Spring 2020 Undergraduate Courses

Dan Streible
Wednesdays / 12:30PM – 4:30pm / Room 648
4 points
CINE-UT 15 / Class # 14979

DESCRIPTION

Examines cinema form and culture from the late 19th-century through the late 1920s, commonly known as "the silent era." Explores the historical contexts that governed the emergence of film as art and mass culture. Investigates the different approaches to filmmaking that developed, internationally, in the silent period. Screenings include early cinema, works of Hollywood drama and comedy, Russian film and Soviet montage cinema, Weimar cinema, and silent black cinema.

Recitations
Tuesdays / Room 646
                                          Class #       
002:  11:00am – 12:15pm      14980
003:  12:30pm – 1:45pm        14981
004:  2:00pm – 3:15pm         14982

Feng-Mei Heberer
Thursdays / 12:30PM - 4:30pm / Room 648
4 points
CINE-UT 21 / Class # 14983

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.

Cinema Studies majors only.

Recitations
Wednesdays / Room 646
                                          Class #
002:  11:00pm – 12:15pm     14984
003:  12:30pm – 1:45pm       14985
004:  2:00pm – 3:15pm         14986

William Simon
Mondays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 652
4 points
CINE-UT 700 / Class # 15052

This seminar will provide an in-depth study of the films of Robert Altman. Primary emphasis will be placed on his development of a narrative mode which in its emphasis on a multi-character structure constitutes an alternative to classical Hollywood filmmaking. As well, his innovations in the uses of sound, editing, camera movement and performance will be considered. The topic of genre transformation defined in relation to historical, political and cultural characteristics of especially 1970’s America will provide another topic of interest. The seminar will concentrate on Altman's status as a renegade filmmaker during the 1970’s, but also provide a sense of the overall contours of his career. Screenings, readings and papers will be required.  

Cinema Studies majors only. Permission code required.

Zhen Zhang
Wednesdays / 6:00-10:00pm / Room 652
4 points
CINE-UT 707 / Class # 21881

Childhood is a persistent topic of countless films throughout the history of cinema worldwide, with an intended audience not limited to children. The focus of this course is not children’s films per se, but “childhood” in world cinema and in popular culture, discussed from an array of historical and theoretical perspectives. The concerns and topics of the course include: the intimate relationship between early cinema and childhood (and by extension, childhood and modernity); conceptions and representations of childhood in different cinematic (and cultural) traditions and historical periods; ideological critiques and other theoretical models in engaging screen and media portrayals of childhood, including feminism, gender and sexuality studies, child studies. Weekly screenings will feature early actualities, silent narrative film, musical, documentary, animation, and more. Students are expected to actively take part in discussions and presentations, and complete a final research paper.

Cinema Studies majors only. Permission code required.

Chris Straayer
Tuesdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 652
4 points
CINE-UT 710 / Class # 15430

The status of film noir, a 1940-50s American film phenomenon named by French critics, remains hotly debated. Was it a genre, a thematic movement, or a stylistic innovation? Was it the product of post war malaise? Was it knowingly existentialist? Was it a voice from society’s underside? Did it admit disrupted gender roles? Was it perverse? Was it American? And, finally, how has it intensified and morphed in more recent filmmaking? We address such topics as international and interdisciplinary influences, philosophical and psychological references, artistic and literary precursors, historical and cultural resonances, war-time and post-war culture, industrial and technical implications, semantic and syntactic elements, adaptation, production economics, genre hybridity, narrative structure, urban locations, racialized space, masculinity in crisis, and the femme fatale. We also examine film noir’s relation to modernist literature, hard-boiled fiction, tabloid and photojournalism, German expressionism, French poetic realism, and surrealism. A tentative list of films includes: Double Indemnity, Crossfire, Detour, The Naked City, Mildred Pierce, Gilda, Kiss Me Deadly, Out of the Past, and Murder, My Sweet.

Cinema Studies majors only. Permission code required.  

Anna McCarthy
Mondays / 6:00-10:00pm / Room 652
2 points / Meets January 27 – March 23 ONLY
CINE-UT 119 / 001 Class # 23690 / 002 Class # 23691

Although critics have written extensively about Hitchcock’s leading ladies, no one has ever had much to say about his old ladies. It is a good thing that these eccentric individuals are mere characters, as they would certainly make a fuss if they knew they were so overlooked. This two-credit course examines the narrative patterns old ladies make in Hitchcock's films, and explores their cultural significance.  As we shall discover, Hitchcock's old ladies embody difficult personality traits--crankiness, forgetfulness, gullibility--thus allowing us to isolate some of the analytic problems raised by aging in the classical Hollywood cinema. And, more profoundly, Hitchcock's old ladies help us access the forms of absence and voiding through which these films engulf their spectator: death, castration, misogyny, and fear.

