Reading Films

FILM 210

This course is designed to help students understand and reflect on the experience of watching narrative film. The course poses questions about the medium that an informed viewer might ask and devotes its time to answering those questions: how does a film work? Why does it move us or thrill us? What is the relationship between image and sound in movies? How did this film get to the screen, and what is its relationship to the society it comes from? What is “film” in a time when movies and media are changing? And what do we get from studying films? Students are introduced to some key films during lectures, which are preceded by a short introduction. They will read preparatory material from the course texts before the film, answer a series of questions posed by the instructor after they see it, and will return two days later for a lecture which knits together the insights of the reading, the students’ own responses to the film, and places the week’s film in a broader context. Clips are a regular part of the lecture and amplify the points raised by the instructor and the text, offering students a range of other films that they might further pursue outside of class. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand salient features and contexts for the work they watch, giving them a basic historical, formal, ideological, and interpretive grounding in narrative cinema.