“Course Summaries” will be listed below as they become available – simply click on the course title to view the course summary information. Special Topics courses may vary from year to year.
Please note:
- the TIME and LOCATION of courses is published in the Public Class Schedule
- OFFICIAL COURSE DESCRIPTIONS are available in the Undergraduate and Graduate Calendars
- the OFFICIAL COURSE OUTLINE will be distributed at the first class of the term
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- FYSM 1509A Special Studies in Film - Moving Image plus Sound - Fall and Winter terms
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- Instructor: Charles O’Brien
- Course description: This course provides an introduction to the discipline of film studies through an investigation into the endeavor of analyzing films. The course will involve the examination of mise-en-scène, editing, cinematography, and sound in a selection of important films, certain of which will be the focus of detailed analysis over the course of two to three weeks. Films such as The Great Train Robbery (1903), The Battleship Potemkin (1925), Housing Problems (1935), Citizen Kane (1941), The Bicycle Thieves (1948), and Tokyo Story (1953) will be examined in connection with a variety of recent works like Lebanon (2000), Winter’s Bone (2010), Contagion (2011), Julie & Julia (2009), The King’s Speech (2010), Inglourious Basterds (2009), and The Social Network (2010). Through writing about movies, students will acquire the technical and critical vocabulary needed for the study of films and other moving image media. They will also gain knowledge of certain of major artists, style movements, and technological transformations that have defined the history of cinema from the late nineteenth century up through the digital present.
- Course evaluation will be based on a variety of short writing assignments, exams, and class attendance and participation.
- The textbook is David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, tenth edition. Film Studies majors who take FYSM 1509 are exempt from the need to take Film 1000 Introduction to Film.
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- FILM 1000A Introduction to Film Studies - Fall and Winter terms
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- Instructor: José Sánchez
- FILM 1000 “Introduction to Film Studies” is the only Film Studies course offered in first year at Carleton University. It is offered by the Film Studies Program, one of the three Programs within the School for Studies in Art and Culture. (The School’s other two Programs are Music and Art History). Students may pursue a B.A General or a B.A. Honours in Film Studies. Many students take Film Studies courses as options within other degree Programs.
- This course is organized as an introduction to the different ways in which films may be studied. We pay particular attention to questions of form, style and critical method. The objectives of the course are to familiarize students with the vocabulary and concerns of cinema studies and to survey three overlapping areas of inquiry: film as art, the aesthetics of film form and film as a social practice. While there is obviously a historical dimension to the course, we do not follow a strictly historical chronology in the presentation of films or issues.
- The course is divided into four units. Unit 1, “Style and Technique,” introduces students to the basic elements of cinema as an artistic and communicative form. During Unit 2, “Film Genres,” we look at generic categories as a way of classifying films and examine particular genres. The genres studied are the Romantic Comedy and the Horror Film. Unit 3, “The Filmmaker,” looks at the problems and advantages of analyzing films in terms of the creative personality of the director as Auteur. We will examine three different filmmakers. Finally, Unit 4, “A Period in Film History,” focuses on specific movements within film history. This year we will look at Contemporary Québec Cinema.
- CAVEAT: Films screened in this course may contain disturbing images and sounds. In order to conduct valid film analyses, students must be able to adopt a critical distance vis-à-vis audiovisual material that might be unsettling or shocking. Individuals who are unable or unwilling to adopt such critical distance should not take this Film Studies course.
- Evaluation: Each section of the course will be examined separately by an In-Class Test and/or Out-of-Class Essay and/or Formal Exam. During the discussion groups there may be surprise pop-quizzes on the readings and the films or written exercises aimed to improve essay writing. Attendance and participation are compulsory and will be evaluated as part of the final grade.
- Lecture format: lecture & screening (three hours/week); discussion group (1 hours/week)
- Text: Textbook & Coursepack
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- FILM 1000B Introduction to Film Studies - Fall and Winter terms
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- Instructor: José Sánchez
- FILM 1000 “Introduction to Film Studies” is the only Film Studies course offered in first year at Carleton University. It is offered by the Film Studies Program, one of the three Programs within the School for Studies in Art and Culture. (The School’s other two Programs are Music and Art History). Students may pursue a B.A General or a B.A. Honours in Film Studies. Many students take Film Studies courses as options within other degree Programs.
