Week 15* Jan 25th Toward A Global Film Culture

Thompson, Kristine & Bordwell, David, 2010. “Toward a Global Film Culture”, Film History: An Introduction, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 694-712 [click HERE]

Final Paper: Due on February 6th, whole day

Write a 1000-1500 word essay (typed, double-spaced, 12-point font, and 1” margins all around; refer to Chicago Manual of Style; check the course blog for detailed instruction on the style, especially with online resources

Your Final Paper should focus on ONE of the periods/segments of film history listed below (refer to the end of this handout)—it would be great if you could think of a title for your essay (better NOT to only use the ‘Period’ as your title); at least ONE references you will be using should be from our syllabus while you are always welcome to quote other academic/semi-academic sources.

SUBMISSION: Please submit the essay to the lecturer’s email address maran@lit.nagoya-u.ac.jp with the subject “Final Paper IFH”; PLEASE format your FILE NAME as ‘IFH final paper+Your Name’ (because there are many students submitting final essays for different courses). I’d send confirmation email once your assignment is received. Late submission is not accepted unless emergency happens.

Format

Include the following information at the top of each assignment:

Your Name Course Title Submission Date Final Paper                                                                      Title of article

Note on Plagiarism:

Plagiarism: A writer who presents the ideas of words of another as if they were the writer’s own (that is, without proper citation) commits plagiarism. Plagiarism is not tolerable in this course or at Nagoya University. You should avoid making quotes or drawing on figures from nowhere—you must provide sources of reference for quotation and/or citations you use in the paper. This applies to images and media clips as well. Failure to observe this would risk being charged of plagiarism. In this University, plagiarism is a disciplinary offence. Any student who commits the offence is liable to disciplinary action. [All assignments/papers will be checked]

AIM & CONTENT:

Statements presented in our major textbook are narratives and arguments built upon solid historical ‘evidences’; they are difficult to refute, challenge, or modify if we are not pushing ourselves for further, advanced film history studies—which we will NOT require you to achieve at the moment. As BA students, it is sufficient that you are clear about how the basic conditions of film institution, film art, and film cultures have been approached and analyzed with each specific period by our authors; of course even better if you know how would each period connect with another; what would be the national, or transnational connections in terms of film business and film cultures and so forth.

For this Final Paper assignment, you are expected to

1) Demonstrate your understanding about a very specific period of world film history (again refer to the list; you could re-use your discussions in your reading journals; could relate to your THP); If you want to make comparative studies, you need to talk to me about your ideas in advance

2) Focus on one or several related aspect(s) of the film history—could be the industrial structure; technological innovation; trends in film culture; film movement; filmmaker and/or star; film style etc.. Better illustrate your ideas with one or two films as your examples—the films could be those that we watched together in class, but could also be other works.

It is very important for me to learn about YOUR (not the subjective you, but a writer for academic paper) own perspectives; remember this is an essay, NO LONGER simply a piece of literature review.  For example, you may want to demonstrate your understanding of 1930s’ Japanese silent cinema with a focus on the tradition of Benshi; or about the 1960s’ European art cinema movement by looking at French New Wave and Agnes Varda’s Cleo 5 to 7.

List of Periods

1. Early Cinema: Origins, Machines and Attractions

2.     National Cinemas: 1913-1919

3.   Soviet Cinema: 1919-1929

4. the Late Silent Era in Hollywood (and Europe)

5. Early Cinemas in East Asia until the 1930s

6. The Hollywood Studio System: 1930-1945

7. Postwar European Cinema: Art Cinema & New Waves

8. The New Hollywood

9.Western European Cinemas since the 1970s

10. Toward a Global Film Culture

Required & Reference Readings: please refer to your syllabus.

Vietnam the Movie

VIETNAM THE MOVIE
Nguyen Trinh Thi
Vietnam | 2016 | 54 mins | Multiple Languages

Vietnam the Movie uses a carefully structured montage of clips from drama and documentary films to give a chronological account of Vietnamese history from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s, encompassing the end of French colonialism and America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. But this is no conventional history lesson. Rather, the excerpts chosen contrast a variety of external and often oppositional views, ranging from mainstream Hollywood drama to European art-house. Source material from the US includes Apocalypse Now, Born on the Fourth of July and Forrest Gump, whilst Europe is represented by the works of Harun Farocki, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog and Jean-Luc Godard. Director Nguyễn Trinh also splices extracts from the films of Nagisa Oshima, Satyajit Ray and Ann Hui into the mix. The result suggests that any ‘true’ picture of Vietnam has been lost to the multiplicity of symbolic purposes to which the country, its people and their tribulations have been put.

(Dharamshala International Film Festival)

https://vimeo.com/189571413

Week 14 *Jan 18th (West) European Cinemas Since the 1970s

Werner Herzog [screening retrospective in town click HERE]

TK&BD, 2010. “New Cinemas and New Developments: Europe and the U.S.S.R. since the 1970s”, Film History: An Introduction, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 566-587 [click HERE]