Film Manifestos

Catalog description

This course poses the question "what is a film manifesto"? Film manifestos express a utopian striving to transform not only cinema but also the world in which it exists-the public sphere. The course uses manifestos as a point of departure to survey various film movements spanning the 20th and early 21st centuries, including the avant-gardes of pre- and post-WWII, national and third cinemas, feminist film, the Production Code and the Pope's encyclical on the motion picture, archival movements, and finally, the explosion of digital filmmaking at the turn of the century. It concludes with a trip to the nearby Eastman-Kodak Film Factory and Dryden Theatre-the manufacturer that gave film manifestos their mass potential.