Course Catalog

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FILM DIRECTORS: AGNES VARDA (FM2087)

This course explores the cinema of Agnès Varda, one of the world’s great filmmakers. To study Varda’s work over is to engage important cinematic questions around politics, marginality and community while also engaging critical shifts in form. The course additionally sharpens skills in close analysis, critical review, writing, curatorial and presentational skills in film studies.

SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY ON SCREEN (FM2088)

The lavish worlds that cinematic technology made it possible became part of the earliest filmmaking endeavors in both America and Europe. In this course, students explore the roots of science fiction and fantastic cinema. They study the importance of modernist movements to evolving trends in both genres and the interrelations between the two.

FILM GENRE: MELODRAMA (FM2089)

Is melodrama a genre, a way of imagining the world, or the predominant aesthetic mode to represent intense emotions? Throughout the history of film it has been all of these, traveling across cultures and cinematic contexts. In this course we explore theories and concepts that can help us make sense of melodrama, and apply them to a number of key films from different countries. We question why these films move us, and how their narrative and mise-en-scene create stark moral conflicts and “excessive” pathos. Through group assignments and an individual research project, we also explore the ways in which melodrama affects our current understanding of history, politics, and society. The first part of the course focuses on melodrama from early cinema to the post-WWII period, whereas the second part addresses a number of international films spanning from the early 1990s to the 21st century.

FILM NOIR (FM2090)

Studies America's cinematic myth: Film Noir, a pessimistic style appearing in Hollywood in the 1940s. Films include: The Maltese Falcon, Shadow of a Doubt, The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Touch of Evil, Out of the Past, The Woman in the Window, Murder My Sweet, Force of Evil, Pickup on South Street, and Kiss Me Deadly.

TOPICS IN FILM STUDIES (FM2091)

Courses on different topics in the discipline, enriching the present course offerings. These classes are taught by permanent or visiting faculty. Topics vary each semester. For the course description, please find this course in the respective semester on the public course browser: https://www.aup.edu/academics/course-catalog/by-term.

WOMEN & FILM (FM2092)

Attempts to understand Hollywood's ambiguous attitude toward women during and after the studio system. What do roles played by women tell us about American culture and its fear of women? Also investigates women's roles in Fellini, Antonioni, Godard, and Truffaut, and the female image presented on the screen by directors such as Jane Campion, Diane Kurys, and Agnes Varda.

WOMEN AND FILM (FM2092)

Attempts to understand Hollywood's ambiguous attitude toward women during and after the studio system. What do roles played by women tell us about American culture and its fear of women? Also investigates women's roles in Fellini, Antonioni, Godard, and Truffaut, and the female image presented on the screen by directors such as Jane Campion, Diane Kurys, and Agnes Varda.

CINEMA & POETRY (FM2093)

Teaches how to analyze cinematic language and films critically by focusing on the work of four modern European film directors, beginning with Pasolini in 1965 and his contemporaries, followed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Examines how the critical concepts learned can be applied to the work of other directors - taking as representative examples the works of Bergman and Kieslowski.

PHILOSOPHY & FILM (FM2095)

Uses film to examine various philosophical ideas and critical concepts. Students look at a number of key Western texts and thinkers and discuss them in the context of a broad range of films. Uses these films as illustrations to investigate questions about knowledge, the self and personal identity, moral philosophy, social and political thought, and critical theory.

FILM GENRE: THE WESTERN (FM2096)

The Western has used to examine American myths about history, race, gender and politics on an uncertain frontier. Looking at films from three continents and from directors including Ford, Hawks, Mann, Leone, Greenwald, Reichardt, Peckinpah, Lucas and Kurosawa, we’ll explore how film works to show the limits and possibilities of culture in collision with ideas of itself.