cinema, experimental, documentary, and avant-garde cinema, Italian Neo-Realism, French Poetic Realism and New Wave, Third Cinema, Political Cinema of the 1960s-‘70s, and film in the era of global multimedia) and how those movements intertwined with critical, theoretical, and popular responses to the medium.
Because this is a historical survey course, the requirements emphasize the learning of “stuff”: important facts, dates, eras, leading figures, landmark events, crucial developments, etc. Therefore you will not be required to write any formal research or analytical papers, although the clarity of your writing will be important in the essay portions of your quizzes and your mid-term and final exams. Instead, you will be tested on your ability to learn, retain, and recount the pertinent “stuff” of cinematic history. Read the assigned chapters, take notes during screenings and lectures, pay attention to and participate in discussions, ask questions, and above all, ATTEND.
Required Text:
- Flashback: A Brief History of Film, Sixth Edition, by Louis Giannetti and Scott Eyman (Allyn & Bacon, 2010)
Film 50
Introduction to Film for Non-majors
Instructor: Russell Merritt
Fantasy is an unusually elastic cinematic category that encompasses horror films, animation, science fiction, Arabian Nights adventures, fairy tales, religious epics, and even musicals. Its roots are labyrinthine and very old; we will try to fashion a workable model of the genre drawing mainly on Todorov and Freud, but also working from literary and film sources as varied as Propp, Kristeva, Rosemary Jackson, and Stephen Neale.
We will be particularly interested in exploring the connection between the cinema and the world of fairy tales, studying the oddly parallel movements in fairy tale lore and film narrative. There is something primal about fantasy films. They are the ones we are taken to first; they are intimately connected with our childhood, help define our expectations of what stories will be like, and of what movies will be like.
They are quite primal in the history of cinema as well. Fantasy comes into the movies almost from the start, primarily in the form of Georges Méliès movies, which started recycling fairy tales and Arabian Nights stories in the 1890s. We will trace the psychic and social resonance of certain themes found in “La Belle et La Bête,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Cinderella,” and “The Fisherman and the Genie” as interpreted by filmmakers that include Jean Cocteau [La Belle et la Bête], Alexander Korda [The Thief of Bagdad], Mizoguchi [Ugetsu], Angela Carter [The Company of Wolves], and Jean-Pierre Jeunnet [La Cité des enfants perdus].
By grounding the fantastic in wonder tales [rather than horror or science fiction] the aim of the course is to pursue fundamental questions about the cinema and the appeals of the fantastic from a fresh perspective. The great controversies that continue to swirl over fairy tales and their interpreters — debates involving origins, gender roles, adaptation, language, and limits of the taboo — will be studied in detail.
The course spirals out from fairy tales and Arabian Nights stories to examine related developments of fantasy: notably the occult tale [exemplified by E.T.A Hoffman and Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari], American wonder tales [Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo in Slumberland,” Disney's Silly Symphonies], carnevale and the tradition of commedia dell’arte [Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus, and the dystopic visions of contemporary fantasists Jan Svankmajer, Dennis Potter, Wim Wenders, and Angela Carter. What happens when modernists make beloved childhood icons strange, morbid, and altogether terrifying? Where human likeness itself, especially in the form of the child, becomes appalling? We end with last year's Splice, directed by Vincenzo Natali.
Film 108.001
Special Topics in Genre: "Musical and Noir"
(Fulfills film major upper division genre requirement).
Instructor: Marilyn Fabe
We begin by defining the genre film in relation to the Hollywood studio system which created it and discuss various theories of what constitutes a genre and how genres evolve. We then focus on two specific Hollywood genres: the Musical and the Film Noir, taking into account the arguments for and against considering the Film Noir as a genre. Because musicals typically create emotions of elation and joy and the Film Noir feelings of angst and despair, the comparison of the formal and thematic characteristics of these two types of film will give us insight into the way the film medium is used to affect our moods and emotions as well as a platform for speculating on how social and historical conditions impact the kinds of entertainment a society craves. We will also compare the representations of masculinity and femininity in the Musical and the Film Noir. The course concludes with a study of films in which the two genres interpenetrate one another.
Required Text:
The Musical/Noir Reader: Availability TBA
Film 108.002
Special Topics in Film Genre: "Anime: Critical Readings in Visual Culture"
(Fulfills film major upper division genre requirement).
