EUROPEAN CINEMA 1

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1. In the first class I will introduce the themes, topics and methodologies of the class. I will explain my expectations, the kinds of assignments I will ask you to do, and the ways we will work online.
2. The Cave of Forgotten Dreams – A Little Philosophy The Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a Documentary by Werner Herzog. If you are able to watch the whole documentary, please do so. If not, you will find parts of the documentary on You Tube and also many images of the paintings if you Google “Chauvet Cave Paintings.” 35,000 Years ago, human beings in the South of France made beautiful and haunting images of animals and people (and half people/half animal images) on the walls of the Chauvet Cave. Why did they do this? What were they doing with their image-making? Is it any different from the image-making that we do today? I want to use the Chauvet Caves as a way to explore philosophical ideas about the role and meaning of images, art and narrative for human beings. Why do we make and watch moving images? What is going on in our minds when we watch?
3. The Great Art of Light and Shadow – Technology The Great Art of Light and Shadow is a marvelous book by Laurent Mannoni that covers the history of the technology of moving images prior to the Lumiere Brothers first public projection of moving images in 1895. (Actually, the Lumiere Brothers were not the first to do this, but more about that later.) In this class we will look at the development of the technology, but also what kinds of images were shown, to who and why? How does technological development affect the content of moving images?
4. The Lumiere Brothers (Alice Guy) Projecting “Reality” to an Audience. According to myth the first projection of moving images to an audience took place in Paris in 1895. In fact, this is not true. Others had already done the same thing in Berlin, but for the sake of simplicity and because the Lumiere Brothers got the publicity for it, we can take this as the start of “Cinema” as we know it (or knew it until fairly recently.)
5. Alice Guy Right from the beginning of cinema history there were women film directors and writers. For years though pioneers like Alice Guy were written out of cinema history by male film historians. Today things are changing (at last) and there are more female directors again, though most film directors are still men. In this class we will look at the films of Alice Guy and ask questions about gender and power in the film industry and media in general.
6. Melies – Trick Cinema and Fantasy Cinema Georges Melies was another cinema pioneer, but unlike the Lumiere Brothers he quickly saw the potential to use “trick photography” to make fantastical films (early Science Fiction films) that took audiences into fabricated universes. (It might be argued that Melies gave birth to what is now the dominant form of cinema (think of all those Marvel movies, Harry Potter and Superhero(ine) films.
7. Eisenstein and Montage. Sergei Eisenstein was not only one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, but also a theorist who tried to explain the way that films could change society. We will look at Eisenstein's theories and his films to understand a different way of looking at cinema.
8. Political Filmmaking Now
9. Surrealism and Cinema - The Surrealists, largely inspired by the ideas of Sigmund Freud, tried to use cinema to change our minds in a very different way from Eisenstein. We will look at Freud's theories, Surrealist theory and Surrealist cinema.
10. How advertising co-opted Surrealism.
11. Early Horror Films, the Unconscious Horror films are almost as old as cinema itself. Why is horror such a popular genre? How does Horror films relate to social issues, to gender issues, to social change?
12. Discussion of Contemporary Horror Films
13. Fritz Lang and the City Fritz Lang made one of the first "Noir" films (a detective film in a city). Cinema is also an urban art form. We will look at the relationship between crime films, cities and urban life.
14. Expressionism Part Two