Evolution of Cinema as Art II

Course Type	Course Code	No. Of Credits
Foundation Core	SCC2FS101	4

Semester and Year Offered: Winter

Course Coordinator and Team: Dr Rajan Krishnan and team

Email of course coordinator: rajan[at]aud[dot]ac[dot]in

No pre-requisites.

Course Objectives/Description:

This course focuses on how the technical invention of the possibility movement image on screen evolved into an art form capable of fictional narration. It uses key theoretical texts on early cinema and the milestone films that helped the evolution.

This course forms the basis for the structure laid out in ECA-II. It is the first part of a progressive course, that lays out a schema for the study of key world cinema debates across ECA I and II.

Course Outcomes:

Enable students to understand historical and theoretical ways of thinking about cinema. Thus, producing disciplinary knowledge of film studies. The course will form part of the core courses for MA Film Studies. It aids, thus, in the building of disciplinary knowledge and in this it is central to the very foundational discourses and debates of the programme.

Given that this course engages with cinema in relationship to national and transnational cinemas, it allows for multicultural competence.

This course allows for an engagement with a variety of transnational forms of cinema, prompting discussions of various aesthetic values and an appreciation thereof.

The course aims to instill both critical thinking and analytical reasoning through an engagement with canonical readings on cinema and viewing films.

Introduces students to the study of cinema as a medium through talking about ways of seeing films and filmic analysis, thus promotes medium-specific expressions.

Brief description of modules/ Main modules:

See reading list below.

Assessment Details with weights:

Response papers (40%)
Final term paper (30%)
Class participation (30%)

Reading List:

WEEK 1

LECTURE 1 & 2- Introduction: Beginnings of Cinema

Siegfried Kracauer, “Basic Concepts” in Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997, 27-41.

CLIPS: Lumiere Films, Kinetoscope Films/ George Melies, A Trip to the Moon (1902)

WEEK 2

LECTURE 3 & 4 - Early Cinema- Cinema of Attractions

Tom Gunning, “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant Garde” in Thomas Elsaesser, ed. Early Cinema Space, Frame, Narrative. London: British Film Institute, 1990, 56-62.

Film: Edwin S. Porter The Great Train Robbery (1903)

WEEK 3

LECTURE 5 - The Silent Film Form and Genres

Bela Balzacs, “The Close-Up”, in Gerald Mast, Marshall Cohen & Leo Braudy Eds. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, 260-267

CLIPS: D.W. Griffith The Birth of a Nation (1915)/ Intolerance (1916)

Buster Keaton Sherlock Jr (1924)

LECTURE 6- Indian Silent Cinema

Suresh Chabria, “D.G. Phalke and the Melies Tradition in Early Indian Cinema”, Kintop 2. Frankfurt am Main, 1993, 103-115.

CLIPS: D.G. Phalke Raja Harishchandra 1913/Kaliya Mardan 1919; Shivendra Dungarpur Celluloid Man (2013); Paresh Mokashi Harishchandrachi Factory (2009)

Suggested Reading: Eric Barnouw and Krishnaswamy, “Three Get Started” in Indian Film: 2nd Edition. New York, Oxford, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1980, 59-71. *

WEEK 4

LECTURE 7&8 - Soviet Montage

Sergei Eisenstein, “A Dialectic Approach to Film Form” in Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, Edited and Translated by Jay Leyda, San Diego, New York, London: A harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers: 1977, 45-63.