Classes

The unit consists of a 4 hour face-to-face teaching block each week. This block will usually consist of; 1 x 1 hour tutorial, 1 x 2 hour screening and 1 x 1 hour lecture. Attendance and participation in weekly tutorials will account for 15% of a student’s final grade.

The timetable for classes can be found on the MQC Student Portal at:  http://student.mqc.edu.au/

Required and Recommended Texts and/or Materials

The required readings for the course will contained in the MAS304 Unit Reader which can be purchased from the Co-op Bookshop on Phillip St. Additional recommended readings can be found on the unit iLearn page. A copy of all the screened films will be made available through the Library.

Technology Used and Required

Computer (for submission of assessments), DVD player

Learning and Teaching Activities

In order to participate fully in weekly tutorial discussions students are expected to have watched the previous week’s film screening, listened to the previous week’s lecture, and read the required tutorial readings contained in the MAS304 Unit Reader, familiarising themselves with the key concepts and arguments raised.

Week One (August 1^st): The Day After Tomorrow & the rise of Cli-Fi

Promoted as ‘the movie the White House doesn't want you to see’, Roland Emmerich’s Hollywood high-concept blockbuster, The Day After Tomorrow (DAT) uses global warming as the underlying premise to decimate Manhattan, only a few years post-September 11. Cli-Fi, short for climate-fiction, is a sub-genre of science fiction which has emerged in literature but could equally apply to a number of disaster flicks released in the last decade, Emmerich’s being one of them.

In tutorials you might like to consider some of the following questions: How does ‘Hollywood ecology’ (Cubitt 2005: 125), evident in films like The Day After Tomorrow, assist in shaping our imagining of a future dominated by climate change? What kinds of stylistic and narrative conventions does Emmerich employ in this film and are they effective? What other examples of cli-fi can you think of and how do they compare to The Day After Tomorrow? Do you think DAT is an example of social problem-filmmaking or rather, a politically motivated distortion of complex scientific and political questions? Is it wrong to derive pleasure from apocalyptic catastrophe?

Required Readings:

Rodge Glass, (2013) “Global Warning: the rise of Cli-Fi” in The Guardian, May 31^st, 2013. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/31/global-warning-rise-cli-fi

Feil, Ken (2005) ‘Conclusion’, Dying for a Laugh: Disaster Movies & the Camp Imagination, p. 146-158.

Recommended Readings:

Branston, Gill. (2007) ‘The Planet at the End of the World: “Event” Cinema and the

Representability of Climate Change’, New Review of Film and Television Studies 5.2 (2007): 211-31.

Reusswig, Fritz. (2005). ‘The International Impact of The Day After Tomorrow’  47.3 

Sean Cubitt, 2005 ‘Always take the Weather:  Green Media in Global Context’ in his EcoMedia  Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi,. 

Jim Beckerman, May 2013, NewJersey.com, Apolcaypse Now, Hollywood Considers the End of the World, http://www.northjersey.com/arts_entertainment/209125101_Apocalypse_Now__Hollywood_considers_the_end_of_the_world.html

Week Two (August 8th): Digital technology & political filmmaking: ‘cinema of a stateless nation’

Lightweight digital technology has created many opportunities for political and activist filmmaking of a very different kind to that glimpsed in The Day After Tomorrow. Bahman Ghobadi’s Turtles Can Fly was the first film to come out of Iraq after the American invasion. Like many Iranian films that use non-professional child actors, this film focuses on a community of Kurdish refugee children eking out a living collecting and selling abandoned land mines. They exist in a precarious space near the Turkey-Iran border. Like his earlier film, Time for Drunken Horses, the director, Iranian Kurd Bahman Ghobadi, populates Turtles with “dislocated and isolated characters whose position and physical location is contingent upon larger, unseen political forces — it is the cinema of a stateless nation [Kurdistan]” (Hamid 2005; 42).

How does a western viewer engage with a film like Turtles Can Fly? Is it possible to compare this film to DAT, or are they completely different beasts? What are their similarities? What are the transnational aspects of Turtles?

Screenings: Turtles Can Fly (Bahman Ghobadi, 2004)

Required Readings:

Hamid, R. (2006) “Panning Out for a Wider View: Iranian Cinema Beyond its Borders”, Cineaste, Summer 2006, pp. 48-50.