- This course is organized as an introduction to the different ways in which films may be studied. We pay particular attention to questions of form, style and critical method. The objectives of the course are to familiarize students with the vocabulary and concerns of cinema studies and to survey three overlapping areas of inquiry: film as art, the aesthetics of film form and film as a social practice. While there is obviously a historical dimension to the course, we do not follow a strictly historical chronology in the presentation of films or issues.
- The course is divided into four units. Unit 1, “Style and Technique,” introduces students to the basic elements of cinema as an artistic and communicative form. During Unit 2, “Film Genres,” we look at generic categories as a way of classifying films and examine particular genres. The genres studied are the Romantic Comedy and the Horror Film. Unit 3, “The Filmmaker,” looks at the problems and advantages of analyzing films in terms of the creative personality of the director as Auteur. We will examine three different filmmakers. Finally, Unit 4, “A Period in Film History,” focuses on specific movements within film history. This year we will look at Contemporary Québec Cinema.
- CAVEAT: Films screened in this course may contain disturbing images and sounds. In order to conduct valid film analyses, students must be able to adopt a critical distance vis-à-vis audiovisual material that might be unsettling or shocking. Individuals who are unable or unwilling to adopt such critical distance should not take this Film Studies course.
- Evaluation: Each section of the course will be examined separately by an In-Class Test and/or Out-of-Class Essay and/or Formal Exam. During the discussion groups there may be surprise pop-quizzes on the readings and the films or written exercises aimed to improve essay writing. Attendance and participation are compulsory and will be evaluated as part of the final grade.
- Lecture format: lecture & screening (three hours/week); discussion group (1 hours/week)
- Text: Textbook & Coursepack
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- FILM 2000A Intro Film Theory & Analysis - Fall and Winter terms
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- Instructor: Marc Furstenau
- The objective of this course is to familiarize students with the main theories and methods of analysis that have been developed for the study of film. As we trace the history of film theory, we will consider a wide range of significant examples of film analysis and interpretation, as well as broader accounts of the cinema as a medium. We will view films chosen from throughout the history of the cinema, representing various genres, styles, and national contexts. The main theme that will be developed in the course is the question of cinema as a popular art. Our primary case study will be the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock. We will view several of his most significant films, which have raised key theoretical questions for film critics.
- Method of Evaluation: 1) Two Reading Reports: 20% x 2 = 40% 2) Mid-term Quiz: 10% 3) Critical Essay: 25% 4) Final Exam: 25%
- Readings: The main text for this course is Marc Furstenau, ed. The Film Theory Reader: Debates and Arguments (New York: Routledge, 2010), which will be available at Haven Books. Additional readings will be available through the on-line reserve system of the Carleton University library (ARES).
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- FILM 2101B The Film Industry - Winter term
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- Instructor: David Richler
- Global Film Industries
- Course description: This course will examine multiple film industries (e.g. Hollywood, France, Hong Kong/China) and their transnational connections. Focusing on the industry’s three major branches—production, distribution, and exhibition—we will adopt a global perspective and explore the international nature of cinema, analyzing film content and style in relation to industry practices and technological developments. Topics may include: analysis of the studio system; the relationship between ‘independent’, ‘art’, and ‘commercial’ filmmaking, the suburban multiplex, repertory theatre, and international film festival; the role of film advertising (trailers, posters, etc.) and the star system; the function of genre; adaptation and remakes; blockbusters and the special effects industry; legal issues and government policies regulating film production and circulation (copyright, censorship, etc.); international co-production and media convergence; film translation (incl. dubbing and subtitling); the recent impact of DVDs and the Internet, etc.
- The goal is ultimately to consider how ‘the industry’ regulates, promotes, and represents itself—by, for example, looking at how fiction films (e.g. The Player) and DVD extras such as making-of documentaries (e.g. Full Tilt Boogie) depict the film industry and the process of filmmaking, and by analyzing how tent-pole blockbusters and smaller art and independent films are marketed for, and consumed by, audiences. In doing so, the course will explore the complex socio-cultural, economic, technological, and aesthetic forces that shape global cinema, all of which make it difficult to separate the art of film from its commercial status as industrial mass entertainment.
