Professor: Irene Gustafson
[831] 459 1498 / Comm 125
click here to email
Office Hours: Wednesday 10am-12pm and by appointment

T.A. Contact and Office Hours:

Emily Martinez click here to email , Thursday 2-3pm, DARC 104
Samantha Stevens click here to email, Thursday 2:30-3:30pm, Joe's Pizza and Sub Cafe, Quarry Plaza
Jacob Garbe click here to email, Wednesday 4-5pm, DARC lab 1st floor.Appointments: http://tinyurl.com/JacobTA

[syllabus last updated: September 28, 2011

Film 80A “The Film Experience” is a course that helps students understand and reflect on the experience of watching narrative film. The course poses questions about the medium that an informed viewer might ask and devotes its time to answering those questions: how does a film work? Why does it move us or thrill us? What is the relationship between image and sound in movies? How did this film get to the screen, and what is its relationship to the society it comes from? What is “film” in a time when movies and media are changing? And what do we get from studying films?

Students are introduced to one key film each week, which is preceded by a short introduction. They will read preparatory material from the course texts before the film, answer a series of questions posed by the instructor after they see it, and will return two days later for a lecture which knits together the insights of the reading, the students’ own responses to the film, and places the week’s film in a broader context. Clips are a regular part of the lecture and amplify the points raised by the instructor and the text, offering students a range of other films that they might further pursue outside of class. By the end of the course, students will be able to understand salient features and contexts for the work they watch, giving them a basic historical, formal, ideological, and interpretive grounding in narrative cinema.

Our class time will typically include:

• Weekly screenings and lectures. Each class period will begin with a lecture that contextualizes the week’s screenings and readings.
• Often we’ll take 10 minutes after each screening to reflect and write notes individually about the film. This does not preclude note-taking during screenings. In fact, you are strongly encouraged to take notes during films. These short pieces of writing will be turned in and read and will count towards your attendance and participation grade.

Attendance is mandatory; punctuality is required. Four unexcused absences or excessive lateness will result in a NO PASS. Please plan your time and commitments carefully. Any emergency situation or special condition should be discussed with the Instructor and/or the TA.

Even though the films are available and on reserve through the Film & Music Center, it is important that you attend the full 1hr 45min class twice a week.

• Exam 1 TH 10/13, scantron /short essay ............................20%
• Exam 2 TH 11/3, scantron/short essay ...............................20%
• Exam 3 TH 11/22 (4-5 page essay) ...................................40%
• Exam 4 TH 12/6, 7:30-10:30PM, scantron/short essay....... 20%

Exams 1, 2, and 4 are given on scantrons and will also include several short-answer essay questions. You are repsonsible for purchasing and bringing the scantron exam to class on the day of the exam. We use ParSCORE form number f-1712 and it is available for purchase at the Baytree Bookstore. Scantron exams must be filled out with a no. 2 pencil. On exam days, you must bring to class: a blank scantron form, a no.2 pencil, and extra paper

REQUIRED:
available at the Baytree Bookstore

Marilyn Fabe, Closely Watched Films: An Introduction to the Art of Narrative Film Technique. Berkeley: UC Press, 2010.

Other readings wil be made available through the course website, as a downloadable pdf file

READING IS TO BE DONE BY THE DAY IT APPEARS ON THE SYLLABUS

1.

TH........... September 22nd
Introduction to the Film Experience
Course Overview, Admissions

2.

T ...........September 27th
Screening: Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010, 103 min.) DVD9027

Reading due:
• Corrigan and White, Chapter 1 (“Preparing Viewers and Views”) (pdf)
• Fabe, (“Glossary”)

TH........... September 29th
Screening: excerpts from Toy Story 3
Workers Leaving the Factory (1895) DVD1530
The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) DVD6234

Reading due:
• Corrigan and White, Chapter 2 (“Exploring a Material World") (pdf)

3.

T...........October 4th
History: Actualities, Experiments, and Film Narrative around the World.
Screening: Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, 1919, 89 min.) DVD233

Reading:
• Fabe, Chapter 1 (“The Beginnings of Film Narrative”)

TH........... October 6th
Screening: excerpts from Broken Blossoms

Reading due:
• Gunning, (“Weaving a Narrative: Style and Economic Background in Griffith’s Biograph Films”) (pdf)

4.

