Department of Cinematic Arts
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View our Course Description Catalogue to see what we're currently cooking up. Below is a listing of repeated and once in a lifetime classes. Use this as a guide as to what we may be teaching next semester or in years to come.
Course Description Catalogues:
Spring 2010
Summer 2009
Fall 2009
Our Foundational Classes:
Introduction to Film: An overview of a century of film history and study, this course will feature a broad range of film types (narrative, experimental, documentary), as well as a range of approaches to understanding the aesthetic and cultural significance of the medium. This course is specifically required to take additional film lecture classes.
History of Film I&II: A study of major fiction, documentary, and experimental films from around the world in relation to prominent artistic, social, and political concerns of the silent era (approximately 1890–1930). Films from the US, France, England, Germany, the former USSR, and Japan are included in this historical survey. Part II is a study of major fictional, documentary, and experimental films from around the world in relation to aesthetic, political, and social concerns that dominate the history of the sound era from its beginnings in 1927 to the present. Students will explore the nature and purposes of film as debated by filmmakers, critics, and theorists.
Beyond Hollywood: This course introduces students to cinemas and filmmaking practices that extend beyond (yet often comment upon) the productions and conventions of Hollywood. We will view a range of fictional, documentary, and experimental works from U.S. and international filmmakers that address issues of “race” and representation in specific historical contexts. Basic film aesthetics, cultural studies theories, and film criticism and theory will inform our investigations. Attentive to a variety of cinematic genres, we will consider how filmmakers have used styles such as epic histories, melodramas, comedies, and social problem films both to respond to Hollywood’s monochromatic representations of race and ethnicity and to articulate multi-faceted viewpoints of their own.
Latin American Film: This course surveys key Latin American films from Mexico’s influential “Golden Age,” Post-Revolutionary movies, screening selections not generally shown in our Mexican Cinema course. We move through Cuban “New Cinema” of the ’60s and ’70s to recent productions from the island, and then examine continent-wide contemporary works, continuing to focus on the cinema of rebellion. Here we look at examples of filmmaking from Peru, Venezuela, Argentina, Columbia, and Chile, discussing the significance of citizenship represented in films about national and local police states. Cinematic constructions of the “national character” will be juxtaposed with examinations of a “raced” and “gendered” citizenry. All films will be accessible to English speakers (though students may submit work in either Spanish or English).
Experimental Film and Video: Early in film’s history, artists discovered that they could work outside the boundaries of institutionalized “cinema” to explore new perceptual frontiers. In this course, students will explore major trends within what has variously been called Experimental, Avant-Garde, and Underground film. Through viewing a variety of films from the 1920s to the present, we will look at the rich history of this film practice, charting the influence of twentieth-century artistic movements such as Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, “Beat” poetics, and others. Why have these filmmakers chosen to position their work outside of mainstream practices? Can the notion of “radical” (or oppositional, subversive, transgressive) aesthetics be applied to these films? What formal and/or narrative elements characterize them? How have these filmmakers dealt with the ever-changing relationship between popular culture and “high art”? Reading critical texts and viewing visual artists’ work will supplement our exploration of this innovative cultural movement.
Intro & Advanced Screenwriting: An in-depth workshop on the basics of character, structure, scenes, dialogue, conflict, visualization, and good old story telling as it applies to the screenplay format. Open to variations (TV, Graphic Novels, Documentary, etc.). We read scenes from scripts, watch film clips, and write at least 40 pages of an original screenplay. Advanced is a continuation of the introductory course. Emphasis will be on developing story ideas, dramatic conflict, sequencing and scene work. Intense workshops will lead to a completed 120-page screenplay.
Teen Rebels: A time of cultural upheaval in the United States, the 1960s yielded a vast number of movies that sought to document the era in a manner that was self-consciously artistic and politically aware. These films, such as Zabriskie Point, Punishment Park, and Easy Rider attempted to engage with and define the times. But what of films with lighter and less serious intentions? What can beach party films, Russ Meyer sexploitation, spy spoofs, and the Beatles teach us about cultural ferment? In this course we focus on movies made for and about the youthful baby boomer generation, particularly those films that are too often dismissed as mere entertainment or camp. What, we shall ask, is the pertinence of Pop?
International Horror: A survey of the horror film genre from its origins in silent films through its contemporary instances, this course asks what it is that horror, as a genre, studies. Among monsters of various kinds, fabulous distortions of the human, what fundamental aspects of human existence and culture are revealed? What do we learn about dreams, suspense, fear, and fantasy? What is it about us that delights in being horrified? How may this last question bear on our experience of the sublime, ecstasy, transgression, and nature?
Technical Intro to Video: An introduction to the technical and aesthetic aspects of digital production, this course emphasizes basic skill building in camera use (multiple and single), editing, and production planning. Screenings and readings will introduce students to the history of video art, as well as provide students with experience in conceptual thinking in the creation of video art.
