Film Theories

Department of Media and Cultural Studies

Block 2, 2010-11
Cursuscode: 200501607
Coordinator: Dr. James S. Hurley, KNG20, 1.13
Email: J.S.Hurley@uu.nl
Hoorcolleges: Wednesdays 1515-1700 HO13, 017
Werkcolleges: Fridays 1100-1245 ADD 102 (Group 1)
Fridays 1315-1500 D23 207 (Group 2)

Requirements
Students will be given weekly reading assignments drawn from materials made
available on the courses WebCT site. In addition, students will have the following
three assignments:
Each week students will prepare five critical questions regarding the assigned
readings to be discussed. Students will collect their questions into a portfolio
which will be submitted at the mid-point of the block for a preliminary,
provisional assessment and at the end of the block for a definitive grade.
(30% of final grade; submission dates: 17-12, 21-01)
Students will be organized into teams which will present assigned readings to
the class and oversee subsequent discussions. These presentations should be
analytical rather than descriptive and should address the class with a set of
questions that will generate relevant and focused discussion. (20% of final
grade)
Students will write a paper of approximately 2500 words investigating a
significant theoretical issue raised by the readings and lectures in this course.
About halfway through the block, a number of possible paper topics will be
posted to the courses WebCT site. (50% of final grade; due, 28-01)
Lectures and discussions will be in English, as will all written work submitted by
students (this work will be graded on the basis of content, not grammar, style, etc).
Unit 1: Ontology, Aesthetic Autonomy, Artistic Value
week 47
Hugo Mnsterberg, The Means of the Photoplay (1916)
Rudolf Arnheim, from Film as Art (1933)
Erwin Panofsky, Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures (1934/47)
week 48
Sergei Eisenstein, Beyond the Shot, The Dramaturgy of Film Form (1929)
Andre Bazin, The Ontology of the Photographic Image (1945), The Evolution of
the Language of Cinema (1950-55)
week 49
Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935)
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm
Unit 2: The Semiotic Intervention: Film and/as Language
week 50
Christian Metz, Some Points on the Semiotics of the Cinema, Problems of
Denotation in the Fiction Film (1968)
Peter Wollen, The Semiology of the Cinema (1969)

Unit 3: Ideology, The Apparatus, Constituting the Subject

week 1
Jean-Louis Baudry, Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus
(1970)
Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975)
https://wiki.brown.edu/confluence/display/MarkTribe/Visual+Pleasure+and+Narrativ
e+Cinema
Unit 4: Post Film/Post Theory? 1) The Claims of History
week 2
David Bordwell, Historical Poetics of Cinema (1989)
http://www.davidbordwell.net/articles/Bordwell_Cinematic
%20Text_no3_1989_369.pdf
Tom Gunning, The Cinema of Attractions (1986); Frank Kessler, The Cinema of
Attractions as Dispositif (2006)
Unit 4: Post Film/Post Theory? 2) Cinema and The Digital Turn
week 3
Tom Gunning, Whats the Point of an Index? (2004)
http://www.nordicom.gu.se/common/publ_pdf/157_039-050.pdf
D.N. Rodowick, Dr Strange Media; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
Film Theory (2001) http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/463543.pdf
Week 4: Independent Research for Final Paper