Undergraduate courses in Film Studies

Formal, historical, and cultural issues in the study of film. Classical narrative cinema compared with alternative narrative structures, documentary films, and experimental cinematic forms. Issues of cinematic language and visual perception, and representations of gender, ethnicity, and sexuality. Aesthetic and conceptual analytic skills with relevance to cinema. GER:DB-Hum

5 units, Aut (Staff)

FILMSTUD 100A. History of World Cinema I, 1895-1929

(Same as FILMSTUD 300A.) From cinema's precursors to the advent of synchronized sound. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Aut (Staff)

FILMSTUD 100B. History of World Cinema II, 1930-1959

(Same as FILMSTUD 300B.) The impact of sound to the dissolution of Hollywood's studio system. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Win (Staff)

FILMSTUD 100C. History of World Cinema III, 1960-Present

(Same as FILMSTUD 300C.) From the rise of the French New Wave to the present. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, not given this year

FILMSTUD 101. Fundamentals of Cinematic Analysis

(Same as FILMSTUD 301.) The close analysis of film. Emphasis is on formal and narrative techniques in structure and style, and detailed readings of brief sequences. Elements such as cinematography, mise-en-scÃ¨ne, composition, sound, and performance. Films from various historical periods, national cinemas, directors, and genres. Prerequisite: FILMSTUD 4 or equivalent. Recommended: ARTHIST 1 or FILMSTUD 102. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Aut (Bukatman, S)

FILMSTUD 102. Theories of the Moving Image

(Same as FILMSTUD 302.) Major theoretical arguments and debates about cinema: realism,formalism, poststructuralism, feminism, postmodernism, and phenomenology. Prerequisites: ARTHIST 1, FILMSTUD 4. GER:DB-Hum, WIM

4 units, Spr (Ma, J)

FILMSTUD 111. The Body in American Genre Film: From Chaplin to The Matrix

(Same as FILMSTUD 311.) The American genre film as a mass form that shares elements with a carnivalesque, folk culture such as a rejection of politeness and piety, and an emphasis on the physical. Genres include comedy, western, war, science fiction, musical, horror, melodrama, gangster, and cult, exploitation, and blaxploitation films. The place of the body onscreen. How does the body exist in relation to the world, other bodies, and the act of perception? What meaning does bodily movement have in relation to narrative? GER:DB-Hum

4 units, not given this year

FILMSTUD 114. Comics: A Lively Art

(Same as FILMSTUD 314.) History and aesthetics of comics in relation to emerging mass media and modernist and postmodernist aesthetic and narrative practices. Focus is on innovators in humorous and dramatic strips, superheroes, undergrounds and independents, political commentary, and autobiography. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, not given this year

FILMSTUD 115. Documentary Issues and Traditions

(Same as FILMSTUD 315.) Issues include objectivity/subjectivity, ethics, censorship, representation, reflexivity, responsibility to the audience, and authorial voice. Parallel focus on form and content. GER:DB-SocSci

4 units, not given this year

FILMSTUD 116. International Documentary

(Same as FILMSTUD 316.) Historical, aesthetic, and formal developments of documentary through nonfiction films in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Aut (Meltzer, J)

FILMSTUD 130. Italian Cinema: Neorealism and Beyond

(Same as FILMSTUD 330.) The post-WW II era. Aesthetic and sociopolitical dimensions of neorealism; 60s cinema of economic miracle; and Italian variations on popular film genres such as the spaghetti western. Filmmakers include Rossellini, De Sica, Visconti, Pasolini, and Antonioni. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, not given this year

FILMSTUD 131. Politics and Aesthetics in East European Cinema

(Same as FILMSTUD 331.) From 1945 to the mid-80s, emphasizing Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, and Yugoslav contexts. The relationship between art and politics; postwar establishment of film industries; and emergence of national film movements such as the Polish school, Czech new wave, and new Yugoslav film. Thematic and aesthetic preoccupations of filmmakers such as Wajda, Jancso, Forman, and Kusturica. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, not given this year

FILMSTUD 132. East Asian Cinema

(Same as FILMSTUD 332.) Social, historical, and aesthetic dimensions of the cinemas of Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China, and Korea. Topics such as nation and gender, form and genre, and local and transnational conditions of practice and reception. Screenings include popular and art films from the silent to contemporary eras, including, Zhang Yimou, Wong Kar-wai, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Ozu Yasujiro, Kurosawa Akira, and Im Kwon-taek.