16mm Film Making: This course provides an introduction to basic 16 mm filmmaking techniques, with an emphasis on film as a creative art form. Students will be introduced to all aspects of filmmaking, from pre-production planning through the final edit, and will become familiar with both the practical and aesthetic challenges of making short films. Class sessions will include critiques of student work, technical demonstrations, screening of short films made by a variety of artists, and the planning and execution of a class project. Among the topics that are covered in the class are camera work, lighting, film stocks and exposure, sound recording, editing techniques, and preparing the film for the lab. Students will be responsible for purchasing the majority of their own materials for the course; 16mm production costs usually run approximately $500 to $600 for the semester.
Alfred Hitchcock: This course will explore the nature of suspense in relation to surprise and shock. In making such distinctions, we will look at various genres to see how Hitchcock represents and transcends them. The director’s approach to sexuality, gender, and nationality will also be explored. Our central goal is to arrive at some idea of what constitutes the distinctiveness of Hitchcock’s cinema.
Documentary Film: When Michael Moore declared at the 2003 Oscars ceremony that “we like nonfiction, and we live in fictitious times,” he did more than voice his objection to current U.S. foreign policy: he raised a fascinating set of questions that have perplexed filmmakers and critics from the earliest history of documentary film to the present time. In this course we will examine the rich and varied tradition of documentary or “nonfiction” film and video, from the early lyrical films of Robert Flaherty to the more recent work of media pirates and activists. Through a consideration of films, videos, and critical readings, we will discuss the “truth claims” made by documentaries; their guarantees of authenticity; the embattled status of objectivity; cross-cultural representations; the ways in which these films mediate reality; and the complex interrelationship between fiction and nonfiction modes of film and video making. We will explore numerous ways that this form attempts, in the words of Salman Rushdie, to “argue with the world.”
Documentary Film Production: Working from the proposition that it is possible to “write” in moving images, students in this hands-on video workshop will receive an introduction to the tools and methods of video making in the genre of “creative nonfiction.” Beginning with short image and sound exercises, and proceeding through longer work with both traditional and innovative documentary techniques, students will explore the role of interviews, testimonials, conversations, narration, the use of historical texts and images, reenactments, and other expressive uses of image and sound, to produce nonfiction video essays. Students will be assigned both individual and group projects. Class sessions will emphasize technical instruction on both analog and digital cameras and editing systems (including iMovie and Final Cut Pro software) and critiques of student work, but will also include screenings of work by other video artists, plus discussion of readings of essays, fiction, and other texts as assigned. Occasional meetings outside of scheduled class time will be necessary for additional technical review.
Film Theory: Students will explore major concepts in film theory and criticism through comparative analysis of critical essays and films of diverse styles. We will read and discuss the ideas of historical and contemporary theorists as they pertain to a variety of films screened in class. Topics will include cinematic realism, montage editing, the development of narrative, documentary, new media, animation, gaming, and avant-garde theories and practices in cinema; plus psychoanalytic, feminist, queer, phenomenological, and multicultural readings of films. What defines cinema as a unique art form? What elements connect films with our notions of reality? How do ideologies come to be inscribed in films? How does film resemble a language? These are among the questions that we will address. This course will provide the background for further studies in media history/theory, film and video making, and cultural studies.
Introduction to Video Art: According to artist Jean Cocteau, "film and video will only become a true art form when its tools are as inexpensive as pencil and paper" (italics mine). The low cost of new digital equipment suggests that only now (70 years after Cocteau’s prophetic statement) are we beginning to realize Cocteau's dream. This introductory course will be structured as a creative laboratory where students will explore a variety of aesthetic and theoretical issues relating to new media technology and the creative process. Students will learn basic digital production/post-production skills through a range of collaborative and individual projects and exercises.
Advanced Video Art: Though media artist Bill Viola recently declared the death of video (a statement that suspiciously coincided with a major retrospective of his own video work) a new generation of practitioners continue to discover exciting, new aesthetic possibilities within this electronic medium. Cinematic Arts 409 will be structured as a laboratory environment to study and explore an expanded sense of cinematic practice (the moving image). Students will use digital production and post-production equipment to create temporal responses to weekly screenings, readings and discussions.
Special Interests:
Avant- Garde: since the beginnings of film, many artists have worked outside of the boundaries of institutionalized "cinema" to explore new perceptual frontiers. This course looks at some major trends within a movement that has variously been called Experimental, Avant-Garde, and Underground Filmmaking, exploring work that frequently ventures into formal abstraction, dream states, alternate sexualities, and fractured narratives. This lecture-based class gathers the rich history of this filmmaking practice, noting the influence of major twentieth-century artistic movements like Dadaism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, "Beat" poetics, and others. The position of “outside mainstream” is questioned as well as noting how to negotiate the relationship between popular culture and “high art,” students are asked to “define” radical and what formal elements do these films share.
