TUESDAYS 6 - 10 PM

Course Description & Objectives

            While film-going is a frequent activity, one’s intuitive familiarity with film does not necessarily provide one with the capability to accurately analyse the medium’s formal elements and understand its aesthetic possibilities. Therefore, in the interests of arriving at a more thorough comprehension of and appreciation for cinematic art, we will adopt an analytic approach to the study of film form. This method is known as filmic poetics, which focuses on the function, effects and uses of a film’s applied constructive principles. Particularly, we will explore some of the medium’s basic formal properties, including narrative structure, compositional norms and performance elements. In turn, we shall ascertain how film artists mobilize these principles in the combined interests of articulating meaning and the development of their own personal style.

            Considerable attention will be paid to the interrelation between form and content, and thus we will be able to express more concisely how a film asserts its significance. Each of the medium’s inherent features will also be thoroughly described, including narrative structure, mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, sound and acting. In attending to the full historical and global range of world cinema from the 1920s to the present, we will acquire the skills necessary to analyse critically a film’s expressive capacities with comprehensive precision.

Course Objectives

• To learn the essential components of cinematic form and how they assert meaning
• To understand the interrelation between a film’s form and its content
• To acquire the skills necessary to analyse a film’s expressive capacity