Courses / Undergraduate

Fall 2022

  • Film History & Form

    10 001 | CCN: 24760

    Instructor: Anne Nesbet

    Location: Dwinelle 142

    Date and Time: TU, TH 11:00am - 12:29pm

    This course will focus on the development of film art, technology, and industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ... More
  • Documentary Forms

    125 001 | CCN: 32329

    Instructor: Deniz Göktürk

    Location: Dwinelle 142

    Date and Time: TU, TH 9:30am - 10:59am

    This course will focus on topics in documentary cinema, television, video, photography, and/or new media. ... More
  • Experimental and Alternative Media Art – History of Avant-Garde Film

    135 001 | CCN: 24770

    Instructor: Jeffrey A Skoller

    Location: Dwinelle 142

    Date and Time: TU, TH 3:30pm - 4:59pm

    “Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all!”–Andre Breton This class approaches the idea of Avant-Garde film as filmmaking without a safety net; a risk taking approach to creative expression that emphasizes filmmaking as exploration and... More
  • Global Media – Global Neorealism

    145 001 | CCN: 31377

    Instructor: Laura E Ruberto

    Location: Social Sciences Building 56

    Date and Time: TU, TH 12:30pm - 1:59pm

    On-location shooting, shoestring budget, non-professional actors, and social commentary on the everyday struggles of the so-called ‘common man.’ These are among the hallmark elements of Italian neorealism—a body of films that emerged out of the literal and... More
  • Special Topics in Film – Slow Cinema: Economies of Attention

    170 001 | CCN: 24774

    Instructor: Dolores McElroy

    Location: Dwinelle 188

    Date and Time: TU, TH 2:00pm - 3:29pm

    In this course, we will consider practices and theories of attention. How do we direct our focus? Which technologies and social forces––including cinema––shape and control our attention? Can cinema also be a way of retraining our attention... More
  • Special Topics in Film – Attention and Distraction

    170 002 | CCN: 33129

    Instructor: Emily West

    Location: Dwinelle 188

    Date and Time: M, W 2:00pm - 3:29pm

    This course is about attention and distraction: how optical and digital media from the 19th century to today have contributed to cultural debates about how we attend to our world. We'll read about the moral panics that... More
  • Special Topics in Film Genre – That's Entertainment!: Theorizing the Musical

    171 001 | CCN: 24952

    Instructor: Dolores McElroy

    Location: Dwinelle 188

    Date and Time: M, W 3:30pm - 4:59pm

    In many ways, cultural attitudes toward the genre of the movie musical are metaphors for cultural attitudes towards films themselves. Often dismissed as “mindless entertainment,” or “unrealistic,” the American musical raises our greatest fears (and joys) about... More
  • Special Topics in Film Genre – East Asian Horror

    171 003 | CCN: 33963

    Instructor: Daniel Cuong O'Neill, Jinsoo An

    Location: Dwinelle 142

    Date and Time: M, W 8:00am - 9:29am

    East Asian Horror: In this course, we will engage with a range of works in East Asian horror cinema (Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) and explore their power to provoke and disturb, in relation to... More
  • Auteur Theory – Auteurs of Anime

    172 001 | CCN: 31381

    Instructor: Miryam Sas

    Location: Dwinelle 188

    Date and Time: TU, TH 12:30pm - 1:59pm

    This course, which serves as an introduction to anime studies, examines the many different forces of creativity that go into Japanese animation. Listed under the “auteurs (authors/directors) of anime” course listing, this course will delve into the... More
  • Introduction to Screenwriting

    180 001 | CCN: 23301

    Instructor: J Mira Kopell

    Location: Dwinelle 226

    Date and Time: TU 9:00am - 11:59am

    Students explore the art and craft of developing and writing a feature-length, narrative screenplay. Each writer pitches story ideas, develops a plot outline and completes a portion of their screenplay. All students workshop outlines and... More
  • Introduction to Screenwriting