Instructor: Miryam Sas
This course is a senior seminar focusing on reading and understanding Japanese animation, or anime, as a medium from its earliest forms to contemporary works. We will think through issues of digital culture, seriality, and the relation between anime and cinema; limited and full animation; cultural disaster and the post-war; bodies and sexuality, and queer/yaoi and otaku culture, as well as anime's place within contemporary media theory. We will view works by Miyazaki Hayao, Kon Satoshi, Anno Hideaki, Oshii Mamoru, and many others.
Required readings will be made available on bSpace and in a reader.
Film 108.003
Special Topics in Film Genre: "Silent Film Comedy"
(Fulfills film major upper division genre requirement).
Instructor: Mark Sandberg
This course explores the links between silent film comedy and “modern times” in early twentieth-century America. In a period that saw new regimens of work, new technologies, and dramatic social transformations, silent film comedy staged and explored the resulting cultural contradictions with surprising sophistication. Issues to be explored are: urban time and space, traffic and circulation, ethnicity and immigration, class conflict, and automatization. The course will also deal with more formal and narratological questions of silent comedy as a genre (as well as its sub-genres of farce, slapstick, and character comedy). Films screened will include the Hollywood films of Mack Sennett, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Harry Langdon, Charley Chase, Mabel Normand, Fatty Arbuckle, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy.
No prerequisites, although prior completion of Film 25A will be helpful.
Required Texts:
King, Rob. The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture (Berkeley: UC Press, 2008)
Knopf, Robert. The Theater and Cinema of Buster Keaton. Princeton University Press, 1999
Paulus, Tom and Rob King. Slapstick Comedy. Routledge, 2010
Film 108.004
Special Topics in Film Genre: "Asian Horror Film"
(Fulfills film major upper division genre requirement).
Instructor: Lalitha Gopalan
This course assumes the student’s familiarity with classical horror films, European and American films to be precise, and the attendant theories on genre and spectatorship. While the theoretical speculations have taken American and European films as their models, they seem totally unprepared for the vibrant horror films emerging from Asia, India to Japan, and this is exactly our charge for the course—to better understand the cinematic style of Asian horror films. As any cinephile would testify while these films have the stock figures of ghosts and monsters, haunted houses, possessed women, and disasters they also question our settled ideas of beauty and disgust that imperceptibly shape our notions of racial, sexual, and national differences.
Film 128
History of Documentary Film
(Replaces Film 28A; fulfills film major documentary requirement).
Instructor: Jonathan Haynes
This class introduces the history and theory of documentary cinema. We’ll begin with Robert Flaherty, whose works, like Nanook of the North, defined the non-fiction film in the 1920s and 1930s, and end in the present. Our focus will be on the documentary’s “blurred boundaries,” those cinematic precincts where reportage blends with other modes of film practice. What kinds of “truth” do documentaries mobilize? What is the difference between a “realist aesthetic” and an “aesthetics of the real?” How does fantasy shape social reality? Students will write at least one, research-based paper, take a midterm exam, and keep a viewing journal.
Required Texts:
Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, by Eric Barnouw
Course reader, Metro Copy
Film 129
History of Avant-Garde Film
(Replaces Film 28A; fulfills film major avant-garde requirement).
Instructor: Marilyn Fabe
Film 129 will focus on works of artists who strive to expand the form and content of film and video beyond the constraints of the commercial mass entertainment product to explore more fully the potentials of the moving image form. Who makes avant-garde films, for whom, and why? What are the stakes of being “experimental,” of refusing to play by the rules of the mainstream cinema? What accounts for the pleasures of mainstream cinema, and how and why are these pleasures often attacked on undercut by experimental film? To what effect? What are the social and cultural contexts out of which these films arise? Why are avant-garde films often met with great hostility by many spectators? Through the screening of a wide range of experimental cinema accompanied by readings and class discussions, we will explore what these films do, and how they might make us see and experience the cinema and the world around us in new and potentially transformative ways.
Please Note: The course has been formulated in conjunction with Pacific Film Archive programs on Wednesday evenings from 7:30-9:30. Attendance at these screenings is required and most of the films screened are not available in the Media Resource Center. Admission is free to those enrolled in Film 129.
