OCTOBER 22

Films:

Un Chien Andalou (Buñuel/Dali, 1929) DVD 1905          

Les Vampires, ep. 2: The Ring That Kills (Feuillade, 1916) DVD 1645 

The Smiling Madame Beudet (Dulac, 1922) reserve DVD 

Ballet Mecanique (Léger/Murphy, 1926) DVD 1636

The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (Vorkapich/Florey, 1928) DVD 1636

At Land (Deren, 1945) DVD 1620

Fireworks (Anger, 1947) DVD 3937

Reading (to be done by October 28):

Luis Buñuel. “Cinema, Instrument of Poetry,”" in course reader.

Germaine Dulac. “The Avant-Garde Cinema,”  in course reader.

Ed Gonzalez. "Les Vampires."

Paper topic (paper due October 29. Graduate students send papers via email to gmairs@calarts.edu; undergraduates send papers to TA Matthew Lax at laxco@outlook.com): 

Take one small moment in any of the films we’ve screened today, and discuss it at length. The idea is to begin with formal analysis – how is this moment shot, lit, edited, etc – and move from there to a discussion of what marks that moment as unusual. These films aren’t simply weird, they’re carefully crafted in ways that challenge our ideas about how films are “supposed” to work, and I want you to discuss how. You’re going to need to see whatever scene you discuss again – luckily, they are all available on YouTube.

“If cinema is to take its place besides the others as a full-fledged art form, it must cease merely to record realities that owe nothing of their actual existence to the film instrument. Instead, it must create a total experience so much out of the very nature of the instrument as to be inseparable from its means. It must relinquish the narrative disciplines it has borrowed from literature and its timid imitation of the causal logic of narrative plots, a form which flowered as a celebration of the earth-bound, step-by-step concept of time, space and relationship which was part of the primitive materialism of the nineteenth century. Instead, it must develop the vocabulary of filmic images and evolve the syntax of filmic techniques which relate those. It must determine the disciplines inherent in the medium, discover its own structural modes, explore the new realms and dimensions accessible to it and so enrich our culture artistically as science has done in its own province.” - Maya Deren

OCTOBER 15

Films:
Sherlock, Junior (Keaton 1924) Blu-Ray 041
City Lights (Chaplin 1921) DVD 2665
One Week (Keaton/Cline 1920) Blu-Ray 153

Reading (to be done by October 21):

Walter Kerr. “The Keaton Quiet,” in course reader. 
J. Hoberman. “After the Gold Rush: Chaplin at One Hundred,” in course reader. 

Paper topic (paper due October 22):

Take whatever single moment made you laugh the hardest in today’s films and talk about how it works as CINEMA – how is the gag framed or edited (or not edited) or choreographed to make it funny. A good starting point might be to imagine the same joke shot or edited in a different way.

PLEASE NOTE THAT NEXT WEEK, OCTOBER 22, IS THE DROP DEAD DATE - THE FIRST FOUR PAPERS (INCLUDING THIS WEEK'S ASSIGNMENT) MUST HAVE BEEN TURNED IN OR YOU WILL BE DROPPED FROM THE CLASS WITH A GRADE OF "NC." EMAIL ME AT gmairs@calarts.edu IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS!

OCTOBER 8

Films:

Bed and Sofa (Room 1927) VHS 1554

excerpts from:

Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein 1925) DVD 984 (chapters  7 - 9,  44:35 to 56:25)

The Man With the Movie Camera (Vertov 1927) DVD 930 (first 25 minutes)

Reading (to be done by October 14):

Sergei Eisenstein, “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form,” online.

Dziga Vertov, “Provisional Instructions to Kino-Eye Groups (1926),” in course reader.

No new paper this week. You are expected to turn in any missing work and to catch up on ALL the readings this week!

The drop dead date is two weeks from today, October 22. The four papers which will have been assigned by that date MUST BE TURNED IN BY CLASS TIME OCTOBER 22 in order for you to avoid being dropped from the class.

OCTOBER 1

Films:

The Last Laugh (Murnau 1924) DVD 377

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Wiene 1920) DVD 3299

Readings (to be done by October 7):

Thomas Elsaesser. “Germany: The Weimar Years,” in course reader.           

Janet Bergstrom.  “Friedrich Wilheim Murnau,” in course reader.

Paper topic (paper due October 8. Graduate students send papers via email to gmairs@calarts.edu; undergraduates send papers to TA Matthew Lax at laxco@outlook.com): 

Your assignment for today is to compare the visual styles of one of the films screened tonight to Broken Blossoms. You only have two pages, so you should think very small – take one short scene (or even a single shot) from Broken Blossoms and compare it to a short scene from The Last Laugh or The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, making very specific, concrete reference to the framing, the editing, the lighting , the makeup, the performance style– any element that intrigues you. DO NOT compare the stories but instead how the films function in visual terms.