- Course requirements:
- Attendance and participation (10%)
- Bi-weekly ‘research’ reports and online participation (15%)
- Film Festival or Academy Awards report (15%)
- Film analysis (30%)
- Marketing and Reception analysis (30%)
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- FILM 2106A The Documentary clw/JOUR 2106A - Fall term
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- Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
- This course will introduce students to the documentary, one of the most important and exciting modes of filmmaking. We will examine, historically, the major forms and movements of documentary ranging from the ethnographic to the Griersonian school, direct cinema to cinema verite, the animation documentary to the emerging form of web/interactive documentary. We will also explore the ways in which documentary addresses not only issues of politics, history, social justice and identity, but also more philosophical concepts such as truth, reality and ethics. Major figures in documentary such as the Lumiere brothers, Robert Flaherty, John Grierson, Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Michael Moore and John Akomfrah will be studied.
- Modes of evaluation: Take-home essays, in-class exams.
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- FILM 2201A National Cinema - Fall term
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- Instructor: Sylvie Jasen
- Topic: British Cinema
- This course will introduce students to the key themes and debates in the study of British national cinema through an examination of films that belong to the tradition of Social Realism. While Social Realism has been defined according to certain aesthetic features, production practices, and socio-political content, we will examine how the tradition also lacks a consistent or unified style. Instead, the Social Realist approach has been redefined over time and by different filmmakers. However, what the films collected here share is the way in which they all speak to the social and political conditions in which they were made. In addition, most of the films under study are concerned with exploring national or regional identity and the experiences of marginalized or minority communities. Thus, the course is roughly organized into two main themes. The first is the representation of the British working class, with a focus on the shifts in industry, changes to the definition of the working class, and the impact of the economic policies of Thatcherism. The second concentrates on racial and ethnic diversity and how films dealing with immigrant experience and transnationalism address the construction of national identity, the decline of empire, and the implications of membership in the European Union. Other topics that we will touch on over several weeks include: youth subcultures, gender and sexuality, the relationship of Social Realism to other genres (specifically heritage films and art cinema), the influence of European or Hollywood films, and the relationship between cinema and television.
- Evaluation: Attendance, Formal Analysis, Essay, Final Exam
- Required Readings: A course pack will be made available for purchase at Haven Books
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- FILM 2209A The Canadian Cinema - Fall and Winter terms
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- Instructor: Tom McSorley
- This course provides an overview of the history and development of filmmaking in Canada from the silent era right up to today. The course features works by Canada’s greatest filmmakers, such as David Cronenberg, Denys Arcand, Deepa Mehta, Bruce McDonald, Sarah Polley, Atom Egoyan, and many others. This is a comprehensive introduction to the many impressive achievements of cinema in Canada, and includes feature fiction films, documentaries, experimental films, and animation.
- Workload: one essay and one exam in each term, plus a short film review in October.
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- FILM 2401A The Film Maker (Stanley Kubrick) - Fall term
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- Instructor: Tom McSorley
- This course offers a detailed and thorough examination of the entire body of work by American filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999). One of the most acclaimed and controversial of American film artists, Kubrick’s films were often both critically lauded and commercially successful. Following his entire career chronologically, we will investigate the principal thematic preoccupations, stylistic strategies, and broader cultural contexts of Kubrick’s work.
- Workload: one mid-term exam, one essay, and one final exam.
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- FILM 2401B The Film Maker - Winter term
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- Instructor: Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
- The Film Maker: Ozu and After
- The study of Japanese filmamaker Yasujiro Ozu’s work in the English-speaking world began in the 1970s, and David Bordwell’s voluminous work, OZU and the Poetics of Cinema (1988) elevated Ozu to of the greatest masters in cinema history. While his work received acclaim abroad from the 1970s onward, Ozu has become a philosophical and poetic auteur, strongly influencing numerous filmmakers in and outside Japan. Ozu’s prevalence ought to be analyzed within the context of global cinema rather than that of national cinema.
- This course will examine Yasujiro Ozu’s films from the 1930s to 1960s, and films directed by contemporary filmmakers that are inspired by or that pay homage to Ozu.
