Arrival of a Train at a Station (The Lumière Brothers, 1895); Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011)
ENGL1011: Introduction to Film Studies Unit Description This introduction to the Film Studies program at the University of Sydney examines a century of film and its impact on the spectator. Specifically, we ask: how do form and style structure our experience of film? How do we view and analyse films? This unit provides a critical introduction to elements of film production and viewing, moving through an exploration of formal components of film to consider film aesthetics in relation to the history of film scholarship. We will consider films in a variety of cultural and historical contexts, from early cinema to digital technologies, and introduce a series of case studies to explore historical, cultural and material contexts of film production and consumption.
Learning Outcomes At the completion of this unit students will be able to: • analyse film shots and sequences utilising the language of film analysis; • introduce and explore basic concepts in film analysis and interpretation; • articulate key concepts in film studies scholarship, such as auteurism, genre theory, and national cinemas; • articulate the historical, cultural, and material contexts that underpin concepts such as genre, auteur, spectator, and audience; • relate film analysis and interpretation to wider historical, cultural and material processes; • analyse new cinema forms within a field of changing technologies and media structures.
ENGL1011 Introduction to Film Studies: Schedule (Subject to change – please check UoS outline at beginning of semester):
Wk 1 2
3 4 5
6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Lecture and Screening Why Film? Introduction to Film Studies Screening: Hugo (Scorsese, 2011) Film Form: Technology, Images, Narrative Screening: The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Wiene, 1920) The Evolution of Film Style Screening: Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942) Storytelling: Film Narrative Screening: Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941) Case Study: Orson Welles, Hollywood Rebel Screening: The Artist (Hazanavicius, 2011) Sound, and Vision: Listening to Film (BI) Special Guest: Jenny Ward: Award Winning Film Sound/Dialogue Practitioner Screening: Cat People (Tourneur, 1942) Film Music Screening: Fargo (The Coen Brothers, 1996) The Screenplay as Film Form Screening: High Noon (Zinneman, 1952) Film Genre Screening: À Bout de Souffle [Breathless] (Godard, 1960) Auteurs and Auteur Theory Screening: Marie Antoinette (Coppola, 2006) Film and/as Ideology Screening: Children of Men (Cuarón, 2006) The Digital Turn, or, “Where are we now?” Screening: In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000) Film Studies: Legacies and Projections No Screening
Tutorial No tutorials week 1 Introduction to unit
Film Form Form and Style: German Expressionism Story, Plot, Narrative
Welles and Hollywood
Film Sound Film Music The Screenplay Film Genre Auteur Film and/as Ideology The Digital Turn
Mystery Road. Ivan Sen (Australia) 2013
ARHT2656: Film Genres and National Cinemas Unit Description Nations are like movies: they are the result of complex imaginings. To what extent have nations been imagined through movies, and have movies been affected by national imaginings? This unit of study takes Hollywood as a starting point to examine the evolving relation of national cinemas and film genres. A national case study - for instance, Australian cinema - will be studied to identify and analyse some of the complexities of the relation of film genres and national audiences. This unit of study seeks to introduce students to the rewarding and complex area of film studies known as national and transnational cinema studies in conjunction with the study of contemporary innovative treatments of film genres. As the distance between the so-called commercial entertainment genre film and the art house film narrows, so the distinctions between films as products of national cultures becomes more and more difficult to sustain. This unit is in three sections. The first section examines a film genre in relation to a national cinema. Often the genre is used to explore issues of national historical and political relevance. The second section examines the complex relation of national cinema and transnational cinema. Special attention is paid in this section to so-called diasporic cinemas, and as an early important instance of cinemas a transit, transience, and displacement. The third section examines transnational and world cinema. Each of the three sections explores issues of significance in contemporary film studies. Film Genres and National Cinemas will run as a two-hour lecture and 1 hour tutorial each week. The lectures will explore key issues around cinematic time, space, movement, and genre. They will centre on in-depth analyses of films shown in class and set as extra viewing in conjunction with the latest scholarly work in the area. Tutorials will include presentations by students wherein the critical relation between scholarly analysis and film form and content will be scrutinised.
Learning Outcomes By the end of this Unit of study students will be able to engage with complex filmic texts from a number of perspectives, textual, theoretical and critical. Students will also be able to move between perspectives and articulate their own position on a range of issues around film interpretation, production, policy and experience.
ARHT2656 Film Genres and National Cinemas: Schedule (Subject to change – please check UoS outline at beginning of semester):
Week
Seminar
Screening
1
Introduction.
Mystery Train. Jim Jarmusch. (1999).
2
Imagined Community.
Synecdoche New York. Charlie Kaufman. (2008).
3
National Cinema Studies
Hunger, Steve McQueen. (2008)
4
Korean Cinema (horror film)
Pieta. Kim Ki-duk (2012).
5
Australian Cinema (western/noir)
Mystery Road. Ivan Sen (2013).
6
Turkish Cinema (melodrama)
Three Monkeys. Nuri Bilge Ceylan. (2008).
7
French Cinema (thriller)
Caché. Michael Haneke. (2005)
8
‘Beur’ Cinema
The Secret of the Grain. Adellatif Kechiche. (2008).
9
Diasporic Cinema
Edge of Heaven. Fatih Akin (2007).
10
European Cinema (after 1989)
Ceasar Must Die. Paolo & Vittorio Taviani. (2012).
