FILM 392 - Research Seminar in Film History and Theory

Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
1 unit(s)

This course is designed as an in-depth exploration of a theoretical topic. Students contribute to the class through research projects and oral presentations. Their work culminates in lengthy research papers. Because topics change, students are permitted (encouraged) to take this course more than once. Preference is given to film majors who must take this class during their senior year; junior majors and others admitted if space permits.

Topic for 2024/25a: Artist, Auteur: Spike Lee. The son of a musician and a teacher, Shelton Jackson Lee was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Nicknamed “Spike”, he grew up in a household that valued education as well as the arts. With the release of his first feature film, Lee initiated another cinematic revolution. He demonstrated to Hollywood studios that serious contemporary African-American films were not only aesthetically innovative, they were also commercially profitable. His success has created opportunity for other writers, directors, actors and technicians. Over the last twenty years Spike Lee has directed an array of challenging, innovative and provocative features, documentaries and commercials. The themes embedded in his work are often culled from news headlines, making him one of the most politically engaged filmmakers of his generation. This course is a senior seminar in which the films of Lee are rigorously examined. Mia Mask.

Topic for 2024/25b: Sensuous Theory. This seminar explores the relationship between film and the senses. How can film, an audio-visual medium, represent and engage with the proximal senses of touch, taste, and smell? How might films employ the senses to reconfigure the relationship between the cinema and the spectator? How can these sensuous films articulate senses of belonging, displacement, or exile? The seminar situates our discussions of these questions within discourses of film phenomenology, postmodernism, gender studies, and postcolonialism. Readings may include: Jennifer M. Barker (The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience, 2009), Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener (Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses, 2010), Laura U. Marks (The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses, 2000, and Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media, 2002), Hamid Naficy (An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, 2001), and Vivian Sobchack (Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture, 2004). Film screenings may include: The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977), The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991), Calendar (Atom Egoyan, 1993), Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995), The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar, 2011), Cyclo (Tran, Anh Hung, 1995), Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015),Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Mel Stuart, 1971), and Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019). Sophia Harvey.

Prerequisite(s): Prerequisite(s): FILM 209; two additional units in film history and theory, and permission of the instructor.

Corequisite(s): FILM 391 (Spring only)

One 2-hour period plus outside screenings.

Course Format: CLS