Hamid, R. (2005) “The Cinema of a Stateless Nation: An Interview with Bahman Ghobadi”, Cineaste, Summer 2005, pp. 42-45.

Ortega, V (2011) ‘Digital technology, aesthetic imperfection and political film-making: Illegal bodies in motion’, Transnational Cinemas, Volume 2 Number 1, pp. 3-19

Recommended Readings:

Ezra, E. & Rowden, T. (2006) Transnational Cinema, The Film Reader, Oxon & New York: Routledge, pp. 1-12.

Hjort, M and MacKenzie, S (eds.) (2000) Cinema and Nation, London and New York: Routlege, pp. 1—16

Schlesinger, P. (2000) “Sociological Scope of National Cinema” in Cinema and Nation, London and New York: Routlege, pp. 19—31.

Dissanyake, W. (1998) “Issues in World Cinema” in Hill, J. & Church Gibson, P. (eds) The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 527—534.

Week Three (August 15^th): Veiled Vision/Powerful Presence: Women in Iranian cinema

The concepts of ‘national cinema’ and ‘world cinema’ have been important to the promotion of non-Hollywood cinemas. Iranian cinema is one example of a national cinema that’s often defined in opposition to Hollywood, but it’s also classified as ‘third cinema’. This week we put Iranian cinema in context but look closely at the role of women filmmakers and the representation of gender. Our main screening is the (French-funded) animation film, Persepolis (2007), based on the highly successful autobiographical graphic novel of the same name by Marjane Satrapi. Persepolis (written/directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud) won the Jury Prize at Cannes and depicts a young girl growing up in a highly volatile period of Iranian history in the 1970s and 80s and her subsequent exile to France.

How might animation acknowledge the impossibility of representation of violent events in history? How does Persepolis challenge the stereotypes and assumptions of Iran that we are often subjected to in the news, or even in recent films such as Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012)? What kind of stylistic choices do the directors/writers/ animators make in the depiction of religious extremists and other characters in the film? What factors have given rise to the increasing presence of women (both on and off-screen) in post-revolutionary Iranian cinema? Comment on the aesthetics and significance of veiling/unveiling in Iranian cinema?

Required Readings:

Naficy, H. (1999) “Veiled Vision/Powerful presences: women in post-revolutionary Iranian Cinema” in Issa, R. & Whitaker, S. Life and Art: the New Iranian Cinema, London: BFI, pp. 44—65.

Warren, K (2010) “Persepolis: Animation, Representation and the Power of the Personal Story,” Screen Education, Winter 2010, Issue 58, pp. 117-23.

Quigley, M (2008) “Drawing on Experience: Animation as History in Persepolis,” Screen Education, Spring 2008, Issue 51.

Recommended Readings:

Langford, M. (2007) “Allegory and Aesthetics of Becoming-Woman in Marziyeh Meshkini’s The Day I Became a Woman”, Camera Obscura 64, Volume 22, Number 1, pp. 1-41.

Dabashi, H. (2001) Close Up: Iranian Cinema: Past, Present and Future, London & New York: Verso, pp. 262—282

Simon, A. (2000) “The Day I Became a Woman” (Review), Cinemaya Number 50, pp. 25—26.

Dudley, Andrew (2006), ‘An atlas of world cinema’ in Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim (eds.), Remapping World Cinema: identity, culture and politics in film, London & New York: Wallflower Press, pp. 19-29. 

Croft, S (2000) "Concepts of National Cinema" in Hill, J & Gibson, P. (eds.) The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, pp. 385-94

Dabashi, Hamid. (2001) Close Up: Iranian Cinema: Past, Present and Future, London & New York: Verso, pp. 1—11.

Smith, G. (1996) “Method in Movie Madness: Salaam Cinema” in Film Comment, Volume 32, Number 4, p. 44.

Bassiri, Mariam. (1997) “Women in the Iranian Cinema” in Art on a Podium, September 1997.

Lahiji, S. (2002) “Chaste Dolls and Unchaste Dolls: Women in Iranian Cinema since 1979” in Tapper, R. (ed.) The New Iranian Cinema: Politics, Representation and Identity, London & New York: I.B. Tauris. pp. 215—226.