    180 002 | CCN: 32226

    Instructor: Juan Nicolas Pereda Rodriguez

    Location: Dwinelle 226

    Date and Time: TU 1:00pm - 3:59pm

    In this introductory screenwriting course students will explore various approaches to screenwriting for a variety of filmmaking forms, including fiction, non-fiction and experimental modes. Students will complete two short screenplays over the course of the term. ... More
  • TV Writing

    182 001 | CCN: 24207

    Instructor: J Mira Kopell

    Location: Dwinelle 226

    Date and Time: TH 9:00am - 11:59am

    This intermediate screenwriting class explores the art and craft of developing and writing serialized narrative scripts. In the first half of the course students simulate the creative and collaborative process of a TV writers’ room by... More
  • Documentary Cinema – “Documentary Cinemas”

    184 001 | CCN: 32303

    Instructor: Deniz Göktürk

    Location: Dwinelle 188

    Date and Time: TU, TH 9:30am - 10:59am

    This course surveys the history, theory and practice of the genre called documentary cinema in a transnational horizon. We will explore what this amorphous and vague term means and examine the ways its forms and ethics have... More
  • Intermediate Moving Image Production

    185 001 | CCN: 23300

    Instructor: J Mira Kopell

    Location: Dwinelle 30

    Date and Time: TU, TH 1:00pm - 3:59pm

    This intermediate film production course explores the process of making narrative shorts. Students will write, pre-visualize, direct and edit three short films and act as cinematographer and assistant director for three of their classmates’ projects. ... More
  • Intermediate Moving Image Production

    185 002 | CCN: 25825

    Instructor: Juan Nicolas Pereda Rodriguez

    Location: Berkeley Art Museum LL14

    Date and Time: M 9:00am - 11:59am

    This intermediate film production course explores the process of making alternative fiction, non-fiction, hybrid and experimental works that defy categorization. Students direct two short exercises and act as cinematographers and sound designers in two classmate’s projects. Throughout... More
  • Documentary and Non-fiction Media Production

    188 001 | CCN: 26427

    Instructor: Jeffrey A Skoller

    Location: Dwinelle 135

    Date and Time: TU 10:00am - 12:59pm

    This workshop class focuses on practices and techniques of non-fiction digital filmmaking. Course work consists of a series of short image and sound exercises and then a final film project of your own design. The class examines... More
  • Documentary and Non-fiction Media Production

    188 002 | CCN: 32996

    This course focuses on practices and techniques of non-fiction film and media. The course examines important techniques of non-fiction media production, such as research and writing for non-fiction; the observational camera; filming in public; the interview; voiceover... More
  • Advanced Film Writing

    194 001 | CCN: 24777

    This course serves to instruct undergraduate Film majors in advanced film and media studies analysis, research, and writing. A variety of forms of writing will be undertaken, including film analysis, research scholarship, essay argumentation, film reviewing and... More
  • Supervised Independent Study for Advanced Undergraduates

    199 002 | CCN: 34202

    Instructor: Juan Nicolas Pereda Rodriguez

    Date and Time: 12:00am - 12:00am

    Reading and conference with the instructor in a field that shall not coincide with that of any regular course and shall be specific enough to enable the student to write an essay based upon his/her study. ... More
  • Film and Media Theory

    20 001 | CCN: 21416

    Instructor: Mary Ann Doane

    Location: Dwinelle 142

    Date and Time: TU, TH 12:30pm - 1:59pm

    This course is intended to introduce undergraduates to the study of a range of media, including photography, film, television, video, and print and digital media. The course will focus on questions of medium “specificity” or the key... More
  • Film Aesthetics – Black Film and Visual Culture

