Spring 2024 Undergraduate Courses

Antonia Lant
Thursdays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 648
CINE-UT 15 / Class #6391
4 points

This course introduces students to the first three decades of film history. It is designed to provide a foundation for the major, through situating the cinema within a broad cultural, aesthetic, economic, and social context, and through establishing that cinema operated internationally from the start.  This period saw the rise of the studio and star systems in the consolidation of Hollywood; the production and screening of a wealth of non-fiction cinemas; and the formation of an international avant-garde cinema movement. Other topics we will cover include: the wide range of early sources for moving image culture; the earliest forms of cinema; the growth of storytelling through film; film exhibition, film audiences, and film reception; the large impact of women’s film work; film as a central component of modern life; and the development of several national cinemas including German, Japanese, Danish, Russian, and Soviet. Silent filmmaking has never gone away; we will consider how it has persisted, revisited and recycled in later works for the screen.

Recitations
Mondays
Room 670
                                             Class #      
002:  8:00 – 9:15am                6392
003:  9:30 – 10:45am              6393

Feng-Mei Heberer
Tuesdays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 648
CINE-UT 21 / Class #6394
4 points

Who, what, when, where, why, and how is television? This core course moves chronologically through different moments in 20th and 21st century history to negotiate these questions, from the golden age of radio to the rise of the networks, cable TV, and online streaming. Modes of inquiry include the political economy of media institutions; theories of reception and fandom; performance and stardom; and studies of genre. We’ll focus primarily on American television, but will make time to explore programming from outside the U.S., as well as American television in languages other than English.

Recitations
Thursdays
Room 674
                                             Class #      
002:  8:00 – 9:15am                6395
003:  9:30 – 10:45am              6396

Feng-Mei Heberer
Tuesdays, 6:00-10:00pm
Room 652
CINE-UT 700 / Class # 6397
4 points

This course explores German film and media from the 1990s to the present through an intersectional framework. Expanding a more traditional German cinema canon, we center the works of migrant and variously racialized communities to ask what their aesthetic, narrative, and production practices can teach us about historical realities of gendered racialization, migrant labor, and both securitarian and humanitarian border-regimes in the context of Germany and beyond. A major concern of this class lies in studying how this moving image repertoire critically revisits the gaps and absences in official and popular conceptions of national belonging – in particular in relation to the ongoing legacies of colonial, heteropatriarchal, and racial capitalist violence. At the same time, and equipped with feminist and queer critiques from the fields of film and media studies, German studies, and ethnic and migration studies, we unpack the many ways in which marginalized artists and communities have created new artistic forms to tell other stories and build toward a more just social world.

Prerequisite: Film Theory

Permission code required to register. Request a permission code here.

Toby Lee
Wednesdays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 646
CINE-UT 702 / Class # 6398
4 points

This course centers the figure of woman -- multiply understood as embodied, discursive, performed, strategic, subversive or subverted -- in a revisionist examination of documentary history and theory. How might our understanding of the documentary, its particular epistemology, & its central concepts be re-calibrated through a shift of focus onto gender and sexual difference, variably behind or in front of the camera, on or in front of the screen? Multiple generations of feminist and queer theory, plus post-humanist and new materialist perspectives, are brought to bear on the practices and discourses of documentary film & video.

Prerequisite: Film Theory

Permission code required to register. Request a permission code here.

Marina Hassapopoulou
Tuesdays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 646
CINE-UT 710 / Class # 6399
4 points

Greek cinema has always been a “weird” anomaly in overarching discourses on European cinema. But recently, “weird” has been more specifically used as a branding term for the low-budget, independent, and bizarre wave of contemporary Greek films. These films are typically characterized by their minimalist aesthetics, shock value, and idiosyncrasy. They deliberately elude straightforward interpretation, and pose new intellectual and visceral challenges to their audiences. Although the weird wave is often regarded as a direct response to (and/or symptom of) Greece’s government-debt crisis, this course aims to provide students with a much more complex and broader historical and cross-cultural introduction to Greece’s most popular export. We will study the weird wave alongside other European and global crises (including the socioeconomic crises in Italy, Spain, and Portugal), the immigrant crisis, Brexit, the crisis of nationalism, the EU debates, terrorism, Islamophobia, and geopolitics. The course aims to examine the weird wave in relation to other cinemas of crisis, and to understand its “weirdness” as signaling to a broader interpretative chasm between Greece’s self-projections and the world’s perception of Greece (and how this could be applicable to other weird waves from around the world). We will explore through different contexts whether “weird” waves can function as what Maria Chalkou calls a “cinema of emancipation” that frees domestic film culture from internationally conceived stereotypes. The Greek “weird” wave challenges audiences to radically reconceptualize national cinema beyond familiar notions of cultural mirroring and representational authenticity. Consequently, the course will not only engage with theories on national/transnational cinema and cultural studies, but also with other critical frameworks including industry and festival studies, posthumanism, animal studies, queer theory, ethics, and biopolitics.

