Check out the trailer for this class:
https://vimeo.com/1077414084/d34434c945

In this course, we will examine various facets of German cinema from its beginnings to the present. We discuss Expressionist Film, Nazi Film, Post WWII German Film of the Rebuilding Era, New German Cinema, and Contemporary German Cinema as we examine in depth film aesthetics through the analysis of film form and style for each period. Our course aims to provide students with a fluency in and understanding of film’s unique language as it evolves technologically, historically and generically. You will learn to recognize and describe formal choices and techniques, engage in close readings of films, attend to the greater aesthetic significance and stakes of formal choices and innovations evident within a particular film, directorial oeuvre, period or movement. Understanding form as an extension of content, we analyze conventions of narrative film, the employment of formal techniques like the close-up, point of view, framing and the use of sound as they function within particular filmic contexts and as they function within film’s systemic languages (like that of continuity editing and genre). Concentrating on questions evoked from early cinema to the present about film’s specificity as an art and technological ability, we will consider the changing role of the spectator in relation to the moving image, film’s relationship to reality including its reporting and construction of the “real,” as well as how film aesthetics have been employed to build ideology and to break with it. Sample films come from different genres (drama, documentary, comedy, horror, and Science Fiction).

FULFILLS: Arts & Letter, Global Perspectives, Global Context requirements.

REQUIREMENTS: Discussion posts, two film analyses, final--and watching films.