Seminar in Film Studies:  Before Sundance:  The Roots of American Independence Cinema (Professor Heather Hendershot): Many of the most respected directors, writers, and cinematographers of 1970s American cinema got their start working with Roger Corman in the late 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, one might say that the roots of the renaissance of American cinema in the 1970s can be found in the cheap independent films of the 50s and 60s. This course, then, catches many of the important and interesting "marginal" films that often fall through the cracks of film history classes. The course focuses on American independent genre cinema of the post-studio era, up to about 1989, the year that Sex, Lies and Videotape premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, kicking off the American independent cinema movement that would be exploited and commercialized by both Sundance and Miramax. Within a few years of the release of Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, "independent cinema" was scarcely independent at all. It had become a marketing category. Avoiding romanticization, this course looks back to the preceding era, when truly independent cinema was produced using creative (if often dubious) funding and distribution strategies. The class examines issues of aesthetics and authorship, as well as economic and industrial issues. Students will study what one might roughly call A, B, and C pictures. ("Roughly" since, technically, the A-B designations refer to the era of studio dominance that began to decay in 1948). At the A level, we will briefly look at how former contract players made the transition to semi-independent filmmaking, some as producers (Kirk Douglas), others as directors (Jerry Lewis).
At the next level down in terms of cultural prestige, the class will consider a number of "low-rent auteurs," independents such as Roger Corman, John Carpenter, George A. Romero, and William Castle who made genre pictures on the edge of Hollywood, often creating films paying direct or indirect homage to A-list auteurs. In other words, to understand Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13, one must also understand its relationship to the "high end" Rio Bravo, as well as Assault’s "low-end" antecedent, Night of the Living Dead. Similarly, we will consider the Castle-Hitchcock dialectic. At the C level, we will consider the increase in pornography, horror, and exploitation during this era, and, of course, the changing legal landscape that allowed such graphic films to proliferate. The final part of the class will turn to the rise of the "film school brats" (focusing on Scorsese), as well as directors such as Kevin Smith, Spike Lee, and Errol Morris, independent filmmakers who made important low-budget films on the cusp of the Sundance explosion. Throughout the semester, students will be asked to interrogate the complex relationship between "high" and "low" culture, the strength and weaknesses of auteur theory, and the industrial and theoretical meanings of "independent" filmmaking. Though clips from avant-garde and experimental work will be shown where appropriate, and some time will be devoted to documentary production and the high-art end of independent production (e.g. Shadows), the bulk of the class will focus on feature-length genre films. Our primary emphasis will be on American cinema, but we will also examine the ways that some independent American films draw upon ideas and aesthetics from European art cinema, and vice-versa (e.g. Masque of the Red Death as a riff on The Seventh Seal; Godard’s homage to Ladies Man in Tout va bien). Each week students will see one film in class. To prepare for class, though, students will often be asked to see an additional film on their own to provide background context. There will also be recommended films each week for extra motivated students. Readings will focus on theoretical issues of authorship, as well as historical and industrial issues. Autobiographies of a number of directors will be read critically. Students will write a final 25-30 page research paper at the end of the semester. A list of readings and films is available in the Certificate Programs Office/Room 5109.
Wednesdays, 4:15pm to 8:15pm.

Seminar in Film Studies: Chinese Cinema(s) & the Art of Transnationalism (Professor Peter Hitchcock) Chinese cinema has just celebrated its 100th anniversary. This course aims to track the extraordinary developments in Chinese film production and distribution of the last quarter century along several contrasting yet linked trajectories: economic and social changes within East Asia, the paths and perils of diaspora, and specific coordinates of globalization that interpellate various forms of "Chineseness" in transnational image markets.. By now most Americans are familiar with the diasporic delights of, for instance, a John Woo action film or the enormously successful Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon of Ang Lee. Art house audiences have also come to appreciate the Fifth Generation work of Chen Kaige or Zhang Yimou, the postmodern Hong Kong of Wong Kar-Wai, or the nationalist dilemmas and more complex Chineseness of Taiwan in the films of Edward Yang or Hou Hsiao-hsien. New generations of filmmakers have recently begun to make their mark, like Zhang Yuan or Jia Zhangke (a "Sixth Generation") of China, or Fruit Chan of Hong Kong, and Tsai Mingliang of Taiwan. Critics have used "Chinese transnational cinema" as an umbrella term for this production and there is much to recommend such analysis. "Chinese cinema(s) in the age of Globalization" will seek, however, to complicate and deepen this approach, first by coming to terms with the ideological and other underpinnings of "Chineseness" and by questioning whether the transnational production and circulation of Chinese film is simply an integer of commodification and economic prowess. What elements, themes, or innovations of Chinese film narrative disrupt the tidy categories of "nation" and "state" identities in world cinema? What is the evidence in Chinese film itself? How might the globality of Chinese cinema paradoxically unhinge or problematize globalization (a question that goes beyond whether Chinese stars [Zhang and Gong] are used to represent Japanese)? In this way, it is hoped that the course will not only function as a primer for understanding the immense impact of recent Chinese film, but more importantly as an in-depth series of case studies on the new ways we might think about national cinema and the contours of film history. Films will include: Yellow Earth (Chen), Red Sorghum (Zhang), The Women’s Story (Peng) Terrorizer (Yang), City of Sadness (Hou), Rouge (Kwan), Durian Durian (Chan), What Time is It There? and Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai), Suzhou River (Ye), Green Tea (Zhang) and Platform and The World (Jia). Readings will be drawn from, for example, Lu (ed.) Transnational Chinese Cinemas, Lu, China, Transnational Visuality, Global Postmodernity, Chow, Modern Chinese Literary and Cultural Studies in the Age of Theory, and Dai, Cinema and Desire, as well as extracts from Hitchcock, Jameson, Dirlik, Marchetti, Zhang, Zizek, Chow, Appadurai, Berry, and Yip. We will consider at least one example of fiction in order to examine processes of adaptation. I hope to include some art house alternatives in the form of sci-fi (2046 [Wong]) and "underground" video as well as special guests (a director or Chinese film scholar currently based in New York). Course Requirements: a class presentation and a 20-25 page final paper. It is hoped that the class presentation may provide a research base for the term paper. Supplementary visual submissions are encouraged. A film and reading schedule (provisional) is available in the Certificate Programs Office (Room 5109).
Tuesdays, 2:00pm to 5:00pm.