Josslyn Luckett
Mondays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 674
4 points
CINE-UT 314 / 001 Class # 21885 / 002 Class # 21886

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.

William Simon
Wednesdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 674
4 points
CINE-UT 444 / 001 Class # 21882 / 002 Class # 21883

This course will examine a tendency in American narrative film during the 1960’s and the first half of the 1970’s. This tendency can be generally defined as putting into dialogue two characteristics: 1) innovation in narrative structure and the use of genre; and 2) a critical perspective towards aspects of American culture and politics. We shall study specific narrative and genre qualities which differentiate this period of American film-making from classical norms. And we shall relate motifs of the films in relation to specific historical manifestations in politics, society and culture. Film-makers include Kubrick, Penn, Peckinpah, Wexler, Lester, Coppola, Malick, Pakula, Scorsese, and Altman. Screenings, readings, and papers required.

Zhen Zhang
Tuesdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 674
4 points
CINE-UT 450 / 001 Class # 21887 / 002 Class # 21888

Critically evaluating select influential scholarship in Asian film studies from the last two decades, this course aims to reconsider and move beyond existing paradigms such as national cinema, world cinema, and transnational cinema, in addition to categories or assumptions derived from traditional area studies with origins in the cold war cultural politics.  While critically reviewing literature on specific cases of national and regional cinemas (e.g.; China, Japan, India), we will explore alternative perspectives on trans-Asian and trans-hemispheric film culture histories (for example, film policy, censorship, co-production, traveling genres, festivals), as well as contemporary formations under the impact of globalization and digital media.  With a focus on historiography and methodology, the course serves as a forum for developing innovative research projects that cut across disciplinary as well as geopolitical boundaries. 

Ed Guerrero
Tuesdays / 4:55-7:35pm / Room 674
4 points
CINE-UT 470 / 002 Class # 20973

In this course we will explore how commercial cinema forecasts, initiates, records, depicts, historicizes and overall, mediates social change. But conversely and obviously cinema is changed by tidal shifts and sudden upheavals in society. So our readings, screenings and critical writing will examine how Hollywood, as well as a number of national and emergent cinemas, and independent cinema movements, coopt, repress, diagnose, or call for social change, but also how change creates new cinematic styles, genres, narratives and formulas. We will also look at various modes of change in society including nationalist, independence and anti-colonial struggles, resistance movements, emergent identities, eco-change and gender and sexual shifts. Moreover, we will interrogate a number of key theories and concepts related to social change and the cinema, such as “third cinema” “cinema novo” “blaxploitation” “the social problem picture” “the historical epic” “crossover” and “imperfect cinema.”

Cinema Studies majors only. All other students must enroll under SCA-UA 180.002.

Eric Kohn
Tuesdays / 6:00-10:00pm / Room 670
4 points
CINE-UT 475 / 002 Class # 21903 / 003 Class # 21904

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 design 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. 

Dana Polan
Tuesdays / 6:00-10:00pm / Room 648
4 points
CINE-UT 51 / Class # 14987

Cross-listed with FMTV-UT 324

This course offers a broad survey of American cinema from 1960 up to the present.  While the emphasis will be on the dominant, narrative fiction film, there will be attention to other modes of American cinema such as experimental film, animation, shorts, and non-fiction film.  The course will look closely at films themselves -- how do their styles and narrative structures change over time? -- but also at contexts:  how do films reflect their times?  how does the film industry develop? what are the key institutions that had impact on American film over its history?  We will also attend to the role of key figures in film's history:  from creative personnel (for example, the director or the screenwriter) to industrialists and administrators, to censors to critics and to audiences themselves.  The goal will be to provide an overall understanding of one of the most consequential of modern popular art forms and of its particular contributions to the art and culture of our modernity.

Recitations
Thursdays / Room 646
                                            Class #
002:  11:00 am – 12:15 pm      14988
003:  12:30 pm – 1:45 pm        14989        
004:  2:00 pm – 3:15 pm          14990

Lukas Brasiskis
Wednesdays / 6:00-9:30pm / Room 648
4 points
CINE-UT 56 / Class # 14991

Cross-listed with FMTV-UT 322

This course presents a comprehensive overview of filmmaking practices across the world since the 1960s and explores the basic methods for analyzing the history and aesthetics of international cinema. Film screenings and additional clips consist of narrative and non-fiction films, including the works of noted film directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jean-Luc Godard, Abbas Kiarostami, Lucrecia Martel, Kira Muratova, Glauber Rocha, Ousmane Sembène, Jia Zhanghe, among many others.