International Cinema: Ozu, Kaurismaki & Jarmusch: This course will explore the work of three filmmakers: Yasujiro Ozu from Japan, Aki Kaurismaki from Finland, and Jim Jarmusch from the USA. These three directors have been recognized individually for their artistic importance and collectively for their aesthetic kinship. The links between them are many. Kaurismaki and Jarmusch both cite Ozu as a major influence. Jarmusch has acted in Kaurismaki’s work. But, above all, they are united by a minimalist, subtle style. Frequently distancing themselves from the Hollywood tradition of excess, they offer movies that are deliberately paced and visually serene. They favor strong, simple compositions and characters that carefully guard their emotions. Although Ozu, Kaurismaki, and Jarmusch often traffic in restraint, their films are far from empty. Their spartan style yields imagery of soaring beauty and emotional depth.
Musicals: This course will explore the rich--and colorful--history of the American film musical, which often engages spectators’ pleasure through the creation of an irresistible spectacle rather than a compelling narrative. In this genre, cinematography, choreography, words, and music all work together to tell simple stories about complex cultural identities and aspirations. How do such films as Oklahoma, State Fair, and Meet Me in St. Louis paint the divisions between urban and rural (or small-town) life? What about the “show-within-a-show” sub-genre (as in Busby Berkeley’s classic dance sequences in 42nd Street and Golddiggers of 1933)? We will examine how ideas of race, ethnicity, gender, and class often provide the backdrop for ideas about cultural assimilation and the process of becoming Americanized. We will also devote attention to gay readings and interpretations; and, since many Hollywood musicals made in the period from 1945-1967 began as Broadway stage productions, we will look at some intersections between theater and cinema histories.
Evaluating the Arts: This course is designed to introduce students to the history of museums, galleries, zoos, and to collecting practices in the United States that have influenced the ways in which “culture” is understood in various academic disciplines. The primary purpose of the course is to provide students with a critical vocabulary for understanding how displays produce knowledge and structure the ways in which history, science, geography, cultural difference, and social hierarchies are mapped. We will ask: Who collects what? For whom? And why? How do collections define their collectors? How can the history of collecting be read as an interdisciplinary practice? What does it mean to collect not only objects, but also people and animals? How can we learn to read exhibits critically? What is a ‘rhetoric’ or ‘poetics’ of display? How can we imagine collecting practices and displays in the future? The class will attempt to answer these questions while visiting cultural centers in and around Albuquerque.
American Westerns: Nearly ubiquitous in American entertainment 50 years ago, the American Western as morality play and melodrama has been a repository of American attitudes about race, class, gender, land, violence, community, conquest and colonialism. From Jamestown to La Frontera and Cabeza de Vaca to George Armstrong Custer, this course will look at roots, branches and exemplars of the Western genre by John Ford, Howard Hawks, Sam Peckinpah, Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood, Robert Altman, Terrence Malick, Richard Brooks, John Sayles, Werner Herzog, Nicolas Echevarria and/or others. E-readings will be provided and a course journal will be kept by students to develop the ability to describe what is seen on the screen.
Cinema of War: Warfare has been an irresistible theme for a vast number of films ever since the inception of motion pictures in the late 1890s. Some films glorified combat to raise the fighting spirit of their country's soldiers during wartime. In times of peace, other filmmakers made movies decrying the death, destruction, and futility of war. In this course, a selection of great pro-war and anti-war films from various countries will be screened and discussed. Topics covered will range from pre-modern wars to various conflicts of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Films of Almodóvar: Almodóvar is the most successful and controversial Spanish filmmaker since Luis Buñuel. And unlike the latter, Almodóvar has achieved his renown without leaving Spain. Since the early 1980s, his films have explored and expressed the joys and contradictions of a generation suddenly freed from a dictatorship that was not only politically but also socially and sexually repressive. Almódovar took full advantage of this explosion of freedom of expression creating a unique body of work that has captured the world’s admiring attention.
Series in Visual Epistemology: This series constitutes two classes each academic year that offer student an introduction to the theory and practice of visual studies situated in the context of the broader examination of modern cultural and social formations, we consider the many ways that paintings, installations, photographs, films/videos, fashions, and everyday objects both shape and are shaped by the concepts, values, and meanings that constitute contemporary cultural life. Some of the themes covered in this series include formalism, cultural transmission, pedagogy, poetics of space/place, the avant-garde, semiotics, representation, discourse, the gaze, panopticism, surveillance, power, ontology, and sexual politics. Students develop the skills necessary to write effectively about the visual world and to think productively about the creation of images and the meanings that surround us.