11
Nordic Cinema
Songs from the Second Floor. Roy Andersson (2000)
12
Transnational Cinema (Mexico)
Silent Light. Carlos Reygadas. (2007).
13
Essay topic presentations and feedback
No Screening
Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009)
ENGL2638: Literature and Cinema Unit Description This unit will examine issues arising from a comparative study of literature and cinema. Our focus will be on questions associated with a consideration of the continuities and discontinuities between the two mediums, including: • • • • • • •
the cultural and historical contexts of literary and cinematic texts; authorship, auteurism and aesthetic authority; adaptation and intertextuality; form and meaning in literature and cinema; the figurative styles of literature and cinema; narrative and narration in literature and cinema; genre study across the mediums of literature and cinema.
Learning Outcomes This unit aims to provide students with the opportunity to critically engage with an historically broad and a generically diverse range of literature and cinema and aims to provide students with: • • • • • •
an enhanced understanding of issues arising from the comparative analysis of texts; an historical sense of the place of the literary and the cinematic text in both ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture and the interactions between these cultural domains; an analytical understanding of the key concepts of aesthetic authority, intertextuality, form, adaptation and genre; a critically informed understanding of the film as ‘text’; an appreciation of the contrasting textual nature of literature and cinema and how this weighs on productions in each medium; an enhanced knowledge of cinematic and literary genres, forms and periods.
ENGL2638 Literature and Cinema: Schedule (Subject to change – please check UoS outline at beginning of semester):
Week
Lecture
Seminar
1
Introduction
Introduction and ‘Auteurism’
2
The Dead – short story (James Joyce) and film (John Huston, 1987)) Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2003)
4
Adaptation and the Question of Fidelity Adaptation and Aesthetic Production Cinema and Drama
5
Cinema and the Novel
6
Re-Imagining Cinema
7
Form, Style and Genre
8
Cinema and Tragedy
9
Cinema and Comedy
10
Documentary and Non-Fiction
11
Poetry and Cinema
12
Poetics and Cinema
3
A Streetcar Named Desire play (Tennessee Williams) and film (Elia Kazan, 1951) The Maltese Falcon novel (Dashiell Hammett) and film (John Huston, 1941) La Jetee (Chris Marker, 1962) and 12 Monkeys (Terry Gilliam, Readings on Genre Rope (Hitchcock, 1948) and Oedipus Rex (Sophocles) Borat (Larry Charles, 2006) and A Modest Proposal (Jonathan Swift) The Fog of War/ Tabloid (Errol Morris, 2003/2010) and selected prose Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009) and Howl (Friedman and Epstein, 2010) and selected poetry Of Time and the City (Terence Davies, 2008)
Tree of Life (Terence Malick, 2011)
ARHT3601: Cinematic Transformations Unit Description What is the cinematic object of the twenty-first century? Where do we locate the essence of a medium that has undergone such a radical transformation? This course examines the intersections of film, digital cinema, and new media experiences such as YouTube, machinima and mobile cinema. Where many have spoken of the death of cinema in a digital era, we will conceptualise the complexity of cinema’s evolution from its earliest celluloid incarnation to the technologies of digital simulation.
Learning Outcomes At the completion of this unit students will be able to: • • • •
articulate and critically engage with current theories of cinema as text, image and mediated process; identify the key industrial, aesthetic and cultural outcomes of the ‘digital turn’ in the broader history of the evolution of the cinematic object; demonstrate complex, subtle image analysis across media platforms, including celluloid, digital cinema and new media practices; critically reflect on the continued “presence” of cinema in contemporary life.
ARHT3601 Cinematic Transformations: Schedule (Subject to change – please check UoS outline at beginning of semester):
Wk 1 2
3
4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13
Lecture and Screening Introduction: What is the Cinematic Object? No Screening Montage, Kino-‐Eye/The ‘Reality Effect’: Screening: Man With a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929) Technological Replication: “How can it not know what it is?” Screening: Blade Runner: Final Cut (Scott, 2007) Technologies of Old and New Cinema: Excursion to Dendy Cinemas No Screening Neo-‐baroque Spatiality Screening: Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone, 1968) Digital Spatiality Screening: The Matrix (The Wachowskis, 1999) Celluloid Temporality Screening: La Jetée (Marker, 1962); Wavelength (Snow, 1967); Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren, 1943) Digital Temporality Screening: Russian Ark (Sokurov, 2002) Documenting the Real Screening: Cloverfield (Reeves, 2008) Mobility and the Digital Avant-‐garde Screening: This is Not a Film (Panahi, 2011); Night Fishing (Park Chan-‐wook, 2011) Global Digital Cultures Screening: The Social Network (Fincher, 2010) Nostalgia for a Lost Object Screening: Tree of Life (Malick, 2011) Musings on a Possible Future No Screening
Tutorial No tutorials week 1 Introduction to unit
The Cinematic World in Montage Man With a Movie Camera Digital Assemblage: Blade Runner Assemblage and Convergence (Lab) Neo-‐baroque Spatiality: Once Upon a Time in the West Digital Spatiality: The Matrix Celluloid Temporality: La Jetée, Wavelength, Meshes of the Afternoon Digital Temporality: Russian Ark Documenting the Real: Cloverfield Cinema as Mobile Image: This is Not a Film Global Digital Cultures: The Social Network Nostalgia for a Lost Object: Tree of Life