Summer 2018 Undergraduate Courses

May 21-July 1, 2018
Tuesdays & Thursdays
6:00-10:00pm

Raymond Tsang

CINE-UT 30 / c#5640

Usually regarded as cheaply made and roughly produced, action cinema is often neglected in film history. However, it continues to attract worldwide fans and discussion. This course will predominantly examine, compare, and contrast three prominent action directors and stars - Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Although they are not credited as directors in the selected films, they direct, choreograph, and compose their action sequences and integrate them into storytelling. Using concepts such as aesthetic in action, class, nation, race, and masculinity, this course will study the formation of the genre and related ones under different historical circumstances, and how they resonate with each other. Key questions we'll address include: How and why does action cinema change and develop across borders? How do we enjoy and make sense of action cinema and action-director stars? What else do we learn from studying these stars and their films?

This course is open to undergraduate students only.

NOTE: In addition to tuition, there are Media & Production fees totaling $84 for this course.

May 21-June 10, 2018
Mondays-Thursdays
12:30-4:30pm

Chris Straayer

CINE-UT 215 / c#5637

Seamlessly combining their talents and training, the Coen Brothers (Joel--NYU Film, Ethan--Princeton Philosophy) have written, directed, and produced a body of work that is aesthetically superb and comically dark. In their tall tales, repeat actors (Frances McDormand, John Turturro, John Goodman, George Clooney, Steve Buscemi) deliver remarkable dialogue within provocative mise en scene through twisting plots. In settings that span the US (NY, CA, MN, MS), they satirically investigate mid-20th century American mythologies. We will study the Coen Brothers’ collaborative work in relation to cinephilia, genre reflexivity, pop culture collage, literary sources, and thematic ruminations. Films to be viewed likely include Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, and A Serious Man.

This course is open to graduate and undergraduate students.  Please use appropriate course number (UT for Undergraduate and GT for Graduate).

NOTE: In addition to tuition, there are Media & Production fees totaling $84 for this course.

June 11-July 1, 2018
Mondays-Thursdays
12:30-4:30pm

William Simon

CINE-UT 230 / c#5638

This course will focus on the New York City films of Martin Scorsese.  We shall approach several of the films (e.g. Gangs of New York, The Age of Innocence) as filmic examples of historical fiction and most of the other films in terms of their socio-cultural representation of New York City phenomena (e.g. immigration, crime, the art and entertainment industries).  As well, we will be concerned with exploring Scorsese’s “narrative method” – his usages of film form and style – in relation to the above issues.

This course is open to graduate and undergraduate students.  Please use appropriate course number (UT for Undergraduate and GT for Graduate).  

NOTE: In addition to tuition, there are Media & Production fees totaling $84 for this course.

July 2-August 12, 2018
Tuesdays & Thursdays
6:00-10:00pm

Paddy Johnson

CINE-UT 403 / c#6524
CINE-GT 2500 / c#6525

Since the mid 1990s the Internet has evolved from a space viewed as ripe with potential but fraught with unknown dangers to a true mass medium full of new opportunities and risks we must now negotiate. Throughout, artists have used this medium to make art that employs, documents, and examines emerging online platforms and social media. Charting a loose timeline of art works, formative debates, and happenings, this course will look at the ongoing relationship of art and technology.  From the early online copy wars and the url gold rush, to surf clubs, image chat, and now emoji domains, we’ll look at how online art has evolved and the key players involved in making it all happen. We’ll also examine commercial platforms for art practice, art in the age of surveillance, and the scholarship that has emerged simultaneously, including concepts such as Net Aesthetics 2.0, The New Aesthetic, and Post-Internet art.

Paddy Johnson is the founding Editor of Art F City. In addition to her work on the blog, she has been published in magazines such as New York Magazine, The New York Times and The Economist. Paddy lectures widely about art and the Internet at venues including Yale University, Parsons, Rutgers, South by Southwest, and the Whitney Independent Study Program. In 2008, she became the first blogger to earn a Creative Capital Arts Writers grant from the Creative Capital Foundation. Paddy was nominated for best art critic at The Rob Pruitt Art Awards in 2010 and 2013.  In 2014, she was the subject of a VICE profile for her work as an independent art blogger.