4 units, not given this year

FILMSTUD 133A. Latin American Cinema

(Same as FILMSTUD 333A.) Emphasis is on Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Cuba. How filmmakers represent and sometimes rewrite key moments in national history. When have filmmakers constructed a dialogue with older cinematic traditions versus breaking from past practices? How have political concerns shaped cinematic practices. Directors include Fernando de Fuentes, Luis Buñuel, Leopoldo Torre Nilsson, Patricio Guzmán, Humberto Solas, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Lucrecia Martel, and Héctor Babenco.

4 units, not given this year

FILMSTUD 134A. Poetic Cinema: The Soviet School

(Same as FILMSTUD 334A.) The poetic or archaic school of Soviet cinema which emerged primarily in the non-Russian Soviet Republics in the 60s and 70s and traced its aesthetic to the films of Aleksandr Dovzhenko. Films by Dovzhenko, Andrei Tarkovsky, Sergei Parajanov, Tengiz Abuladze, and Otar Ioseliani. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Spr (Staff)

FILMSTUD 144. Experimental Video Workshop

(Same as FILMSTUD 344.) Theory and practice of the moving image. Students work on video exercises and experiments as applied theory: attempts at practically implementing, verifying, or challenging ideas about sound, image, and performance. Prerequisites: FILMPROD 114 or equivalent, and consent of instructor.

4 units, not given this year

FILMSTUD 150. Cinema and the City

(Same as FILMSTUD 350.) Utopian built environments of vast perceptual and experiential richness in the cinema and city. Changing understandings of urban space in film. The cinematic city as an arena of social control, social liberation, collective memory, and complex experience. Films from international narrative traditions, industrial films, experimental cinema, documentaries, and musical sequences. Recommended: 4 or equivalent. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, Win (Bukatman, S)

FILMSTUD 152. Cinema-Machine

(Same as FILMSTUD 352.) The film medium as culmination of the industrial and electronic revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the apotheosis of modernist impulses around the problematic of a perfect vision and visibility. The ideal of cinema in relation to its technological basis: the film apparatus as mechanical artifact, desiring machine, phenomenological toy, and instrument of knowledge. Screenings. GER:DB-Hum

4 units, not given this year

FILMSTUD 220. Being John Wayne

John Wayne's imposing corporeality and easy comportment combined to create an icon of masculinity, the American West, and America itself. Focus is on the films that contributed most to the establishment, maturation, and deconstruction of the iconography and mythology of the John Wayne character. The western and war film as genres; the crisis of and performance of masculinity in postwar culture; gender and sexuality in American national identity; relations among individualism, community, and the state; the Western and national memory; and patriotism and the Vietnam War.

5 units, Spr (Bukatman, S)

FILMSTUD 230. Cinema and Ideology

The relationship between cinema and ideology from theoretical and historical perspectives, emphasizing Marxist and psychoanalytic approaches. The practice of political filmmaking, and the cinema as an audiovisual apparatus and socio-cultural institution. Topics include: dialectics; revolutionary aesthetics; language and power; commodity fetishism; and nationalism. Filmmakers include Dziga Vertov, Jean-Luc Godard, Bruce Conner, and Marco Ferreri. Theoretical writers include Karl Marx, Sergei Eisenstein, and Slavoj Zizek. Prerequisite: consent of instructor.

5 units, not given this year

FILMSTUD 231. Contemporary Chinese Auteurs

New film cultures and movements in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China in the 80s. Key directors including Jia Zhangke, Wu Wenguang, Tsai Ming-liang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wong Kar-wai, Ann Hui. Topics include national cinema in the age of globalization, the evolving parameters of art cinema, and authorship.

5 units, Aut (Ma, J)

FILMSTUD 290. Senior Seminar: Movies and Methods

Capstone course for majors. Topics vary year to year. Focus is on historiography and theory.

5 units, Win (Ma, J)

FILMSTUD 297. Honors Thesis Writing

May be repeated for credit.

1-5 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff)

FILMSTUD 299. Independent Study: Film and Media Studies

May be repeated for credit.

1-15 units, Aut (Staff), Win (Staff), Spr (Staff)

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Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09

Stanford Bulletin, Archive 2008-09

Alphabetical Index

Bulletin Archive

Undergraduate courses in Film Studies