- The objectives of this course are twofold: the first is to clarify Ozu films’ stylistic attributes; and the second is to analyze the processes of “translation” of Ozu’s work deployed by filmmakers across the world.
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- FILM 2601A Film Genres - Fall term
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- Instructor: Corey Stevenson
- Film Genres: Science Fiction Film
- For a variety of reasons to be explored through this course, science fiction (SF) is often considered the most explicitly cinematic of film genres. These links position the SF genre as a particularly illuminating means of discussing and debating the operation of generic models in cinema. This course will trace the development of the SF genre in film, and examine its interaction with and relation to its larger social environment in an effort to understand both the industrial and cultural imperatives that shape its evolution. Such an examination will touch upon questions of definition, generic identity, boundaries and hybridity that will provide a broader understanding of the concept of genre itself within film.
- Evaluation: In-class Participation, Mid-Term Assignment, Reading/Screening Quiz, Term Paper
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- FILM 2601B Film Genres - Winter term
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- Instructor: André Loiselle
- This course will examine a number of Canadian horror films, ranging from obscure movies like Peter Carter’s Rituals (1977) to some of Cronenberg’s most famous contributions like A History of Violence (2005), to identify whether there are such things as “typical Canadian fears”. If, as Robin Wood has famously suggested, the horror film can be essentially summarized as when “normality is threatened by the monster,” then normality in the Canadian horror film might very well be “peace, order and good government” and the monster is everything that unsettles this mundane civil society. As we will see in this course, such threats include everything from bipolar American radicalism to the legendary malevolence of our indifferent natural environment which, at the drop of a hat, can turn from bucolic melancholia into a flaming blizzard. Perhaps most disturbingly, the normality that is threatened by the monster in many Canadian horror films is represented by the superficial rationalism, prudence and level-headedness that conservative British North Americans are so proud of, but which collapse like a house of cards under the pressures of repressed lust, anger and madness. These and other forms of ‘typical’ Canadian terrors will be explored in this course.
- Course Requirements
- 2 Short Reading Report: 30% (15% each)
- Research Essay: 30%
- Final Take Home Exam: 30%
- Attendance: 10%
- Mandatory readings will be provided through cuLearn
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- FILM 2608A History of World Cinema clw/ENGL 2608A - Fall and Winter terms
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- Instructor: Malini Guha
- The objective of this course is to offer a historical survey of the evolution of the cinema that takes us from its birth in the late 19th century up until the present day, which is commonly pronounced as the digital era. As the title of the course suggests, we will study the most significant film movements from around the world in an effort to explore the development of cinematic cultures from both a national as well as a transnational perspective. As many have argued, world cinema must be examined as a set of complex and overlapping circulatory practices that often remain grounded within a national context while also exceeding the nation state as a result of the global nature of film production, distribution and exhibition. We will pay careful attention the development of film form and style in this course as it pertains to a variety of film movements and categorizations such as the ‘cinema of attractions’, Soviet Montage, post-war European cinema, as well as numerous ‘new wave movements’ including the French and Iranian New Wave.
- Evaluation (Subject to Change): Seminar Participation, Take-Home Test, Research Essay, Final Exam
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- FILM 3301B Topics in Cinema and Gender - Winter term
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- Instructor: Laura Horak
- How do moving images participate in the production of gender? In what ways is this process inflected by sexuality, race/ethnicity, class, and national identity? This course will investigate the crucial role of normative and “deviant” genders in the history of moving image production, distribution, and reception. We will investigate the way films and related media use formal means (such as mise-en-scene, editing, camerawork, acting, lighting, and make-up) to make gender visible and the display of gender difference pleasurable in early and “classical” forms of cinema. We will also consider how the star system and new forms of consumerism associated with the cinema have shaped and contested gender norms and the way genre systems and modes (like melodrama, the action film, and documentary) produce gendered meanings and forms of address. The course will also investigate the way that feminist, queer, and transgendered media makers have inventively rethought moving image media for poetic and political ends and the gendered politics of labor in media industries.
- Study goals:
- After the course, students are expected to be able to:
- Develop a nuanced account of gender and sexuality that takes into account historically- and geographically-specific meanings and a wide array of gender and sexual expressions and identities.