Prerequisite: Film Theory

Permission code required to register. Request a permission code here.

Navnidhi Sharma
Thursdays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 670
CINE-UT 105
Cinema Studies majors: Section 001 / Class # 6414
Non-Cinema Studies majors: Section 002 / Class # 6415
4 points

This course will provide a historical overview of the diverse cinematic practices and cultures that together comprise the ‘Indian Cinema’ as it traverses political, technological, and aesthetic shifts. While Hindi-Urdu language films produced in Bombay/Mumbai popularity known as “Bollywood” are the focus, we will also study Indian cinemas from other regions, languages, and genres that circulate outside of mainstream productions.

This course will familiarize students with the historiographic debates that animate Indian film studies and acquire a synoptic understanding of the film industries that together produce the largest number of films in the world, while inspiring among their viewers what the film critic Anupama Chopra calls “a particularly virulent case of movie madness.”

This course fulfills the International Cinema requirement.

Josslyn Luckett
Fridays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 674
CINE-UT 314
Cinema Studies majors: Section 001 / Class # 20332
Non-Cinema Studies majors: Section 002 / Class # 20333
4 points

Can a visual archive help to change the discourse of a musical form? How does what we see/screen about this music called "jazz" (in narrative feature films, in PBS documentaries, in music videos, on Grammy night) inform our listening, our purchasing and streaming? Could a different set of films, a wider reaching visual archive transform our understanding of this music, or to paraphrase the late great Gang Starr poet, Guru, could what we see restructure the metaphysics of a jazz thing? Much of what Hollywood feature films and mainstream documentaries have scripted or proclaimed about the history of this music is that it was created by some black genius musicians (all tragic), and a few white genius musicians (some tragic), who were all male (except for an occasional junkie female vocalist) and are now all dead. In spite of decades of academic and cinematic signifying about jazz as democracy and jazz as freedom, this visual archive tells a very limited tale of this music, who played it, and what it meant to communities from the Treme to Sugar Hill to Central Avenue, to the world, and even to the stars ("space is the place"). In this course we will center a different visual archive that tells a wider tale of this music and who made and still makes it and who is energized and challenged by it. We will evaluate this counter-archive of narrative, documentary and experimental film and video keeping in mind Sherrie Tucker and Nichole Rustin's challenge to "grow bigger ears" to listen for gender in jazz studies. This archive and its international, multiracial, multireligious musician participants invites us to grow bigger ears and eyes for the sound. A combination of film studies and jazz studies readings will support our viewing of a wide range of shorts and features, as well as some close listening of film scores by jazz composers.

This course fulfills the American Cinema requirement.

Jacob Floyd
Wednesdays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 670
CINE-UT 320
Cinema Studies majors: Section 001 / Class # 20351
Non-Cinema Studies majors: Section 002 / Class # 21128
4 points

In this course we will explore and study horror cinema. We will first look at ways people have tried to define the genre, its elements, and its effects. Next, our course will examine the genre and its developments through theories about film genre. After that, the course will chart a broad history of the horror genre, from silent cinema to the present, through examining some of its popular subgenres and notable approaches such as the ghost story, slashers, zombie films, found footage, etc. In each instance, we will consider the genre’s connection to cultural, social, industrial, and historical contexts.

This course fulfills the American Cinema requirement.

Eric Kohn
Mondays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 674
CINE-UT 475
Cinema Studies majors: Section 001 / Class # 20323
Non-Cinema Studies majors: Section 002 / Class # 20324
4 points

This class will explore the recent history and architecture of the international film festival circuit and its relationship to the distribution and exhibition markets. Students will study the rise of major festivals such as Cannes, Sundance, and Toronto as well as their relationship to the evolving landscape for independent film. We will hear from veteran programmers, publicists, and distribution executives to contextualize the business and its impact on film culture. Specific topics include the contrast between local and national programming, the growth of video-on-demand market, streaming platforms, the current challenges facing theatrical exhibition, niche festivals, and the emerging roles of television and new media. Assignments will include written assignments based off classroom discussions, group projects designed to simulate the film sales and marketing processes, and the opportunity to curate your own film program. Screenings will be a mixture of contemporary films and repertory work.