    30 001 | CCN: 24766

    Instructor: Rizvana G Bradley

    Location: Dwinelle 142

    Date and Time: TU, TH 2:00pm - 3:29pm

    Black Film and Visual Culture focuses on transatlantic black filmic and artistic movements, genres, and practices, with an eye towards situating their significance within the modern world. It addresses the politics, aesthetics, and historical conditions that continue... More
  • Television Studies

    45 001 | CCN: 24768

    Instructor: Emily West

    Location: Dwinelle 188

    Date and Time: M, W 12:30pm - 1:59pm

    This course will focus on the industrial, technological, and aesthetic history of television. ... More
  • Cultural Representations of Sexualities: Queer Visual Culture

    C146B 001 | CCN: 32947

    Instructor: Paola Bacchetta

    Date and Time: TU 2:00pm - 3:29pm

    This course examines modern visual cultures that construct ways of seeing diverse sexualities. Considering Western conventions of representation during the modern period, we will investigate film, television, and video. How and when do “normative” and “queer” sexualities... More
  • The Craft of Writing – Film Focus – Gooey, Liquid, Incomputable: Writing About New Media Art and Material Histories of Tech

    R1A 001 | CCN: 21376

    Instructor: Lou Silhol Macher

    Location: Dwinelle 263

    Date and Time: TU, TH 9:30am - 10:59am

    We all use so-called “new media” in our everyday lives: from computer software to AI-powered apps, these platforms and technologies are the result of the digital turn. New media are difficult to define however, perhaps primarily because... More
  • The Craft of Writing – Film Focus – The Trap of the Visual: An Inquiry into Trans* Cinemas

    R1A 002 | CCN: 25819

    Instructor: Isaac Arland Preiss

    Location: Dwinelle 89

    Date and Time: TU, TH 9:30am - 10:59am

    “This is the trap of the visual: it offers–or, more accurately, it is frequently offered to us as–the primary path through which trans people might have access to livable lives.” -Tourmaline, Eric A. Stanley and Johanna Burton, Known... More
  • The Craft of Writing – Film Focus – “The Illusion of Life”: Animation and Character

    R1A 003 | CCN: 26034

    Instructor: Pamela Leandra Weidman

    Location: Dwinelle 262

    Date and Time: TU, TH 11:00am - 12:29pm

    Animated films love to represent their own processes of animation. American cartoons stretching from the 1910s through to the present insistently show off their new techniques and technologies; their labor-intensive modes of production; and their artificiality. Above... More
  • Accelerated Reading and Composition

    R1A 019 | CCN: 23477

    Instructor: Tory Adkisson

    Location: Haviland 321

    Date and Time: M, W 12:00pm - 2:59pm

    This course will explore representations of mental illness and mental health across a variety of media including literature, comics, film, and video games. We will consider how discussions around mental health and wellness have shifted in popular... More
  • The Craft of Writing – Film Focus – The Medium of Memory

    R1B 001 | CCN: 24208

    Instructor: Yvonne Lin

    Location: Dwinelle 134

    Date and Time: TU, TH 9:30am - 10:59am

    The development of film and photography radically shifted what we remember of the past and how we remember it. Not only does film technology make possible new forms of recording and storing actual events, it also changes... More
  • The Craft of Writing – Film Focus – A JAPANESE HISTORY OF “NEW” MEDIA

    R1B 002 | CCN: 25821

    Instructor: Chelsea Morgen Ward

    Location: Dwinelle 263

    Date and Time: TU, TH 5:00pm - 6:29pm

    When we think of new media, we usually think of global technology and the digital realm. But what makes media “new”? How have local contexts shaped the development, spread, and experience of what we now think of... More
  • The Craft of Writing – Film Focus – The Digital Mundane

    R1B 003 | CCN: 26036

    Instructor: Annie Golda Felix

    Location: Dwinelle 189

    Date and Time: TU, TH 11:00am - 12:29pm

    Taking the personal computer user as its starting point, this course considers the ways in which digital technologies have seeped into the ordinary routines of everyday life. I’m writing here about the quotidian practice of using and... More