Throughout the course students will study international films from historical, aesthetic and theoretical perspectives specifically focusing on (1) the development of national and transnational cinemas and their relations to the larger cultural, political, and industrial contexts in which they are embedded, (2) the evolution of various styles and aesthetic traditions, and (3) the legacy of individual “auteurs”. 

Recitations
Fridays / Room 646
                                             Class #
002:  11:00 am – 12:15 pm       14992
003:  12:30 pm – 1:45 pm         14993
004:  2:00 pm – 3:15 pm           14994

Josslyn Luckett
Wednesdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 670
4 points
CINE-UT 400 / Class # 21884

MGM screenwriter Dorothy Farnum once described script writers as "stokers of a ship, necessary but condemned to the hold of obscurity...we do work so the stars and directors will have a nice time on deck." This course is designed to center the work of the writer by analyzing the techniques employed by both Hollywood and independent screenwriters such as Waldo Salt, Sabrina Dhawan, Dee Rees, Ava DuVernay, Bill Gunn, Guillermo Arriaga, John Sayles and Jennifer Phang (in several cases we will screen at least two different films by the same screenwriter). We start in the "hold" by exploring the formal elements of the script (character, scene, dialogue, plot structure, genre). We then move to consider how underrepresented communities are served by the efforts of script writers to bring untold stories to big and small screens, thereby changing and challenging film culture.  

Cinema Studies majors only.

David Bagnall
Mondays / 6:20-9:00pm / Room 108
4 points
CINE-GT 1401 / Class # 7084

This course examines documentary principles, methods, and styles.  Both the function and the significance of the documentary in the social setting, and the ethics of the documentary are considered. Course open to all students. No codes required.

Ed Guerrero
Wednesdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Cantor 102
4 points
CORE-UA 750 / Class # 8319

Recitations
Fridays
                                            Class #:                    002:  8:00 am – 9:15 am          8320
003:  9:30 am – 10:45 am        8321
004:  11:00 am – 12:15 pm      8322
005:  12:30 pm – 1:45 pm        8323                     006:  2:00 pm – 3:15 pm         8324                     007:  3:30 pm – 4:45 pm         8325
008: 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm           10230        
009: 3:30 pm – 4:45pm           10231

Robert Stam
Tuesdays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 670
4 points
CINE-GT 2117 / Class # 21895

This course will cover much of the history of Brazilian cinema, from the musical-comedy chanchadas of the thirties and forties, through the Hollywood-style (Vera Cruz) productions of the fifties, through the diverse phases of Cinema Novo up to the latest features such as City of God and Elite Squad. Although a film course that pays close attention to the filmic texts, the approach is also one of (multi)cultural studies, with an emphasis especially on issues of race and multicultural expression. Films will be seen as part of a discursive continuum that includes history, literature, music, and performance. Some of the topics foregrounded will include national allegory, the trope of carnival, the ambiguities of race, and multicultural dissonance as artistic resource. Students are expected to write a term-paper on a subject related to Brazilian Cinema.

Dan Streible
Mondays / 12:30-4:30pm / Room 670
4 points
CINE-GT 1806 / Class # 7132

This course focuses on the practice of film exhibition and programming in museums, archives, and independent exhibition venues. It examines the goals of public programming, the constituencies such programs attempt to reach, and the cultural ramifications of presenting archival materials to audiences. Students will study how archives can encourage increasing quantities and different forms of access through their own publications, events, and productions, as well as through the role of new technologies (DVD, CD-ROM, the Internet). They will study how these methods of circulation provoke interest, study and appreciation of archive and museum moving image collections. The seminar will also treat such themes as: individual vs. collective access; film programming design, budget, documentation, and print control; legal issues; projection, and theater management; archival loans, the "Archive Film"; stock footage services; and film stills archive services.

Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Students outside of the Moving Image Archiving & Preservation (MIAP) MA Program: please email tisch.preservation@nyu.edu to request enrollment and provide your N-Number.

CINE-UT 901 / Class # 14995
1-4 points variable

CINE-UT 903 / Class # 14996
1-4 points variable

A student wishing to conduct independent research for credit must obtain approval from a faculty member 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 present a signed “Independent Study Form” at the department office when you register. This form must be completely filled out, detailing your independent study project. It must have your faculty sponsor’s signature (whomever you have chosen to work with - this is not necessarily your advisor) indicating their approval. 

CINE-UT 950 / Class # 15244
1-4 points variable

CINE-UT 952 / Class # 15245
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.