Required Text:
Film 128 Reader available at Replica Copy. Availability: To be announced
Film 140.001
Special Topics: Film Sound
Instructor: Mark Berger
This course will explore the nature, evolution, use, and abuse of sound in cinema. From the first silent films, which weren’t presented in silence at all, to current ride films, the relation between sound and image will be analyzed in detail. While there is a high degree of visual sophistication in audiences and academic analysis, there is an almost equal naiveté when it comes to sound. Starting with the physics of sound, the neurophysiology of hearing, and how our perception influences our emotional reactions, we will consider the three main categories of film sound - dialogue, music, effects - from the perspectives of the writer, the director, and the audience, looking at the artistic and technical factors that guide and constrain the creative process, as well as how changes in presentation have affected audience response. Examples will be shown from foreign and domestic feature, documentary, and animated films. Depending on schedules, there will be several guest lectures by directors and editors currently working on the soundtracks of their films. At the end of the course, students should be able to bring an increased sophistication and depth to their understanding of how sound contributes to (or diminishes!) the filmic experience.
Requirements:
Attendance in class lectures and film screenings is mandatory. Midterm Exam, final exam, 2 quizzes, several short analyses of assigned films, and small group creation and presentation of audio scenes illustrating concepts covered in class.
Film 140.002
Special Topics: Pulp Fiction and Film Noir
Instructor: Eileen Jones
We'll be studying the relationship between the popular literary category once known as “pulp fiction” and the dark, violent American crime movies that French cinephiles called “film noir.” This name derived from the “Serie Noire,” an imprint from the French publishing house Gallimard Editions, which featured the most celebrated works of popular writers of “hard-boiled” American crime fiction, such as Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Horace McCoy, and W.R. Burnett. These writers had made their names in the notoriously tough, cheap, lurid American publishing world of the “pulps.”
A significant number of influential films noirs were direct adaptations of the short stories and novels of pulp fiction writers; some were based on scripts written by pulp fiction writers lucky enough to “break out” and land Hollywood screenwriting contracts; and many more of them were more indirectly inspired by the cynical action-packed pulp fiction style.
We'll be looking at the impact of Hollywood censorship codes on adaptations of pulp fiction, as well as the slow development of the fractured narrative and dark, disorienting visual style that we now consider definitive of film noir. This cinematically radical “noir style” was at least partly the result of attempts to approximate the impact of pulp fiction writing.
There will be a mid-term exam, a final paper, and several short assignments. We will be doing a lot of reading, writing, viewing, and discussing. There is a required weekly film screening. Attendance is a must!
Required Texts:
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
Double Indemnity by James M. Cain
In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Horace McCoy
Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson
Course Reader
Film 140.003
Special Topics: Art & the Moving Image
Instructor: Erika Balsom
This course will examine a series of encounters between art and the moving image, from the filmic experiments of the historical avant-garde of the 1920s, to the advent of video in the 1960s, and the obsession with cinema found in art today. In addition to this historical overview of moving-image art, we will address conceptual/theoretical issues such as: the relationship between art and mechanical reproducibility, how the mass character of cinema and television influences their relation to "high" art, the alliances and antagonisms between experimental cinema and the art world, the politics of the museum space, the architectural specificity of various venues and modes of exhibition, conceptions of spectatorship, and curatorial/institutional practices.
Film 151.001
Auteur Theory: "Chinese Auteurs"
(Fulfills film major upper division auteur requirement).
Instructor: Lalitha Gopalan
Film theory follows cinephilia. Long canonized by film festivals and cherished by cinephiles, the ‘new cinemas’ from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the People’s Republic of China continue to revise our taste and assumptions of what is cinema: long takes and slow motions reanimated; relationship between mise-en-scene and realism rearticulated; links between film and politics redirected; connection between film style and directors reaffirmed and so on. To explore these various aspects, we will be primarily viewing films by Taiwan based auteurs, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, and Tsai Ming-liang; references and viewings of films by auteurs from Hong Kong and China will serve to understand the substance of the term 'Chinese Auteurs.'
Film 151.002
Auteur Theory: "Fellini & Self-Referential Cinema"
(Fulfills film major upper division auteur requirement).