Dominic Clarke
Tuesdays, 6:00-10:00pm
Room 648
CINE-UT 51 / class # 6408
4 points

American cinematic history is rich with film movements and moments that have continued to inspire each successive generation. Film has inspired audiences to confront social issues, rethink historical moments, and help to bring about changes in norms. 

While this course is designed to primarily survey Hollywood cinema, we will also examine independent and experimental cinema. As the film industry continuously pivots, changes, and adjusts to whatever is thrown in its way (or sometimes not, often to its detriment), we can look back throughout the last 60 years and see how many times film has been declared dead, yet here we are. 

Recitations
Thursdays
Room 670
                                            Class #       
002:  9:15-10:30am                  6409
003:  10:45am-12:00pm            6410

This course fulfills the American Cinema requirement.

Leticia Berrizbeitia Anez
Thursdays, 6:00-10:00pm
Room 648
CINE-UT 56 / class # 6411
4 points

This overview course provides critical footing to approach cinema practice and culture across the globe from the 1960s onwards. Understanding world cinema as a post-national phenomenon, we will explore diverse production contexts through select influential filmmakers and their work while outlining these films' transnational address, politics, economics, and aesthetics. We will also reconsider existing international cinema paradigms, thinking through questions of diaspora, conflict, and activism across borders. Parallel to developing a critical vocabulary, the screenings will allow us to touch upon socio-historical events, technological developments, and ideological movements that shaped audiovisual practice during the second half of the 20th century into the new millennium. This course also aims to steer away from an exclusive white masculinist cinema canon by centering feminist and antiracist concerns and foregrounding the contribution of women, queer, and filmmakers of color to film history across the globe. Screenings will include the works of Sara Gómez, Abbas Kiarostami, Lucrecia Martel, Alexander Sokurov, Chris Marker, Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, Ousmane Sembène, Trinh T. Minh-ha, among many others.

The result will be a multipolar map of modern and contemporary filmmaking. By the end of this course, students will orient their viewership in a complex chart while acknowledging their situation as spectators. They will also have increased awareness of the perils of discussing a diverse phenomenon like world cinema through a single overarching conceptual lens.

Recitations
Tuesdays
Room 674
                                            Class #       
002:  9:15-10:30am                6412
003:  10:45am-12:00pm          6413

This course fulfills the International Cinema requirement.

CINE-UT 901 / Class # 6400      1-4 points variable
CINE-UT 903 / Class # 6401      1-4 points variable

A student wishing to conduct independent research for credit must obtain approval from a full-time faculty member in the Department of Cinema Studies who will supervise an independent study for up to 4 credits. This semester-long study is a project of special interest to the student who, with the supervising faculty member, agrees on a course of study and requirements. The proposed topic for an Independent Study project should not duplicate topics taught in departmental courses. This is an opportunity to develop or work on a thesis project.

To register, you must submit an Independent Study Form. Once the information from your form is verified by your faculty supervisor, you will receive a permission code.

CINE-UT 950 / Class # 6416      1-4 points variable
CINE-UT 952 / Class # 6417      1-4 points variable

A student wishing to pursue an internship must obtain the internship and submit the Learning Contract before receiving a permission code. All internship grades will be pass/fail.

Dan Streible
Wednesdays, 12:30-4:30pm
Room 674
CINE-GT 1806 / Class # 18858
4 points

Please email tisch.preservation@nyu.edu to request an enrollment permission code.

This course embraces a broad conception of curating as the treatment of materials from their discovery, acquisition, archiving, preservation, restoration, and reformatting, through their screening, programming, use, re-use, distribution, exploitation, and interpretation. It focuses on the practices of film and video exhibition in cinematheques, festivals, museums, archives, web platforms, and other venues. The course examines the goals of public programming, its constituencies, and the curatorial and archival challenges of presenting film, video, and digital media. We study how institutions present their work through exhibitions, events, publications, and media productions. We examine curatorial practices of festivals, symposia, screening series, distributors and others. Our guest speakers are professionals involved with an aspect of curating and programming.

Much of this semester’s version of the course is a practicum, with our work devoted to planning, producing, and documenting the 14th Orphan Film Symposium (wp.nyu.edu/orphanfilm), a biennial international event devoted to screening, studying, and saving neglected moving images. NYU Cinema Studies is co-organizing the symposium with the host site, Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, NYC, April 10-13, 2024. Students must attend the symposium for as much of the three days and four nights as possible. Each student will help co-produce a portion of the event. Final projects may be the documentation and completion of aspects of the production (e.g., audio recordings, video documentation, programming notes, promotional work, website content, analysis and reporting on the symposium, media production, etc.) These projects may be well-developed endeavors conceived individually or in small groups.

Please visit the College Core Curriculum website for a course schedule and description.