VSA2190

Forms of narrative cinema

David Hanan

8 points
* 4 hours per week
* First semester
* Clayton

Objectives A primary objective of this subject is for students to engage in a detailed manner with the ambiguities and complexities of filmic communication, considering film as a multi-layered form of communication. Students will be expected by the completion of the initial exercise to demonstrate an understanding of particular issues of spatial construction in film and of range editing styles specific to cinema. In a second exercise, through the analysis of a range of filmic texts students will be asked to display an awareness of the cultural, ideological, contextual and hermeneutic considerations which influence filmic expression. Students will also be required to critically engage with written and filmic texts in a clear and confident manner in both written and oral presentation.

Synopsis A study of films representative of a range of stylistic diversity in the cinema. The aim of the subject is to develop in students an awareness of film form, and the way in which film, as a system of communication, affects audiences and of films as systems of communication that tend to affect audiences in particular ways. The areas of cinema to be considered will be drawn from the early development of film form over the period 1895- 1910; the Russian experiments with editing, particularly works by Eisenstein; Brecht and the Cinema; alternative formal systems in the work of Ozu in Japan; significant post-war developments, including European art cinema (Antonioni), the work of Godard and Resnais; some avant-garde film practices, including films by Maya Deren; third world filmmaking, particularly, some third world political filmmakers of the 1960s; and a contemporary Australian experimental feature. Film technology will be studied in so far as it is relevant to more general considerations, as will the issues of the institutional and economic frameworks in which the films are produced and viewed. Students will be encouraged to engage with recent theories of narrative and ideology, and with feminist film theory and criticism. Films will generally be chosen for the purpose of exemplification of topics, but allowance will be made for a particular film's individual concerns, and critical engagement with a film's range of possible meanings will be encouraged.

Assessment Essay (2000 words): 33%
* Essay (2500 words): 42%
* Visual test (1.5 hour): 25%

Prescribed texts

Bordwell D and Thompson K Film art: An introduction rev. edn, Addison-Wesley, 1986
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 Narration in the fiction film Methuen, 1985
de Lauretis T Technologies of gender Indiana U P, 1987
Cook P (ed.) The cinema book: A complete guide to understanding the movies Pantheon or BFI, 1985
Doane M A and others Re-vision: Essays in feminist film criticism AFI Monograph Series, vol. 3, 1984
Eisenstein S Film form HBW, 1949
Nichols B Ideology and the image Indiana U P, 1981