Courses

MA Course Descriptions 2011-2012

FMST 600/3 A (6 credits, fall and winter)

Methods in Film Studies

Instructors:  Dr. Catherine Russell / Dr. Haidee Wasson                          

Mondays     13:15 -17:15     FB-250              

This is the only mandatory course in the MA in Film Studies Program. It is designed to help students develop research, writing and presentation skills appropriate to the discipline of film studies. In addition to technical and practical matters, the course helps students develop productive and original research questions by examining those that guide quality research in the field. The screenings and readings provide the ground for an analysis of the tools and methods of film studies. Course materials examine the ways that film history, criticism and textual analysis have been and can be written, encompassing a range of ways of seeing, interpreting and understanding cinema. Written and oral assignments are designed to develop research and communication skills appropriate to the field. The course also works to facilitate an esprit de corps within the M.A. class. The first term, taught by Catherine Russell, will cover issues of aesthetics and film analysis, including questions of authorship, genre and national culture. The second term, taught by Haidee Wasson, will address issues of film reception, exhibition, institutions and technologies.  Final grades will be calculated on the basis of all assignments and presentations in both semesters.

 

FMST 605G/2 A (3 credits, fall)  / FMST 805G/2 A (3 credits, fall) 

Topics in English Canadian Film

Special Subject: English Cinema

Instructor:  TBA

Fridays     13:15-17:15     FB-250

 

FMST 620D/4  (3 credits, winter)  /  FMST 820D/4 (3 credits, winter)

Topics in Non-European Cinema

Special Subject: Argentinian Cinema

Instructor:  Dr. Peter Rist

Thursdays        13:15-17:15     FB-250

This is a film history course. It is also a national cinema course that will consider the differences between constructions of  “South American/Latin American,” and “Argentine” cinema as well as, more generally, Spanish language films. Although the films will be screened chronologically on the course from the silent era until today, we will be approaching Argentine cinema from three different angles: (a) the commercial cinema, including the phenomenon of silent and sound era “tango films,” and the country’s recent Oscar success; (b) the left-political cinema, with a focus on the 1960s, the pan-continental “New Latin American Cinema” movement, the clandestinely-made film  La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, 1968) and the subsequent work of director Fernando Solanas; (c) the “art “ cinema, including, especially the so-called “New Argentine Cinema,” which was initiated with the appearance of the low budget feature film, Pizza, birra, faso in 1997. Course assignments will include readings, extra screenings, an essay, and, at least one in-class presentation.

 

FMST 630C/2 AA (3 credits, fall)  /  FMST 830C/2 AA (3 credits, fall)

Topics in Film Theory

Special Subject: On the Concept of Excess

Instructor: Dr. Carole Zucker

Tuesdays     13:15-17:15     FB-250

We often use the word excess or excessive when speaking about films. But what might this mean conceptually and historically? How can we develop insight into what might be considered “excessive” about film? The course begins with Nietzsche and the split between the Appollonian and Dionysiac, and continues with the cultural anthropologist René Girard on violence; Mikhail Bakhtin and the carnivalesque; romanticism; the gothic; melodrama and Le Théâtre du Grand Guignol; surrealism; the work of Sade, Georges Bataille and Pasolini; the monstrous female body; stylistic excess; high/low culture and the trashing of the academy and apocalypticism. Readings by authors such as: Roland Barthes; Walter Benjamin; Peter Brooks; Barbara Creed; Michel Foucault; Northrop Frye; Tom Gunning; Julia Kristeva; Mario Praz, and Steven Shaviro, et. al. are included in the syllabus. Screenings will take place in most classes potentially including work by Julie Taymor; Jodorowsky; Herzog; de Palma; Argento; Romero; Buñuel and Dali; Pasolini; Cronenberg; Josef von Sternberg, Ken Russell, and Abel Ferrara. There are required readings for each week as well as supplementary readings for those who wish to go further with a particular subject. An oral presentation is possible as is written work.

 

FMST 630G/4 A (3 credits, winter)  /  FMST 830G/4 A (3 credits, winter)

Topics in Film Theory

Special Subject: Media Theory  

Instructor: Dr. Marc Steinberg

Wednesdays     13:15-17:15     FB-250

A proliferation of theoretical approaches to contemporary media has accompanied the recent proliferation of digital media forms. This course introduces students to recent developments in film and new media theory, offering a succession of texts that seek, each in their own way, to engage the central questions of this course: What is a medium in this age of multimedia? And by what theoretical avenues may we approach the issues of medium specificity, the multiplicity of media formations, and the emergent, culturally specific uses of media forms? Drawing on theoretical writings on film, television, comics, sound, video games and new media this course will introduce students to the multiple ways of thinking, seeing and writing about moving image media in the era of digital mediation. Authors we will engage with may include Raymond Williams, Marshall McLuhan, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Lev Manovich, Friedrich Kittler, Wendy Chun, Brian Larkin, Thomas Lamarre, Matthew Fuller, Brian Massumi, Celia Lury, John Caldwell, and Tiziana Terranova. Classes will include screenings of films, animation, video games and new media artefacts.

