FTV2240 - Cinema Institutions: The New Hollywood

Leader: Con Verevis

Offered

Clayton Second semester 2007 (Day)

Synopsis

Cinema Institutions looks at contemporary Hollywood cinema, its films and its industry. This unit considers blockbuster and independent films, and a number of institutionalised and unofficial, public and industrial discourses. These include film industry publicity and marketing; advertising and commercial tie-ins; media coverage of stars and directors; film censorship and studio self-regulation; motion picture palaces and suburban multiplexes; film reviewing and academic film criticism; the impact of television and wide-screen technologies in the fifties; the impact of home video and cable television in the seventies and eighties; and new media technologies in the nineties and beyond.

Objectives

By the completion of this unit students will be expected to:

1. Recognise that meaning is not simply an intra-textual property of a particular text but an effect of historically specific extra-textual, material technologies or "institutions".
2. Demonstrate an understanding of historically specific material technologies of production, distribution, exhibition and reception, in relation to a range of contemporary Hollywood films.
3. Translate the particularity of Hollywood institutions into a methodology for investigating the material - social, historical and political - difference of other national cinemas.

Assessment

Visual test (1.5 hours): 40%
Essay (3000 words): 60%

Contact hours

4 hours (1 x 1 hour lecture, 1 x 1 hour tutorial and 1 x 2 hour screening) per week

Prerequisites

One unit at first-year level in Visual Culture