Reading Film

Catalog description

A practical and historical approach to film theory and analysis. This seminar develops critical visual literacy by examining a range of practices in cinema study, with emphases on the relation of film to literature and the analysis of film meaning. The course asks how to read a film, and considers the multiple ways that films combine framing, movement, editing, narrative, character, and genre toward the production of culture, ideology, identity, desire, poetic imagery, and community. Students will explore a wide range of critical methods, and will view one to two films per week. Readings will range from novels to classic film theory, cultural studies, belles-lettres, film criticism, radical poetics, apparatus theory, media theory, and contemporary philosophy.