World Cinema syllabus Spring 2024

1A04 Professor Ian Almond, [email protected] lesson hours: Monday Wednesday 4pm – 5.15pm. office hours: Monday Wednesday 3pm-4pm ENG 2550 4pm to 5.15pm World Cinema The aim of the course is to examine the development of World Cinema from its origins to the present day. Amongst other aspects, a thoroughly critical and at times even aggressive approach will be adopted towards the present conditions of global cinema, and the Euro-American canonicity which permeates it. Famous directors which feature in this course, but a generous amount of presentation time will also be allotted to students to feature and discuss their own choices. One of the goals of the course will be to give the student a decent familiarity with some of the world’s best directors, and a healthy appreciation of exactly how the evolution of world cinema – particularly independent world cinema – is taking place. A second aspect of the course will be the subject of Film Studies. What it is, how we approach cinema as academics, what kind of language and technical vocabulary we use to analyse and evaluate film. In all of the textual approaches adopted, a range of contexts and interpretations will be considered – questions of gender, class, race which run across the boundaries of the many scholarly disciplines this course encompasses: it is a course primarily of cinema, but also sociology, religious studies, media studies and history. Questions of theory – Derrida, Zizek, Foucault – will also be implicit in our classroom discussions. Some of the film content may be disturbing. D. W. Griffiths’s Birth of a Nation is an openly racist, white supremacist film; Riefenstahl’s documentary is a piece of Nazi propaganda. Funny Games is a deeply disturbing film. A number of the film titles will have scenes of violence and/or sexuality – although I don’t issue trigger warnings, I will try to alert students to any scenes of extreme sexuality/violence. Here are nine course keywords/key ideas that might be used to connect the syllabus to the other courses you will be studying: Gender/sexuality, Religion/spirituality, Race, capital/class, Language/form, Nation-state/nationhood , Selfhood/subjectivity, History/time, Modernity, Empire/colonialism YOU WILL BE EXPECTED TO WATCH ALL OF THE FILMS. Failing to watch even one of the films may cause you to fail the course. Primary Sources: Texts to be read (obligatory): Geoff Dyer, Zona – A Book about a film about a journey to a Room Amy Villarejo, Film Studies: The Basics (Routledge, 2007) Extracts from Sikov, Ed. Film Studies: an Introduction. New York: Columbia UP Directors to be featured: August and Louis Lumiere, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896) D. W. Griffiths, Birth of a Nation (1915) Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin (1925) Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will. (1935) Vittorio de Sica, Bicycle Thieves. (1948) Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon (1950) Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard. (1950) Yoshijuro Ozu, Tokyo Story. (1953) Satiyajit Ray, Pather Panchali. (1955) Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal (1957) Youssef Chahine, Cairo Station (1958) Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho. (1960) Francois Truffaut, Jules et Jim (1962) Federico Fellini, 8 and ½. (1963) Ken Loach, Kes (1969) Andrei Tarkovsky, Mirror (1975). Available on youtube - Stalker. (1979) Ousmane Sembene, Xala. (1975) Abbas Kiarostami, Close Up (1990) Moufida Tlatli, The Silences of the Palace (1994) Michael Haneke, Funny Games (1997) Martin Rejtman, Silvia Preto. (1999) Wong Kar-Wai, In The Mood For Love. (2000) Alejandro Inarritu, Amores Perros (2000) Ashgar Farhadi, A Separation (2011) Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Pear Tree. (2018) Secondary Sources (non-obligatory): Rob Stone, Paul Cooke (eds), Routledge Companion to World Cinema Stam, Robert. Film Theory: an Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000. Slavoj Zizek, What You Always Wanted to Know About Lacan But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchcock Almond, Ian, World Literature Decentered: Beyond the “West” Through Turkey, Mexico and Bengal (Routledge,2021) – just to give a non-cinematic idea of what is at stake in debates about global culture Week 1 Monday 8th January Introduction August and Louis Lumiere, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1896) (one minute clip – found on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FAj9fJQRZA) D. W. Griffiths, Birth of a Nation (1915) Wednesday 10th January Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin (1925) Week 2 -First half of Chapter 1 of Villarejo, Film Studies Monday 15th January. Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will. (1935) Wednesday 17th January Vittorio de Sica, Bicycle Thieves. (1948) Week 3 –READER RESPONSE FOR FIRST HALF OF VILLAREJO Second half of Chapter 1 of Villarejo, Film Studies Monday 22nd January Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon (1950) Wednesday 24th January - Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard. (1950) Week 4 - First half of Chapter 2 of Villarejo, Film Studies Monday 29th January Yoshijuro Ozu, Tokyo Story. (1953) Wednesday 31st January Satiyajit Ray, Pather Panchali. (1955) Week 5 - Second half of Chapter 2 of Villarejo, Film Studies Monday 5th February. Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal (1957) Wednesday 7th February Youssef Chahine, Cairo Station/Bab el-Hadid (1958) Week 6 - First half of Chapter 3 of Villarejo, Film Studies Monday 12th February Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho. (1960) Wednesday 14th February Francois Truffaut, Jules et Jim (1962) Week 7- Second half of Chapter 3 of Villarejo, Film Studies Monday 19th February Federico Fellini, 8 and ½. (1963) Wednesday 21st February MID TERM EXAM Week 8 Monday 26th February SPRING BREAK Wednesday 28th February Week 9 First half of Chapter 4 of Villarejo, Film Studies Monday 4th March Ken Loach, Kes (1969) Wednesday 6th March Ousmane Sembene, Xala. (1975) Week 10 – READER RESPONSE FOR SECOND HALF OF VILLAREJO AND DYER EXTRACTS Second half of Chapter 4 of Villarejo, Film Studies Monday 11th March . Andrei Tarkovsky, Mirror (1975). Available on youtube - Stalker. (1979) Also: Geoff Dyer, Zona – A Book about a film about a journey to a Room Wednesday 13th March. Abbas Kiarostami, Close Up (1990) Week 11 Monday 18th March STUDENT LED DISCUSSIONS/PRESENTATIONS Wednesday 20th March STUDENT LED DISCUSSIONS/PRESENTATIONS Week 12Monday 25th March. STUDENT LED DISCUSSIONS/PRESENTATIONS Wednesday 27th March STUDENT LED DISCUSSIONS/PRESENTATIONS Week 13 - First half of Chapter 5 of Villarejo, Film Studies Monday 1st April Moufida Tlatli, The Silences of the Palace (1994) Wednesday 3rd April Michael Haneke, Funny Games (1997) Week 14 Monday 8th April. NO CLASS Wednesday 10th April – Eid Break Week 15 - Second half of Chapter 5 of Villarejo, Film Studies Monday 15th April. Wong Kar-Wai, In The Mood For Love. (2000) Wednesday 17th April Alejandro Inarritu, Amores Perros (2000) Week 16 -Chapter 6 of Villarejo, Film Studies Monday 22nd April. Ashgar Farhadi, A Separation (2011) Wednesday 24th April Conclusion. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Pear Tree. (2018) Some Guidelines First and foremost, the course is your responsibility. I’m here to help, to guide, to encourage, but it is up to you and you alone to pass this course. A large part of this course is graded on the effort you make. If you put in the effort to make the most of this course – you turn up on time, you pass all your quizzes, you make meaningful contributions in class, you don’t spend the lesson checking your phone or wandering in and out – you will get a good grade. The mark consists of punctual attendance (10%), general class participation (10%), two reader responses (10%), a mid-term in-class exam (30%) and a final in-class exam ( 40%). The whole point of the reader responses is to give me an opportunity to see and correct your work. - 80% attendance is compulsory - if you do not make this, you will not be able to finish the course. Please do NOT arrive late. Late arrivals will not count as attendances. Repeated late arrivals will result, at the end of the course, in the reduction of your grade by one letter. Please also avoid wandering in and out of the class during the lesson. Please remember to pick up your textbooks from the class as soon as you are able to. Please remember, the quizzes and reader responses come ahead of the texts, not after them – they check that you read them. A quiz will be a brief, ten minute time at the very beginning of the lesson (don’t come late), where you will physically write down answers to a couple of questions about the texts. I reserve the right to give an unscheduled quiz. Sorry. A reader response will either be in class or online, and will be a slightly longer expression of what you think about a particular text – how you respond to it, what you felt it was about, whether you felt there was an important context, and so on. Both exams – the mid-term and the final – will very probably consist of a sample passage or two taken from the texts we have studied, and you will be asked to comment on the passage, draw out themes, find points to extrapolate and develop. If you fail to complete any of the quizzes, reader responses and exams, there is a danger you will fail the course. Their completion is a condition for passing the course. -we have a policy of intellectual continuity – which basically means that if for any reason there is an interruption of lessons (for weather, traffic breakdown, etc) we will arrange some kind of substitute to supplement the missed lesson (whether it is an extra lesson or a lesson taught online). -Most of the grades I give, quite frankly, are As and Bs and a few Cs. I do not give out many As. To get an A, you give me excellent midterm papers and final exams, you turn up on time, I never have to check that you read something, you contribute intelligently and articulately to class discussions, and you don’t spend half the lesson trying to txt your friend whilst staring up at the blackboard. To get a B: you manage the minimum attendance requirement, you come on time, your papers are decent, some spelling mistakes and style errors but overall good, you speak up now and then in class. If you get a ‘C’ or less, I’m really not very happy with you. You appear to have given no sense of commitment to the course at all. -please do not plagiarize (i.e. copy or paraphrase) your essay from somewhere else. Use AI by all means for brainstorming ideas – but you should not, under any circumstances, submit any work which is not your own. The overwhelming proportion of the course is in-class exam anyway. The whole point of this course is to get you thinking creatively, critically, imaginatively, about a given topic. It doesn’t make sense to use AI as a replacement for your own thought – it’s ultimately a waste of your own time and money. This isn’t even an appeal to your ethics – it’s an appeal to your common sense. Presentations: in groups of three or four, choose a film of your own and lead a discussion on it. The film should a) have had some kind of influence or impact and b) should be accessible to ALL students. -Probably the one thing I am neurotic about in my teaching is that the students read the texts. It is, for me, the most crucial and basic condition for passing the course – if you miss a quiz or response deadline, it will directly affect your grade. I simply don’t have the time to run around after each student, checking they have done their quizzes and read their syllabus. PLEASE make sure you do your reading and viewing. -Any problems regarding the course can be discussed with me during my office hours Office hours: Monday and Wednesday 3pm to 4pm in Room 1d55 or I can be emailed at [email protected]. I try to reply to emails as quickly as possible, but I am not constantly online at home, so please don't expect immediate replies.