AVANT-GARDE FILM

COMARTS 902

Studies in advanced research in film history, theory and criticism.

COMARTS 461

In the wake of World War Two, European directors began making films that employed location shooting, ambiguity, psychological realism, and unfamiliar stylistic flourishes. Such films drew on literary modernism, experimenting with time shifting, extreme duration, subjectivity, and reflexivity. "Art cinema," as it came to be called, is now the dominant storytelling mode of the contemporary film festival circuit and constitutes a robust alternative to mainstream genre cinema. Explores art cinema from a variety of national and transnational contexts, analyzing its narratives, styles, and cultural contexts. Investigates the work of directors from the first generation of art cinema, including Michelangelo Antonioni, Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, and Agnès Varda, and more recent work by Aki Kaurismäki, Abbas Kiarostami, Wong Kar-wai, and Claire Denis.

COMARTS 669

Survey of significant trends within both classical and contemporary film theory. Designed for those interested in reading, analyzing, and evaluating the central concepts and intellectual history of writings about film, particularly with respect to film as a medium presenting an array of aesthetic, psychological, and social potentialities. Whereas classical film theory attempts to treat cinema as a unique art form, contemporary film theory addresses issues related to cinema as a mode of communication, a source of visual pleasure, and as an ideological tool. Much contemporary theory attempts to incorporate the insights of other critical and analytical paradigms, such as semiotics, psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, critical race theory, postmodernism, and cognitive science. Questions regarding the ontology of cinema, its relation to existing theories of art, its effects on spectators, and the various ways in which its formal properties create meaning are considered.

COMARTS 613

Specialized topics and issues in film history, theory, and criticism.

COMARTS 958

Seminar probes theoretical questions concerning nature of historical knowledge, examines scholarly models and introduces methodologies and resources for research on the history of cinema.