 

FMST 635G/2 A (3 credits, fall)  /  FMST 835G/2 A (3 credits, fall)

Topics in Aesthetic and Cultural Theory

Special Subject: Postcolonial Theory and Cinema

Instructor: Dr. Luca Caminati

Thursdays     13:15-17:15     H-333

This course will introduce students to some key concepts in the field of postcolonial theory in relation to cinema and other media practices.  Taking as our starting point Edward Said’s political and ideological renegotiation of the term “orient”, we will explore this concept in the writings of early theorists of postcoloniality (Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha, among others) and in the more recent works of Ella Shohat and Robert Stam.  These texts will provide the initial theoretical framework by which we will then critique the  “orientalist” tradition in European and American cinema. We then will turn our attention to films that speak to the experiences of colonialism and post-colonialism from the point of view of the colonized.  We will look at cinemas of Africa, Asia and Latin America (Sembene, Indian Parallel Cinema, Third Cinema, etc.). These sections will be informed by theoretical readings by scholars directly involved in the anti-colonial struggle (Franz Fanon and Edouard Glissant). In the last section of the course we will address the issue of globalization and its effects and representations in film and media practices. The course will consist of weekly web-posts addressing the reading, occasional additional screenings, and two short analytical papers (9-10 pages).

 

FMST 660A/1 A (3 credits, summer)  /  FMST 860A/1 A (3 credits, summer)

Topics in Film Directors

Special Subject: Stanley Kubrick

Instructor: Dr. Mario Falsetto

May 3-June 14, 2011     Tuesdays and Thursdays     13:15-17:15     FB-250

Stanley Kubrick was a key filmmaker of the contemporary era. Kubrick's films are technically dazzling, intellectually stimulating and always involve serious investigations into the nature of film form. This seminar will closely examine the complexities of meaning generated by Kubrick's films, paying particular attention to questions of narrative and style. The course will explore how the films' thematic investigations relate to and evolve out of their stylistic and formal operations. Most of Kubrick's major work will be screened including Killer’s Kiss (1955), The Killing (1956), Paths of Glory (1957), Lolita (1962), Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Barry Lyndon (1975), The Shining (1980), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Through a combination of lectures, close analysis, discussion, student presentations and readings we will attempt to thoroughly examine the work of one of the great filmmakers of the 20th Century. Required Reading: Stanley Kubrick: A Narrative and Stylistic Analysis (Revised 2nd edition) by Mario Falsetto (Praeger Press, 2001). Other readings will also be assigned.

FMST 650A/2 (3 credits, fall) (cross-listed with ASEM 654D/2)  
Topics in Experimental Film/Video
Special Topic: Classical North American Avant-Garde Film, 1943-1970
Instructor:  Dr. Mario Falsetto

Tuesdays     13:15-17:15     VA-114

Although the history of the American avant-garde cinema can be traced to several key artists of the late 1920s, and in particular to significant developments in the European avant-garde, the movement begins a crucial phase of its development in the early 1940s with the ground-breaking work of such artists as Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, Marie Menken, Sidney Peterson and Gregory Markopolous. This early phase emphasized what we now call “trance films” or “psycho dramas,” films that were as much a personal examination of the sexual and artistic identity of the artist as they were explorations into the nature of film form. These films were often connected to such artistic movements as surrealism, imagist poetry, or the psychoanalytic writings of Jung and Freud. The films of this period were most often focused on the idea of personal expression and the creation of poetic forms, and were often seen as an alternative history to mainstream, studio film practice. The movement also saw the entry of visual artists such as Jordan Belson, Harry Smith and the Whitney brothers who explored the graphic potential of the medium similar to the experiments of the great European filmmakers of the 1920s such as Ferdinand Leger and Hans Richter.

The 1950s and 1960s saw the great flowering of the experimental film movement in the U.S. with the crucial arrival of artists such as Stan Brakhage, Bruce Conner, Carolee Schneemann, Andy Warhol, Bruce Baillie, and many others. The movement moved through many stages and forms of expression often linked to developments in the visual arts, such as abstract expressionism, pop art, op art, happenings, minimalism, literary movements such as the Beats, minimalist/free form music and dance, theatre of the absurd, and many other forms of artistic practice. Throughout this period, individual filmmakers explored the full potential of film, primarily as a medium of self expression, and ultimately, as a way to create metaphors for human experience that approximated the workings of perception and consciousness.

This seminar will examine the rich cinematic legacy of the classic American avant-garde cinema through weekly film screenings, readings, discussion and student presentations. Although the class is primarily focused on the U.S. movement, we will also acknowledge the contributions of several key Canadian artists such as Normal Maclaren, Arthur Lipsett, and Michael Snow. Each student will be expected to make an in-class presentation and/or write a term paper, and to keep up with the weekly readings, which will include books by P. Adams Sitney and Stan Brakhage, and a course-pack of supplemental readings.

