Film and the Moving Image

CMST 14400

Most recently taught: Autumn 2025
past student work from this class

Course Description

This course seeks to develop skills in perception, comprehension, and interpretation when dealing with film and other moving image media. It encourages the close analysis of audiovisual forms, their materials and formal attributes, and explores the range of questions and methods appropriate to the explication of a given film or moving image text. It also examines the intellectual structures basic to the systematic study and understanding of moving images. Most importantly, the course aims to foster in students the ability to translate this understanding into verbal expression, both oral and written. Texts and films are drawn from the history of narrative, experimental, animated, and documentary or non-fiction cinema.

Assignments & Grade Distribution

Students’ final grades will be determined by adherence following expectations:

15% Attendance and Participation. Students will consistently attend course screenings and participate in class. Small, otherwise ungraded assignments and exercises (including in-class group work) will contribute to this area of the grade. Students may miss three class sessions or screenings without penalty. Beyond that point unexcused absences will have an impact on this portion of your grade. Masking is encouraged if it will allow you to participate more fully.

25% Canvas posts. Students will post to the Canvas discussion board a total of seven times over the course of the quarter (out of a total of nine prompts). Posts should consist of 1–2 paragraphs reflecting on readings, films, or both.

15%  Discussion Animation. Once during the quarter, students will take charge of animating class discussion about either a course reading or a course film/video. Topics will be assigned according to student preferences. Students animating discussion on a reading should present a close reading of one or more chosen passages and prepare 2–4 questions to ask the class. Students animating discussion on a film or video should come ready with a clip (approx. 2 min) to present the class, offer a short analysis using ideas or frameworks from course readings, and ask 2–4 questions of the class. To ensure ample time for class discussion, the discussion animator’s overall time spent presenting should not exceed 10 min.

20%  First written assignment. 1200 words (3–4 double-spaced pages), due Mon November 3 at the start of class. Specific prompts will be circulated ahead of time.

25%  Final written assignment. 2200 words (5–6 double-spaced pages), due Wed December 10 at 11:59 PM. Specific prompts will again be circulated. However, you may with my approval write on a topic of your own.

Course Materials & Screening Policies

Students are not required to purchase any materials for this course. All readings and other materials listed on this syllabus will be posted in PDF form on Canvas or linked to if already online.

Regular attendance at weekly screenings is expected as a general rule. Cinema is a medium designed for collective viewing on a large screen; when at all possible, this should be the mode of experience one engages a film with. The course absence policy allowed for three unexcused absences including class sessions and screenings. Beyond that point unexcused absences—including at screenings—will have an impact on this portion of your grade. If you are genuinely unable to attend a screening, notify me, and together we will work with the Film Studies Center (located on the third floor of Cobb Hall, across the hall from Cobb 311) to accommodate a private viewing of course materials.

Course Schedule

Mon, September 29: Movement (1)

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Maxim Gorky, Newspaper review of the Lumière programme at the Nizhni-Novgorod fair (1896)
  • Martin Loiperdinger, “Lumiere’s Arrival of the Train: Cinema’s Founding Myth” (1995)

Tues, September 30 Screening (140 min)

  • L’Arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat (Louis and Auguste Lumière, 1897, 1 min)
  • A Study in Choreography for Camera (Maya Deren, 1945, 3 min)
  • Ambulance (Michael Bay, 2022, 136 min)

Wed, Oct 1: Movement (2)

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Tom Gunning, “Animating the Instant: The Secret Symmetry between Animation and Photography” (2014)

Mon, October 6: Photography (1)

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • André Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” (1945)

Tues, October 7 Screening (96 min)

  • La Jetée (Chris Marker, 1962, 29 min)
  • (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton, 1971, 36 min)
  • Je vous salue, Sarajevo (Jean-Luc Godard, 1993, 2 min)
  • What the Water Said, Nos. 1–3 (David Gatten, 1997–1998, 16 min)
  • Flying Lotus “Until the Quiet Comes” music video (Khalil Joseph, 2012, 4 min)
  • Your Father Was Born 100 Years Old, and So Was the Nakba (Razan Al Salah, 2017, 7 min)
  • Vince Staples “FUN!” music video (Calmatic, 2018, 2 min)

Wed, Oct 8: Photography (2)

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography (1980), Part 1 sections 9–13
  • Colin MacCabe, “Barthes and Bazin: The Ontology of the Image” (1997)

Recommended contextual reading on What the Water Said:

  • Gregory Zinman, “Echoes of the Earth: Handmade Film Ecologies” (2019)

Mon, October 13: Film/Media Objects (1)

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Hollis Frampton, “A Lecture” (1968)
  • Francesco Casetti, “Cinema Lost and Found: Trajectories of Relocation” (2011)

Tues, October 14 Screening (128 min)

  • Digital T.V. Dinner (Jamie Faye Fenton, 1979, 3 min)
  • No No Nooky T.V. (Barbara Hammer, 1987, 12 min)
  • Crossroad (Phil Solomon and Mark LaPore, 2005, 6 min)
  • Videograms of a Revolution (Harun Farocki, 1991, 107 min)