- Notice the narrative and formal elements of a media text (e.g. mise-en-scene, editing, camera placement and movement) and use these elements to sustain an argument about a media text.
- Identify a scholarly essay’s argument and evidence, and critically evaluate and respond to them.
- Come up with creative, original arguments about gender and moving images and support these arguments with evidence.
- Write an accessible, well-researched entry for Wikipedia, bringing information about notable cis-women and transmedia workers to a global readership
- Grades will be calculated as follows:
- Participation and In-class Quizzes: 20%
- Close Analysis Essay: 20%
- Disagree with a Scholar Essay: 30%
- Assignment #3: Wikipedia Project: 30%
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- FILM 3505A Aspects of Film History & Theory - Fall and Winter terms
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- Instructor: André Loiselle
- The dual purpose of this course is to examine 1) how film historiography (the “writing of history”) is influenced by various film theories and 2) how film theories are reflexive of the historical periods during which they were conceived.
- To fulfill this dual purpose, the course will be divided into two main sections. 1) During the first term, we will study various film histories of the same period – the 1960s – to see how diverse film historians describe the same moment in the evolution of cinema from a wide range of divergent, even contradictory perspectives. 2) The second term will focus on film theories that emerged at specific socio-cultural moments – the mid-1970s; the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s – to emphasize how certain contemporary concepts, although seemingly different on the surface, focus on similar issues of importance at given historical points. Ultimately, the goal is to encourage students to see how theory and history are closely intertwined.
- Course Requirements
- Short Reading Report (Fall Term): 10%
- Take Home Exam (Fall Term): 20%
- Short Reading Report (Winter Term): 10%
- Research Essay: 30%
- Final Take Home Exam: 20%
- Attendance: 10%
- Mandatory readings will be provided through cuLearn.
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- FILM 3608A Topics in Film History - Fall term
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- Instructor: Charles O’Brien
- Course description: This course examines a major transition in media history, the conversion from silent to sound cinema. Topics covered by the course include: cinema’s interface with other media, notably radio, recorded music, and the popular stage; the integration of the film business with the music business; technical and aesthetic issues pertaining to film sound, including sound-related changes in acting, editing, and other parameters of film style; and similarities and differences between sound conversion circa 1930 and digital conversion in the early twenty-first century. Films screened for the course include major works of the period such as: The Singing Fool (1928), Dracula (1931), Sous les Toits de Paris (1930), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), The Blue Angel (1930), The Love Parade (1929), King Kong (1933), The Broadway Melody (1929) and M (1931).
- The main course requirements are: reading the weekly assignments and attending all lectures and screenings; completing two exams (a midterm and a final); and submitting a paper at the end of term.
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- FILM 3608B Topics in Film History - Winter term
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- Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
- Topic: African Cinema
- This course will explore the history of cinema in Africa, from its beginnings to the present. It will explore among other things the work of the Lumiere brothers in Africa, the colonial cinema, the multiple ways in which Africans have used the cinema since the advent of independence starting in the late 1950s and early 1960s and the recent boom in film production on the continent. The works of such masters as Ousmane Sembene, Souleymane Cisse, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Abderrahmane Sissako, MedHondo, Faouzi Bensaidi, Fanta Nacro, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, John Akomfrah, will be explored. Such major concerns in African cinema as the problem of auteurism, spectatorship, realism, third cinema, the national, feminism, the popular, cinephilia, Nollywood, the postcolonial, race, Afro-futurism, genre and the challenge of the digital will also be examined.
- Evaluation: Take home exams, research paper, and final exam.
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- FILM 3701A Topics in Animation, Video, and Experimental Film - Fall term
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- Instructor: Jenna Stidwill
- Issues in Animation Studies
- Course description: This course will introduce third-year students to the study of animation history and theory. During the course we will explore the ways in which historical and theoretical accounts of animation during the 20th and 21st centuries have defined animation by emphasizing its difference from (live action) cinema. Issues to be addressed include the multiple origins of animation history, accounting for shifts in media formats (film, television, digital), and the animated body. A range of significant films from the 20th and 21st centuries will be screened. Students may be required to play a video game.