There are two (2) assignments for this course: a short (approx. 20-30 minute) oral presentation and a term paper (minimum 2500 words), each worth 50% of your final grade. The term paper may elaborate on ideas presented in the oral presentation. Students may also elect to do a double assignment worth 100% of their grade: either a longer presentation (approx. 45 minutes) or a longer paper (minimum 4,000 words). Students doing the longer in-class presentation must also submit a typed, cleaned-up copy of their written notes for the presentation.

4 places are reserved for FMST students. Once those are filled, students should request registration with Maureen Kennedy at mak@alcor.concordia.ca

FMST 660F/4 A (3 credits, winter)  / FMST 860F/4 A (3 credits, winter)

Topics in Film Directors

Special Subject: Alfred Hitchcock

Instructor:  Dr. Martin Lefebvre

Thursdays     08:45-12:45     FB-250

 

 

FMST 665I/2 AA (3 credits, fall)  /  FMST 865I/2 AA (3 credits, fall)

Early Soviet Cinema

Instructor:  Dr. Masha Salazkina

Wednesdays     18:00-22:00     FB-250

This course is an in depth study of the major cinematic and theoretical works of Soviet cinema in the 1920s-early 30s. We will consider some of the major concepts and experimental practices of the period (“montage,” “kino-eye,” “eccentric cinema,” “cine-trains,” etc). Placing equal weight on historical and theoretical developments, we will analyze the films and the writings of Kuleshov, Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Vertov, Dovzhenko, Medvedkin, Trauberg, Barnet, and Shub.  We will pay particular attention to the merging of theory and practice in the work of these directors, the influence they have had on the development of cinema around the world, and on the re-emergence of their critical and theoretical reception in film studies in the 1960s and up to the present day.

The class assignments will consist of regular web responses to the readings and screenings, a midterm exam, and a choice between an essay (10-12 pp) and a final exam.

 

FMST 665J/4 AA (3 credits, winter)  /  FMST 865J/4 AA (3 credits, winter)

Cinema and Exploration

Instructor:  Dr. Luca Caminati

Tuesdays     18:00-22:00     FB-250

 This class will examine the notion of cinema as a mode of exploration of reality. The first instantiation of this approach will include a historical overview of the Western tradition of travel films from early anthropological reportages to different contemporary variations on the theme of the travelogue, presented to the students through a wide array of modes of filmmaking (anthropological, “national geographic”, experimental, avant-garde, “fakes”, etc) and authors (Buñuel, Rouch, Marker, etc).  We will then address the notion of scientific exploration through film, from early examples of science documentaries and theoretical discourses to the contemporary debate on the role of microcinema in the recording of scientific experiments.  Finally, we will turn to exploration of reality as the structuring principle of art cinema, focusing our attention on modernist open narratives as a way of “searching the world with the camera”. The course will consist of weekly web-posts addressing the reading, occasional additional screenings, and two short analytical papers (9-10 pages).

 

ENGL 628B/4 AA (3, credits, winter)

***Please note there are only 3 places reserved for FMST students in this course. Registrations will be made on a first-come-first-served basis***

Psychoanalysis and Film, A Parallel History

Instructor: Alan Bourassa

Tuesdays 18:00 – 20:15                  

It is no coincidence that film and psychoanalysis undergo almost parallel evolutions from the late nineteenth century to the present day. They are born and grow up together. Film theory and psychoanalysis demand something of each other, something much more than the kinds of casual links provided by current forms of cultural studies or film criticism. What film demands of psychoanalysis is a theory that will link the notions of the unconscious, fantasy, alienation, desire-formation, with the visual techniques of film. What films can do must be explicitly linked to what psychoanalysis reveals. What psychoanalysis demands of film may be even more problematic. It demands not chiefly an illustration of psychoanalytic principles but rather a kind of embodiment of what escapes the framework of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis requires of film, in other words, that film leads the theory of psychoanalysis to a complementary theory of forces and transformations. In this seminar we will look at some of the early theory of film – Kracauer, Arnheim, Munsterberg, Bazin – and its parallels with the theories of Sigmund Freud. We will later examine the work of Lacan and contemporary Lacanians in relation to more recent theorists of film – Deleuze, Shaviro, Cavell. The seminar will challenge students to draw theoretically useful parallels between the theory of film and the theory of psychoanalaysis.

Bruce Fink             The Lacanian Subject

Rudolph Arnheim   Film as Art

Siegfried Kracauer Theory of Film

Gilles Deleuze       Cinema 1: The Movement Image

                             Cinema 2: The Time Image

Sigmund Freud     Metapsychological Essays

                            Moses and Monotheism

                           “The Uncanny”

                           “Screen Memories”

Stanley Cavell     The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film

                           Contesting Tears: The Melodrama of the Unknown Woman

Steven Shaviro   The Cinematic Body

Jacques Lacan    The Seminar XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis,

                          The Seminar XVII, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis

                         The Seminar XX, Encore: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge