FILM 195 - Topics in Film Studies

FDR: HA
Credits: 3 credits in Fall or Winter; 4 credits in Spring
Planned Offering: Offered when interest is expressed and departmental resources permit.

Prerequisite: Completion of FW FDR requirement, and other prerequisites may vary with topic. Selected topic in film studies, focused on one or more of film history, theory, production, or screenwriting. May be repeated for degree credit if the topics are different.

Winter 2015 topics:

FILM 195-01: Film: Medium of a Disintegrating World: Visual Culture and Modernity in the Weimar Republic (3). Prerequisite: Completion of FW FDR requirement. Before the advent of modern fascism, a group of prescient German Jewish intellectuals began to take film and popular culture seriously. Known as “The Frankfurt School,” they theorized possible connections between their own visual landscape and the social, political, and economic conditions of the Weimar Republic. This course revisits key writings about film from The Frankfurt School in their historical specificity and seeks to reopen the potential of their thought more generally. In a time of swiftly evolving digital media, what theoretical tools, flickers of insight, or provocation can these early scholars of popular culture offer us today? (HA)

FILM 195-02: Acting for the Camera (3). Prerequisite: Completion of FW FDR requirement. A studio course designed to improve a student-actor’s ability to communicate ideas and emotions in a public forum and, in particular, for a film- and television-viewing audience. Students explore the acting techniques unique to dramatic characterization in the non-linear processes of digital film production. (HA)