- Evaluation (tentative): In addition to weekly readings and class participation, students will be required to complete 4 assignments. Assignments include 1) a critical review of a film screened at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, 2) a group DVD commentary presentation, 3) leading class discussion on a reading 4) a research essay.
- All readings will be made available for download on the course CULearn.
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- FILM 3701B Topics in Animation, Video, and Experimental Film - Winter term
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- Instructor: Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
- Anime’s ability to cross the boundaries of culture and media challenges our attempts to place it within conventional categories. This course will examine how anime has been constructed in a nexus of popular culture. We will map anime across various paradigms of history, style, gender, media and technology, and think about anime’s potential as a “cultural commons.”
- Anime’s global success is linked to its affinity with technological developments, its multiple formats of television series, film, OVA (original video animation), DVD, Blu-ray Disk, and Internet file sharing. As such, it affords us the opportunity to go beyond the typical textual analysis to discuss anime’s role in global culture, in transnational cinema, and in digital technology’s impact on visual culture. Screenings will cover various Japanese animations, not limited to auteur anime, from the 1960s to present, but also from TV series and art animation.
- The objective of this course is to develop our critical thinking, while expanding our knowledge on anime. Therefore, even if you know nothing about anime or its cultural contexts in Japan, that will be fine.
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- FILM 3808A Cinema and Technology - Fall term
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Instructor: Theberge, Paul D
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- FILM 3808B Cinema and Technology - Winter term
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- Instructor: Marc Furstenau
- Topic: Film and the Technology of Photography
- Description: Film has historically been based in the technological process of photography, and most theoretical accounts of cinema have emphasised the cinema’s photographic nature. In this course we will consider accounts of photography as a technology, and reflect on the cinema as a perhaps uniquely technological artform. We will read representative examples from the large theoretical and philosophical literature on filmic and photographic art. We will conclude with a consideration of the transformation that is underway, as the cinema becomes increasingly “digital,” presumably at the cost of its photographic basis.
- METHOD OF EVALUATION: 1) Two Reading Reports: 20% x 2 = 40% 2) Final Essay: 60%
- READINGS: Readings will be available through the on-line reserve system of the Carleton University library (ARES).
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- FILM 4001A Research & Critical Methodologies - Fall term
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- Instructor: Charles O’Brien
- Course description: This course introduces fourth-year students to methods of advanced research in film studies, with a focus on questions of film history. Topics covered by the course include: the variety of ways in which film history has been written; the status of films in film historiography; the limits and possibilities for contextualizing films relative to aesthetic, psychological, economic, technological, and social conditions and forces; and the documentation used in making film-historical claims, which can include film reviews, trade press reportage, drafts of scripts, interviews with filmmakers, correspondence, censorship records, and so on. The course will also touch on the practicalities of designing and writing a research proposal for submission to a funding agency and/or admissions committee for a graduate program. The course is thus relevant to students considering graduate work.
- The main course requirements for undergraduate students are: reading the weekly assignments and attending all lectures and screenings; completing two exams (a midterm and a final); and submitting a paper at the end of term. With respect to the paper, students, pending the instructor’s approval, may be allowed to write a funding proposal on a topic of their choice rather than a conventional academic research paper. Graduate students in the course will be asked to give a class presentation pertaining to one of the weekly reading assignments and/or screenings and to write a longer paper.
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- FILM 4002B Topics in Audio-Visual Culture clw/FILM 5107 B - Winter term
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- Instructor: Laura Horak
- Topic: Passing and Masquerade in Cinema
- Cinema has long been fascinated with bodies that stray from their assigned social boundaries, even as it works to make bodies unmistakably legible. This course will examine instances of gender and racial passing, masquerade, and transformation in cinema from its origins to the present day.
- We will investigate the way that various movies forge (and break) connections between bodies, voices, and social identities. Movies train viewers to detect allegedly truthful signifiers of race and gender and but also offer powerful fantasies of transformation and self-invention. Identity crossing sometimes works in service of white-supremacist and patriarchal ideologies, but also sometimes as a radical critique of these ideologies. In the movies we will see and texts we will read, we will encounter competing conceptions of identity crossing—as deceit, play, self-actualization, or appropriation, for example. Rather than think of race and gender as analogous categories, we will investigate ways in which these categories are constituted in and through each other—how every instance of racial crossing puts gender into play and vice versa. We will consider the influence of genre (particularly comedy and melodrama) on the ways that stories of identity crossing are told, as well as the different possibilities of documentary, animation, music videos, and amateur films compared to narrative fiction.
