Forms of narrative cinema
8 points * 4 hours per week * First semester * Caulfield * This subject is offered with the cooperation of the Visual Arts department
This subject is a study of a selection of films representative of a range of stylistic diversity in the cinema, concentrating on alternative cinema practices. It aims to develop in students an awareness of film form, and of films as systems of communication that tend to affect audiences in particular ways. Among the areas of cinema to be considered will be the early development of film form in Hollywood; the Russian experiments with editing, especially the works by Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Vertov; some avant garde film practices; the work of Arzner, a female filmmaker in Hollywood; alternative formal systems in the work of Ozu and Oshima in Japan; significant postwar 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; and contemporary Australian independent features and short films. Students will be encouraged to become familiar with recent theories of narrative and ideology, with feminist film theory and issues of the institutional and economic frameworks in which films are produced.
Assessment
Written (4500 words): 75% * Examination (1 hour): 25%
Prescribed texts
Bordwell D and Thompson K Film art: an introduction rev. Edn, Addison-Wesley, 1986
Cook P (ed.) The cinema book: a complete guide to understanding the movies Pantheon, 1985