Instructor: Gavriel Moses
Among Fellini's many distinctive features as director, one of the most important has been his introduction of Self-Referential Cinema into mainstream film culture. While not invented by Fellini, before the appearance of the film 8-1/2 in 1963, self-reference, self-awareness, and other varieties of metafilmic strategies were mostly relegated to literature, to the theatre, and to experimental and avant-garde filmmaking. From the very outset of Fellini's career there were indeed hints that this might become his focus. Such retrospective wisdom notwithstanding, once 8-1/2 burst upon our screens, the rest of his career, as well as world cinema, could not but be affected in radical ways.
This course will thus study self-reference and allied features as culture codes typical of 20th Century discourse. More specifically, we will study their role in Fellini's films, while also gaining an overview of other aspects of his distinctive style, thematic repertoire, and symbolic codex. We will establish, by questioning "auteurity" as a cultural notion, the special conditions and distinctive features that make Fellini one of the foremost film voices of world cinema.
Major works from the early period (Strada, Vitelloni, Bidone, Cabiria) will be covered, as well as works from Fellini's middle and late periods (Dolce Vita, 8-1/2, Giulietta, Satyricon, Roma, Clowns, Casanova, The Ship). We will also look at the work of other filmmakers (Bergman, Antonioni, Godard, and others) to highlight elements of difference and similarity.
Classes will entail film analysis, lectures, and discussions. Readings to include materials on Fellini as well as theoretical writings about the "auteur" and other theory.
Film 151.003
Auteur Theory: "Glauber Rocha and Pedro Costa"
(Fulfills film major upper division auteur requirement).
Instructor: Natalia Brizuela
What exactly is auteur theory? Francois Truffaut called it “the program/policy of auteur” in his 1954 essay which first coined the term. Andrew Sarris, considered the first film critic in the U.S.A. to use the term, famoulsy wrote, in an attempt to address the question, that “the strong director imposes his own personality on a film; the weak director allows the personalities of others to run rampant”. This course will study the literature and debates around the notion of auteur theory and cinema from the 1950’s to the present while analyzing the work of two Lusophone directors—Brazilian Glauber Rocha (1938 - 1981) and Portuguese Pedro Costa (1959 - ). The Portuguese language is not the only element in common between these two directors, although it will be our starting point, and not a minor one. Part of the course project will be to trace the similarities and differences between them. Glauber’s films were made either during the height of or immediately following the auteur discussions, while Costa’s films belong a later, contemporary, moment. This distance will allow us to question the very notion of auteur theory, and discuss its historicity.
Film 180A
Beginning Screenwriting
Instructor: J. Mira Kopell
Explores the art and craft of writing a feature length, narrative screenplay. Participants present three story ideas to the class, develop one concept into a detailed treatment and write the first act of the script in professional screenplay form. Focus is on rewriting, with regular presentations of outlines and scripts to fellow writers. Emphasis on story structure, character development and screenplay form. Includes in-class writing exercises.
Prerequisites:
Consent of instructor required. This class is open to juniors and seniors. Preference is given to Film & Media but instructor will try to accommodate students who are not Film & Media majors. Interested students should attend the first class session.
Film C185
Digital Video: Focus on the Narrative Short
(Cross-listed with Practice of Art C171.001; may be used as an elective for film major).
Instructor: J. Mira Kopell
This hands-on course explores the process of making narrative shorts using digital video production. Students will write, storyboard, shoot and edit four short films (2 - 7 minutes).
Lecture topics include how to write an effective short script; storyboarding; working with the digital video camera; directing actors and camera; continuity and coverage; composition; lighting; sound design; fundamentals of video editing and editing esthetics.
Class members work outside of class in assigned "crews" to shoot projects and edit in the media lab outside of class as well. Dailies and cuts are screened in class and critiqued by both the instructor and fellow filmmakers.
Prerequisites: Consent of instructor required. This class is open to juniors and seniors. Preference is given to Film Studies and Art Practice majors but instructor will try to accommodate students with other majors was well. Interested students should attend the first class session.
Required texts:
Crafting Short Screenplays that Connect, by Claudia Hunter Johnson (Focal Press, 2000) ISBN-10: 024081214X, ISBN-13: 978-0240812144
Film Directing Shot by Shot, by Steven Katz (Michael Wiese Productions, 1991) ISBN 0-941188-01-8
Film C187
Advanced Digital Video
(May be used as an elective for film major).