- Students will learn to execute compelling interpretive analyses of visual media, situate media within their historical context, and formulate persuasive, well-organized arguments about media texts.
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- FILM 4201B Selected Topics in National Cinemas - Winter term
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- Topic: Revisiting Third Cinema
- Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
- This fourth-year seminar will revisit the concept of third cinema, one of the most important and enduring theoretical accounts of film practice in our field. As one of the theories to emerge outside the Euro-American cultural matrix, third cinema will make it possible for us to explore and cast new light on the relationships between cinema and politics, cinema and spectatorship, cinema and ideology (capitalism, Marxism). Our study will involve a close analysis of many of the canonic texts and manifestoes of third cinema as well as the filmic work of two of the most eminent representatives of the form: Mauritanian giant Abid Med Hondo and the late Cuban master, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. Some of the films under study will include Soleil O, The Last Supper, Memories of Underdevelopment, West Indies, Sarraounia, Death of a Bureaucrat, Fatima, The Algerian Woman of Dakar and Strawberry and Chocolate. Finally we will assess the relevance of third cinema for contemporary film and media practice.
- Mode of assessment: Essays and In-Class presentation
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- FILM 4501A Selected Topics in Film Theory clw/FILM 5500F - Fall term
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- Instructor: Marc Furstenau
- Topic: Film Theory and the Philosophy of Art
- Description: This course will consider the history of debates in film theory about the aesthetic status of the cinema. One of the very first questions to be asked about the new medium of film was whether it could be art. The cinema emerged at a time when the very concept of art – its status, its value, its significance – was being questioned by philosophers and critics, and being redefined by artists experimenting with new forms and materials. We will consider the effect that the emergence of the cinema had on these debates, reading representative essays in film theory and in the philosophy of art.
- METHOD OF EVALUATION: 1) Two Reading Reports: 20% x 2 = 40% 2) Final Essay: 60%
- READINGS: Readings will be available through the on-line reserve system of the Carleton University library (ARES).
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- FILM 4800B Seminar in Film/Video Archival or Curatorial Practice - Winter term
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- Film Programming
- Instructor: Tom McSorley
- From the multiplex movie chains, to the ByTowne Cinema and Mayfair Theatre ‘repertory’ cinemas, to institutions like the Canadian Film Institute, to hundreds of film festivals, curatorial decisions are being made that will affect what is seen and, equally important, what is not seen. Just what is this cultural practice called film programming? What is its role in contemporary culture, and in what forms does it appear? Who decides what gets shown in the many public presentation contexts of cinematheques, galleries, museums, and film festivals? And, more immediate to the broad intentions of this course, how does it work. This seminar/workshop course is intended to give students practical experience in film programming, from film selections to program note writing to organizing public screenings.
- Workload: multiple short text writing, logistical organization of public screenings, media outreach, publicity.
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- FILM 4901A Special Topic - Fall term
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- Instructor: Sylvie Jasen
- Special Topic: Reenactment
- This course will focus on the practice of reenactment across both documentary and narrative (docudrama) films, marking changes and consistencies from early cinema to contemporary examples. Emphasis will be placed on critically investigating historiographical assumptions behind various approaches to representing the past and its relationship to the present. Other themes covered in the course include performance in documentary, the question of indexicality, minority communities and cross-cultural production, representing war and violence, and trauma.
- Evaluation: Participation, Presentation, Short written assignment, Essay.
- Required Readings: A range of articles will be made available for download through Ares.
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- FILM 5000T Directions in Film Theory and Film History - Fall and Winter terms
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- FILM 5000 is the core seminar in the Film Studies graduate program. Its basic objective is to situate recent film-studies trends in the history of film theory and historiography. An additional aim is to facilitate the generation of research topics appropriate for MA research papers and thesis topics.
- Instructor – Fall term: Laura Horak
- Instructor – Winter term: Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano
- During the fall term, we examine current film studies in light of the history of film theory and historiography.
