OCTOBER 9
Films:
Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein 1925) DVD 984
Enthusiasm (Vertov 1930) DVD 2082
Reading (to be done by October 15):
Sergei Eisenstein, “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form,” in course reader.
Dziga Vertov, “Provisional Instructions to Kino-Eye Groups (1926),” in course reader.
Paper topic (paper due October 16. Graduate students send papers via email to elkrugamigos@earthlink.net; undergraduates send papers also cc to TA Masahiko Fox at gracefulbrute@gmail.com):
Take one short moment – just a shot or two – from one
of the films we’ve seen in the last three weeks and compare some aesthetic issue
in that moment to a short moment in one of the other films. The films you can
thus choose to compare are: Broken Blossoms, The Musketeers of Pig Alley,
Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari, Battleship Potemkin and Enthusiasm. I want you to be very
specific in what you choose to write about – don’t try to cover the entirety of
a film, or even a scene. Instead, take one particular element you’d like to
discuss (say, the use of closeups or editing style or the blocking of actors)
and find two good, contrasting scenes in two films to compare.