Instructor: Gavriel Moses
This advanced studio course (very demanding and very labor intensive) is designed for students who have mastered basic skills and concepts involved in digital video production as taught in FS26 and FS185, and who are interested in further investigating critical, theoretical, and creative topics in digital video production. This semester the course will address the full production process of a short narrative film: from idea, to narrative premise, to treatment, to pre-production, to casting, to shooting-script, to directing the film, to crewing for each other, to post-production and, finally, to exhibition.
Narrative should be understood, for the purposes of this class, in a broad sense. The final result (your film) can be, if not mainstream narrative, metanarrative - antinarrative - deconarrative - conceptnarrative - subvertgenrenarrative, and so on. For all of these alternatives to work, however, we must be clear about what narrative is assumed to be in its conventional form by our culture[s]. We will therefore look first of all, and very carefully, at the conventions and techniques of story development, clear communication, and engaging execution. We will do this before we explore the tangents that test the limits and contradictions of the shared traditional conventions of classic narrative cinema.
We will focus, of course, on the craft. But just as much as technique, the course is built on the assumption that what needs to be at the core of good filmmaking is a distinct and individual voice that knows what it is about. We will thus explore what you need to master if you are to communicate your ideas, what it is that constitutes meaning , and how much all of this depends on knowing who you are. This class takes it for granted that the most important thing a filmmaker needs to learn from the outset (over and above technique) is what s/he is going to put into the film. Of course, you will need to master further the nuts & bolts of the filmmaking process. Yet we will keep our focus on the fact that the most difficult task for a filmmaker is to have something to say that is worth saying.
Required Texts:
Online Class Reader & Links
Robert McKee, Story (New York: Harper Collins, 1997) ISBN-10: 0060391685, ISBN-13: 978-0060391683
Gaspard & Newton, Persistence of Vision (Los Angeles: Michael Wiese, 1996) ISBN-10: 094118823X, ISBN-13: 978-0941188234
Recommended Texts:
Jeremy Vineyard, Setting Up Your Shots (Los Angeles: Michael Wiese, 2000) ISBN-10: 1932907424, ISBN-13: 978-1932907421
Nicholas T. Proferes, Film Directing Fundamentals (Oxford: Focal Press, 2005) ISBN-10: 0240809408, ISBN-13: 978-0240809403
Steven Katz, Film Directing: Shot by Shot (Los Angeles: Michael Wiese, 1991) ISBN-10: 0941188108, ISBN-13: 978-0941188104
Judith Weston, Directing Actors (Los Angeles: Michael Wiese, 1996) ISBN-10: 0941188248, ISBN-13: 978-0941188241
Film 197A
Field Study at the Pacific Film Archive
Instructor: Nancy Goldman
Tu: 10:00am – 11:00am
PFA Library in the Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave
Mandatory group meetings on Tuesdays at the PFA Library. Students must schedule three hours of fieldwork per week in addition to the group meetings.
Prerequisites:
Declared film majors with at least 60 semester units completed.
Interning at the Pacific Film Archive Library and Film Study Center. Interns will learn about research strategies and film reference resources by attending lectures, writing a subject bibliography, and working in the PFA Library. Interns will get a thorough orientation to the PFA Library through introductory lectures and training sessions. Then, for 3 hours per week throughout the semester, they will help organize materials for inclusion in the PFA Library’s clippings files. Interns will gain experience in library organization and film bibliography, as well as a broad knowledge of the kinds of film reviews and criticism found in a variety of sources. For more information, please call Nancy Goldman at 642-0366.
Film 197B (3 units)
Independent Studies/Field Study for Majors
Instructors: Marilyn Fabe
Offsite course: Film Majors Only. See Undergraduate Advisor for details.
Film 197C
Film Curating Internship
Instructor: Kathy Geritz
Th: 4pm – 5:30pm, Pacific Film Archive
Meet in PFA’s Research Screening Room at the Berkeley Art Museum, 2625 Durant Ave.
Prerequisites:
Declared film majors with at least 60 semester units completed; must have completed Avant Garde Film 28B. Professor approval required; enrollment limited.
Experience “behind-the-scenes” at PFA! Interns will learn about film curating through creating a program of works by Bay Area film students to present at PFA the following Fall semester. Students will solicit films and videos, preview, and make a final selection as a group. Students will write short anlayses of local film exhibition programs and will do projects related to PFA’s ongoing exhibition program.