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History of Sound Film
25B | Session A | CCN: 48215
Patrick Ellis
Date and Time: MWF 930-12P, 142 DWINELLE
4 Units
Seventy-five years of film history in five weeks. Ranging widely, this class will cover major film movements, events, and technologies; as well as minor genres, national cinemas, and media. Recurrent areas of focus will include animation, science and science fiction, and cinema’s treatment of its past. Throughout, we will be attentive to the historical provenance of a given film, as we will to the audiences who viewed the film.
Essential historiography from this arc of film history will be collectively considered, and we will model several approaches to writing about this history. Student work will be premised upon archival materials, and coursework will ground students in research methods.
Screenings may include work from, for instance, Cronenberg, Disney, Fleischer, Haneke, Hawks, Hitchcock, Hou, and Truffaut, as well as a number of unknown directors.