American Cinema: 1960 to Present

Catalog description

Offered in the spring semester only. Course level: Intermediate. 4 points. No prerequisite. Over the last 50 years the American Cinema has produced a remarkably rich abundance of entertaining, exciting, and challenging films. This course is designed to provide a survey of the wealth of styles, forms, purposes, and approaches to filmmaking that developed and emerged in this era. While Hollywood has obviously served as the dominant mode of filmmaking in this country, a significant of other filmmaking practices have continued to operate and sometimes thrive outside of it. Beyond the attention paid to Hollywood narrative cinema as it has changed and evolved over this half-century, we will also consider documentaries, avant-garde and experimental works, independent narraive cinema, and "cult" films. Consequently, we will be screening a variety of films, including works by such notable American filmmakers as Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Quentin Tarantino, George Romero, John Singleton, and Michael Moore.