- The winter term of the course will focus on eclectic questions around world cinema and theory, and examine topics such as “globalization of art cinema,” “film theory through the senses,” “essay films,” “adaptation and the question of fidelity,” “aesthetic philosophy and cinema studies,” and “world cinema and cinematic translation.”
- During the winter term, students will be asked to start working on their thesis project or research essay.
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- FILM 5107B Topics in Film History clw/FILM 4002 B - Winter term
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- Instructor: Laura Horak
- Topic: Passing and Masquerade in Cinema
- Cinema has long been fascinated with bodies that stray from their assigned social boundaries, even as it works to make bodies unmistakably legible. This course will examine instances of gender and racial passing, masquerade, and transformation in cinema from its origins to the present day.
- We will investigate the way that various movies forge (and break) connections between bodies, voices, and social identities. Movies train viewers to detect allegedly truthful signifiers of race and gender and but also offer powerful fantasies of transformation and self-invention. Identity crossing sometimes works in service of white-supremacist and patriarchal ideologies, but also sometimes as a radical critique of these ideologies. In the movies we will see and texts we will read, we will encounter competing conceptions of identity crossing—as deceit, play, self-actualization, or appropriation, for example. Rather than think of race and gender as analogous categories, we will investigate ways in which these categories are constituted in and through each other—how every instance of racial crossing puts gender into play and vice versa. We will consider the influence of genre (particularly comedy and melodrama) on the ways that stories of identity crossing are told, as well as the different possibilities of documentary, animation, music videos, and amateur films compared to narrative fiction.
- Students will learn to execute compelling interpretive analyses of visual media, situate media within their historical context, and formulate persuasive, well-organized arguments about media texts.
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- FILM 5500F Advanced Film Analysis clw/FILM 4501 A - Fall term
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- Instructor: Marc Furstenau
- Topic: Film Theory and the Philosophy of Art
- Description: This course will consider the history of debates in film theory about the aesthetic status of the cinema. One of the very first questions to be asked about the new medium of film was whether it could be art. The cinema emerged at a time when the very concept of art – its status, its value, its significance – was being questioned by philosophers and critics, and being redefined by artists experimenting with new forms and materials. We will consider the effect that the emergence of the cinema had on these debates, reading representative essays in film theory and in the philosophy of art.
- METHOD OF EVALUATION: 1) Two Reading Reports: 20% x 2 = 40% 2) Final Essay: 60%
- READINGS: Readings will be available through the on-line reserve system of the Carleton University library (ARES).
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- FILM 5506W Topics in Culture, Identity and Representation - Winter term
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- Instructor: Malini Guha
- The Politics of the Image
- This course investigates the longstanding relationship between cinema and politics, moving across seminal debates in film studies that pivot around the question of whether or not the formal characteristics of a film are where its politics must lie. This course begins by examining the relationship between cinema and ideology as it coincides with the rise of political modernist filmmaking and other forms of militant cinema in the late 1960s to recent examples of political filmmaking that centre on racial, sexual and gendered identities as well as those that explore moments of political crisis and upheaval around the world. We will spend time thinking carefully about the tools of representation on offer in these films including, but not limited to, the use of archival footage, of documentary-style re-enactments, the use of spectacle or decorative imagery and so on. Alongside of these topics, a second trajectory will run through this course that addresses contemporary debates about whether or not film studies as a discipline is becoming increasingly depoliticized.
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- FILM 5601F Studies in Genre - Fall term
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- Instructor: Aboubakar Sanogo
- Graduate Documentary Seminar
- This course will explore the theory, history and aesthetics of the documentary mode of filmmaking. As such it will examine major theoretical debates related to the very nature of documentary, and its relationship to larger debates such as truth, reality, fiction, representation, memory, history, identity, subjectivity, among other things. The history of the documentary form will also be examined through such canonic figures, schools and movements as the Lumiere brothers, Thomas Edison, Robert Flaherty, John Grierson, Dziga Vertov, Joris Ivens, Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, alongside such newer figures as Su Friedrich, Naomi Kawase, John Akomfrah, Harun Farocki and Ari Folman.
- Evaluation: Discussion leading, position paper, research paper.
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