Kurzus nemzetközi vendég- és részidős hallgatóknak
- Kar
- Bölcsészettudományi Kar
- Szervezet
- BTK Anglisztika Tanszék
- Kód
- BBI-ANGF-224E.07
- Cím
- Introduction to Film Theory
- Tervezett félév
- Őszi
- Meghirdetve
- 2023/24/2
- ECTS
- 5
- Nyelv
- en
- Oktatás célja
- The purpose of the course is to enable students to approach the experience of moving images with an analytical, inquisitive, multi-layered, symbolic and transformational mindset. Looking behind the immediate visual impact of the film, to understand the intended and unintended consequences of the director’s techniques, decisions and applications. To learn about the genre in general, about schools that developed in particular periods in particular countries connected to certain film makers, with special emphasis on the French New Wave and surrealist schools (Godard and Rivette, 1950s and ‘60s), Italian neorealism (Rossellini, De Sica, Fellini, 1944-52), German expressionism (1910s-30s, Lang, Wiene), the Russian-Soviet montage and formalist (1920-40s, Eisenstein, Vertov) and revisionist-realist (1967, Askoldov) approaches, as well as the British and American responses to these, including film noire (Hitchcock, Freddie Francis) and the social realism of the British New Wave (1950s and ’60s, Karel Reisz, Anderson, Richardson). The post-structuralist deconstruction of many of these schools, the ‘poetics and politics of postmodernism’ as well as the problems posed by the ‘post-cinematic’ digital culture will also be discussed and explained. It is also the purpose of the course to impart knowledge of the most important film making techniques, to recognise their use in moving pictures and to interpret them properly. (Enticknap, Moving Image Technology; Ryan & Lenos, An Introduction to Film Analysis)
- Tantárgy tartalma
- Aesthetics, medium specificity, genre and interactions with realism will be at the core of these approaches to film making and the various schools associated with it. The course will start with a short history of film theories, followed by a discussion of the intensely complex relationship between photography and film (Barthes, Berger, Stam, Sontag, Kracauer, Currie). In order to ease the inevitable tedium of some film theory, the course will take a reverse approach and start each topic with a film or film excerpt on account of which the theoretical approach may be deducted (or indeed inducted) and discussed. Hopefully, the discussions will bring closer to the students how Aesthetics, Ethics and Logic (the philosophical triumvirate) correspond to the Beautiful, the Good and the True in the making and analysis of films. On a number of occasions, the filming technique discussed will be tested on small analogue and digital cameras in the classroom. Students will be encouraged to practise frame and image manipulation for various desired effects. The results can be watched and evaluated right after the experiment. The bibliography is quite comprehensive. No one item will be used as the main textbook and the items will not all have to be read from cover to cover. Some sections of each book will be highlighted and given to read and comment as home assignment. The literature is made available in PDF format.
- Számonkérés és értékelés
- There will be three short impact (home) papers to be written on the basis of film experiences, and two in-class tests, one mid-term, one at the end of the semester.
- Irodalomjegyzék
- Barthes, Roland. Image Music Text: Essays selected and translated by Stephen Heath, London: Fontana Press, 1977. Berger, John. Understanding a Photograph, London: Penguin Classics, 2013. Burnett, Ron. Cultures of Vision: Images, Media and the Imaginary, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995. Casetti, Francesco. Theories of Cinema, 1945-1995, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999. Currie, Gregory. Image and Mind: Film, philosophy and cognitive science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Enticknap, Leo. Moving Image Technology: from zoetrope to digital, London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2005. Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality, London, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1960. Miller, Toby & Robert Stam (eds). A Companion to Film Theory, Malden, MA, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. Ryan, Michael and Melissa Lenos. An Introduction to Film Analysis: Technique and Meaning in Narrative Film, New York and London: Continuum, 2012. Sontag, Susan. On Photography, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1977. Stam, Robert. Film Theory: An Introduction, Malden, MA, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000. (Several excerpts will be shown from around 15-20 feature films during the sessions. Listing them here would take up too much space.)