From Movie Palaces to Netflix

Catalog description

Cinema has always had an audience. From its first appearances in cafes, tea houses, and variety shows to today’s streaming platforms, cinema continues to exist in relation to different ways of looking and experiencing. This course examines how films have been shown and how audiences have watched films in diverse historical and cultural contexts such as in India, China, Nigeria, and the US. We will give special attention to streaming as the latest model for delivering films. How does exhibition shape both the films being shown and audiences’ moviegoing experiences? What kind of conceptions about cinema emerge through this process? How has the showing of films been related to modernization, colonialism, migration, gender relations, and other social issues? To answer these questions, this course introduces students to research methods such as archival research, oral history, and ethnography. Students will contribute to the collective research project “Moviegoing in Philadelphia” and organize a film screening for their final project.