Paddy also maintains an active presence as a curator. In 2011 she has curated Graphics Interchange Format, a survey of animated GIFs for Denison University and in 2016 created the sequel to that exhibition, Geographically Indeterminate Fantasies, for Providence College and GRIN Gallery. In 2015 she curated Mimic, a show about imitation and illusion and Floating Point, an exhibition showcasing the work of 49 Columbia MFAs at Judith Charles Gallery and in 2015 and 2016 created shows for the Satellite Art Fair. She is currently working on a retrospective of the feminist artist Carol Cole with curator Emily Stamey at the Weatherspoon Gallery in North Carolina. 

This course is open to graduate and undergraduate students.  Please use appropriate course number (UT for Undergraduate and GT for Graduate).  

NOTE: In addition to tuition, there are Media & Production fees totaling $84 for this course.

July 2-August 12, 2018
Mondays & Wednesdays
6:00-10:00pm

Alexander Davis

CINE-UT 420 / c#6004

In an era where everything from awards shows to late-night television skewers our nation’s highest office, it’s hard to imagine what it felt like to live in a country where rejecting the government and standard modes of living felt radical. This course will look back at one of the most famous groups of anti-establishment radicals in US history, the hippies, in an attempt to understand what it originally meant to be counter-culture. While predominantly concerned with hippie cinema, this course will take a multidisciplinary approach to hippiedom, with sections on the art, music, fashion, literature, and lifestyle (including drugs) of the movement. In doing so, this course will address basic questions like: what did it mean to be counterculture in the 1960s? In what ways did hippies express their rejection of the status quo? How did hippies envision an alternate future for the US? Ultimately, this course will also critically interrogate what it means to be a counter-culture at all, and what it means to position oneself against “the establishment.” Along the way, we’ll be studying such artists as Bob Dylan, Carolee Schneemann, Arthur Penn, Yoko Ono, Buckminster Fuller, Adrian Piper, The Beatles, Andy Warhol, Jimi Hendrix, Thomas Pynchon, and more! 

This course is open to undergraduate students only.

NOTE: In addition to tuition, there are Media & Production fees totaling $84 for this course.

July 2-August 12, 2018
Mondays & Wednesdays
12:30-4:30pm

Tanya Goldman

CINE-UT 251 / c#5696

American independent film has always operated in tandem with the Hollywood mainstream, but its specific manifestations have never been static or monolithic. This course examines independent film through the lens of the contemporary “indie,” a buzzword whose meanings extend far beyond autonomous projects unbeholden to money-hungry Hollywood executives. Yet, since the 1990s, “indie film” has increasingly been institutionalized on the domestic festival circuit and through studio specialty divisions; it has also become a conduit through which young actors and directors may "graduate" to higher-budget, blockbuster fare. At the same time, the indie has come to possess specific narrative formulas, styles, and representational connotations that arguably make it a genre classification unto itself. In its ubiquity, then, has the “indie” outlived its relevance? With these considerations in mind, students will examine a cross section of fiction films that characterize 21st century American fiction filmmaking outside—and, in
many cases, alongside or even inside—the Hollywood mainstream. We will consider independence as practiced and reflected in matters of production, narrative, formal style, and racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual identity. At the end of the course, students will produce their own original research project on a current independent filmmaker of their choice. We will test the boundaries of “indie” through in-class screenings and discussions of the works of current filmmakers such as Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, Sofia Coppola, Todd Haynes, Jim Jarmusch, Charlie Kaufman, Harmony Korine, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Mike Mills, Kelly Reichardt, Quentin Tarantino, Gregg Araki, Ryan Coogler, Dee Rees, and Todd Solondz.

This course is open to undergraduate students only.

NOTE: In addition to tuition, there are Media & Production fees totaling $84 for this course.