Wed, Oct 15: Film/Media Objects (2)

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Paolo Cherchi Usai, “Film as Art Object” (2002)

Recommended contextual reading on Videograms of a Revolution:

  • Benjamin Young, “On Media and Democratic Politics: Videograms of a Revolution” (2004)

Mon, October 20: Frame and Space (1)

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Alexander Sesonske, “Cinema Space” (1973)
  • Noël Burch, Theory of Film Practice (1981), Ch 2 “Nana, or the Two Kinds of Space”

Tues, October 21 Screening (119 min)

  • Suspense (Lois Weber, 1913, 11 min)
  • Everything Will Be OK (Don Hertzfeldt, 2006, 17 min)
  • Mountain Lodge (Jordan Wong, 2020, 8 min)
  • Unfriended (2014 Levan Gabriadze, 83 min)

Wed, Oct 22: Frame and Space (2)

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed (Enlarged Edition, 1979), Ch 3 “Photograph and Screen”
  • Leo Braudy, The World in a Frame (1976), Ch 1 “Varieties of Visual Coherence,” subsection “The Open and the Closed”
  • Timur Bekmambetov, “Rules of the Screenmovie” (2015)

Mon, October 27: Time and Narrative

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time (1986), Ch 3 “Imprinted Time” [excerpt]
  • Noël Carroll, “Narrative Closure” (2007)

Tues, October 28 Screening (159 min)

  • Breakaway (Bruce Conner, 1967, 5 min)
  • Sink or Swim (Su Friedrich, 1990, 48 min)
  • Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010, 106 min)

Wed, Oct 29: Narrative in Art Cinema

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Seymour Chatman, Story and Discourse (1978), Ch 2 “Story Events” [excerpt]
  • David Bordwell, “Art Cinema as Mode of Film Practice” (1979) [excluding afterword]

Mon, November 3: Sound

First written assignment due at 9:30AM, via Canvas

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Elisabeth Weis, “Sync Tanks: The Art and Technique of Postproduction Sound” (1995)
  • Béla Balázs, Theory of the Film (1945), Ch 2 “Sound” [multiple excerpts]

Tues, November 4 Screening (129 min)

  • Kodachrome Color Motion Picture Tests (John G. Capstaff, 1922, 5 min)
  • Missy Elliott “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” music video (Hype Williams, 1997, 4 min)
  • Busta Rhymes ft. Janet Jackson “What’s It Gonna Be” music video (Hype Williams, 1998, 5 min)
  • DMX “Get at Me Dog” music video (Hype Williams, 1998, 4 min)
  • Grace Jones “Corporate Cannibal” music video (Nick Hooker, 2008, 6 min)
  • Passing Through (Larry Clark, 1977, 105 min)

Wed, November 5: Color

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Murray Pomerance, “The Color of Our Eyes” (2017)
  • Richard Dyer, White (1997), Ch 3 “The Light of the World” [excerpt]

Recommended contextual reading on Passing Through:

  • Angelo Restivo, “The Sound of Color/The Color of Sound: The Aesthetics of Passing Through” (2015)

Mon, November 10: Reception (1)

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975)

Tues, November 11 Screening (136 min)

  • Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1943, 14 min)
  • Possibly in Michigan? (Cecelia Condit, 1983, 12min)
  • Jennifer Lopez “If You Had My Love” music video (Paul Haunter, 1999, 6 min)
  • Exotica (Atom Egoyan, 1994, 104 min)

Wed, November 12: Reception (2)

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Graeme Turner, Film as Social Practice (1988), Ch 5 “Film Audiences”

Mon, November 17: Affect

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation” (1964)

Tues, November 18 Screening (128 min)

  • SOPHIE “Faceshopping” music video (SOPHIE and Aaron Chan, 2019, 4 min)
  • The Eric André Show S3E10 “Bird Up!” (Andrew Barchilon and Kitao Sakurai, 2015, 11 min)
  • Un chant d’amour (Jean Genet, 1950, 26 min)
  • Leviathan (Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2012, 87 min)

Wed, November 19: Embodiment

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Laura U. Marks, “Video Haptics and Erotics” (2002)

Recommended contextual reading on Leviathan:

  • Michael A. Unger, “Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s GoPro Sensorium” (2017)

Mon, December 1: Cinematic Modes of Production (1)

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Trihn T. Minh-Ha, “Documentary Is/Not a Name” (1990)

Tues, December 2 Screening (129 min)

  • Sanctus (Barbara Hammer, 1990, 19 min)
  • How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (Hito Steyerl, 2013, 16 min)
  • Transformers: The Premake (Kevin B. Lee, 2014, 26 min)
  • Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929, 68 min)

Wed, December 3: Cinematic Modes of Production (2)

Required reading in advance of this class meeting:

  • Jonathan Beller, The Cinematic Mode of Production (2006), Ch 1 “Circulation” [excerpt]

Wed, December 10

Second and final written assignment due at 11:59 PM, via Canvas