FILM 114H - World Cinema — Honors

3 credits

This is an honors-level seminar on the movies as an art form and as an international multicultural phenomenon. Students will engage in a focused exploration of the technical and formal elements that make the movies a unique and powerful means of human expression, one that finds its definition in diverse cultural contexts. The course will provide students with a window onto the rich cultural landscape beyond their own, exposing them to cinematic accomplishments that extend beyond the conventional American model and their own experience and introducing them to the national cinemas of Africa, Asia, Europe, Central and South America, India and the Middle East, with their distinctive perspectives, attitudes, values and beliefs. The course will concern itself with culture and its impact on film as a work of art, with culture as shaper of both content and form. Methods include class discussion, oral and written reports, individual and group class presentations, readings, and critical viewing of selected films and videos.