Introduction to Cinema Studies

This course equips students with a working toolbox for studying cinema. Over the semester, students will have continuous and creative opportunities to acquire and practice the vocabulary and media literacy skills needed for analyzing cinema in a variety of ways. We will pay close attention to films’ formal and stylistic techniques as well as to the narrative, non-narrative, and generic organizations of cinema. Using a variety of case studies, we will also examine the growth of cinema as industry, infrastructure, and entertainment; as a political and educational instrument; as a tool of personal and collective expression; and as a regime of sensory experience. Students will watch films from across the history of global cinema while reading and responding to historical, critical, and theoretical texts that investigate the development of cinema within a broader media landscape. There are no prerequisites. Students are required to watch films on their own.