T...........October 11th
Ways of Looking: Film Forms and Modes of Expression
Screening: The Last Laugh (Murnau, 1924, 91 min.) DVD6614

Reading due:
• Fabe, Chapter 3(“Expressionism and Realism in Film Form”)

TH........... October 13th
Screening: The Adventurer (Charles Chaplin, 1917, 30 min.) DVD3762
excerpts, The Last Laugh

EXAM 1 in-class scantron/short essay

5.

T...........October 18th
Classical Hollywood Cinema and Film Narrative
Screening: His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940, 91 min.) DVD6391

Reading due:
•Fabe, Chapter 4 (“The Conversion to Sound and the Classical Hollywood Film”)

TH........... October 20th
Screening: excerpts His Girl Friday

Reading due:
• Chion, (“Sound Film—Worthy of the Name”) (pdf)

WEEKEND VIEWING SUGGESTION—
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941, 119 min.)

6.

T...........October 25th
Social and Political Histories and Film
Screening: Bicycle Thieves (Zavattini, 1948, 89 min.) DVD4891

Reading due:
• Fabe, Chapter 6 “Italian Neorealism”

TH........... October 27th
Screening: excerpts from Bicycle Thieves

Reading due:
• MacDougall (“When Less is Less”)(pdf)

7.

T...........November 1st
Auteurs and New Waves
Screening: Chungking Express (Kar-wai, 1994, 102 min.) DVD1246

Reading due:
• Fabe, Chapter 7 “Auteur Theory and the French New Wave”
• Corrigan, (“Style and Structure in Writing”) (pdf)

TH........... November 3rd
Screening: excerpts from Chungking Express

EXAM 2 in-class scantron/short essay

8.

T...........November 8th
Artists and Art Films
Screening: The Seventh Seal (Bergman, 1957, 96 min.) DVD4961

Reading due:
•Fabe, Chapter 9 “The European Art Film”

TH........... November 10th
Screening: excerpts The Seventh Seal

9.

T...........November 15th
Race and Contemporary American Cinema
Screening: Do The Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989, 120 min.) DVD4194

Reading due:
• Fabe, Chapter 11 “Political Cinema”

TH........... November 17th
Screening: excerpts Do The Right Thing

10.

T...........November 22nd
Gender, Genre, Sexuality and Cinema
Screening: I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (Patricia Rozema, 1988, 82 min.) VT1422

Reading due:
• Fabe, Chapter 12 “Feminism and Film Form”

EXAM 3 due: 4-5 page essay due at the beginning of class

TH........... November 24th
THANKSGIVING
No Class

11

T...........November 29th
New Film Experiences
Screening: Timecode( Marinelli, 2000, 97 min.) DVD266

Reading due:
• Fabe, Chapter 13 “Digital Video and New Forms of Narrative”

TH........... December 1st
Screening: excerpts from I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing and Timecode

Review for final exam

LAPTOP/ MOBILE TECHNOLOGY USE:

Laptops can be a useful tool in the service of teaching and learning, however, I ask that you use them productively and respectfully.
A few common sense rules:
1. Always set up your laptop computer before the beginning of class. Setting up the computer and booting it up can take a few minutes depending on what applications are set to open at startup. Turn off all other mobile devices before lecture begins
2. Disable sound
3. During lecture and classroom discussion, you should not be connected to network resources. To do so invites many distractions - web surfing, email, chats, etc. Chatting or emailing during class is no more acceptable than talking on a cell phone during class time. Additionally, your networked screens are distracting to those sitting near and behind you
If you are found to be doing anything other than note-taking (or sanctioned network activity) you will be asked to leave the class immediately and will be marked as absent for that day.
I reserve the right to further legislate laptop use in their classes. For example, you may be asked to close your computer during screenings or be asked to sit in the first two rows of the class if you are actively using your laptop.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

A note on academic integrity, plagiarism, and intellectual work:
At the university we are continually engaged with other people’s ideas: we read them in books, hear them in lecture, discuss them with our friends, engage with them on a personal level, and incorporate them into our own writing. As a result, it is very easy to blur the lines between our own intellectual work and the work of others. But, it is important that we give credit where it is due. Plagiarism is using others’ ideas and words without clearly acknowledging the source of that information.
To avoid plagiarism, you must give credit whenever you use
• another person’s idea, opinion, or theory;
• any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings—any pieces of information—that are not common knowledge;
• quotations of another person’s actual written words and/or spoken words; or
• paraphrase of another person’s spoken or written words.

The UCSC “Official University Policy on Academic Integrity for Undergraduate Students” can be found at:
http://www.ucsc.edu/academics/academic_integrity/undergraduate_students/