Forms of narrative cinema
David Hanan
8 or 12 points * 4 hours per week * First semester * Clayton
A study of a selection of films representative of a range of stylistic diversity in the cinema, concentrating on alternative cinema practices. The aim of this course is to develop in students an awareness of film form, and of films as systems of communication that tend to affect audiences in particular ways. Amongst the areas of cinema to be considered will be the early development of film form in Hollywood; the Russian experiments with editing, particularly works by Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Vertov; some avant-garde film practices; the work of a woman filmmaker in Hollywood (Arzner); alternative formal systems in the work of Ozu and Oshima in Japan; significant post-war developments, including European art cinema (Antonioni), the work of Godard and Kluge, and women filmmakers; the emergence of third world political filmmakers in the 1960s; contemporary Australian independent features and short films. Students will be encouraged to engage with recent theories of narrative and ideology, with feminist film theory and with issues of the institutional and economic frameworks in which films are produced.
Assessment: 8 points
Essay (4500 words): 75% * Examination/visual test (1.5 hours): 25%
Assessment: 12 points
Essay (2000 words): 30% * Essay (2500 words): 35% * Special study paper (1500 words): 15% * Examination/visual test (1.5 hours): 20%
Prescribed texts
Cook P (ed.) The cinema book: A complete guide to understanding the movies Pantheon or BFI, 1985
Hanan D Course reader, forms of narrative cinema Dept Visual Arts, Monash University, 1991
Recommended texts
Blonski A and others Don't shoot darling: Women's independent filmmaking in Australia Greenhouse, 1987
Bordwell D and Thompson K Film art: An introduction rev. edn, Addison Wesley, 1986
Bordwell D Narration in the fiction film Methuen, 1985
de Lauretis T Technologies of gender Indiana UP, 1987
Doane M A and others Re-vision: Essays in feminist film criticism AFI Monograph Series, vol. 3, 1984
Eisenstein S Film form HBW, 1949