Week Four (August 22^nd): Politics of Childhood & Trafficking women

A number of films we have viewed in this course so far have featured child actors (eg. Turtles Can Fly, Ten, The Day I Became a Woman and The Day After Tomorrow). Our screening this week, Lilya 4-Ever, is about a Russian teenager abandoned by her mother and left to her own devices in decaying, post-Soviet Russia. Lilya’s only friend is an angelic little boy called Volodya.

In addition to the representation of childhood/children, we also turn our attention to the trafficking of women. While not overtly didactic, Lilya 4-Ever was taken up by the Swedish government to educate its own population (and internationally) on the horrors of trafficking women from Eastern Europe and Russia. The director, Lukas Moodysen says that: “I wanted my film to be a train running over the audience” (Noh 2004: p. 20). Do you think he’s been effective in this and what kinds of stylistic and narrative conventions does he use to do this? How does the portrayal of children (and childhood) compare to others you’ve seen in the course so far?

Screening: Lilya 4-Ever (Lukas Moodysen, 2003)

Required Readings:

Wilson, E. (2005) “Children, Emotion and Viewing in Contemporary European Film”, Screen, 2005 46(3), pp. 329-340.

Noh, David, (2004) “Hardcore Spiritualism” Film Journal International, May 2003, 19-20.

Kristensen, L. (2007) “Divergent Accounts of Equivalent Narratives: Russian-Swedish Interdevochka meets Swedish-Russian Lilya 4_Ever”, Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, Volume 4, Number 2, July 2007.

Recommended Readings:

Jones, K. M. (2003) “Lilya 4-ever: Lukas Moodysson, Sweden, 2002,” Film Comment, volume 39, number 2, March/April 2003, 73-74.

Graffy, J. (2003) “Trading Places”, Sight and Sound, volume 13, number 4, pp. 20-22.

Week Five (August 29^th): Transnational Turkish Cinema: Impossible Homecomings?

This week begins our module on ‘Forbidden Desire and Divided Communities’. We explore the work of German-Turkish auteur, Fatih Akin. His landmark film Head On starts in Hamburg and ends in Istanbul. With the Turkish diaspora in Germany numbering over 3 million, a growing body of films are being made about Turkish experiences of living in German cities. Their impact have driven some critics to claim: “that the new German film is Turkish and that ‘Turkish’ cultural production has the potential of salvaging ‘German’ culture” (Fachinger 2007, p. 243).

Head-On won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and the European film of the year in 2004. It has elements of melodrama glimpsed in many Turkish films but this film also exudes a raw kinetic energy. The story centres on two second-generation Turks living in Hamburg, Cahit and Sibel, and their marriage of convenience. How is their experience of ‘exile’ or ‘diaspora’ in a ‘foreign’ country contrasted to the characters we saw earlier in Turtles Can Fly and Lilya-4-Ever? What might a European cinema that includes Turkish productions look like? What role does music play in this film?

Screening: Head-On (Fatih Akin, 2004) with excerpts from Im July (Fatih Akin, 2001), Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin, 2007), Kebab Connection (Anno Saul, 2004)

Required Readings:

Berghahn, D. (2006) “No place like home? Or impossible homecomings in the films of Fatih Akin”, New Cinema: Journal of Contemporary Film, Volume 4, #3, pp. 141-157.

Isenberg, N. (2011) “Fatih Akin's Cinema of Intersections”, Film Quarterly, Vol. 64, # 4, (Summer 2011), pp. 53-61.

Recommended Readings:

Petek, P. (2007) “Enabling Collisions: Re-thinking multiculturalism through Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand/Head On”, Studies in European Cinema, volume 4, Number 3, pp. 177-186.

Ewing, K.P. (2006) “Between Cinema and Social Work: Diasporic Turkish Women and the DisPleasures of Hybridity”, Cultural Anthropology, Volume 21, Number 2, May 2006, pp. 265-294.

Fachinger, P. (2007) “A New Kind of Creative Energy: Yadé Kara's Selam Berlin and Fatih Akin's Kurz und Schmerzlos and Gegen die Wand”, German Life and Letters, volume 60, Number 2, pp. 243-260.

Naficy, H. (2001) An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, pp. 188—199.

Gokturk, D. (2002) Anyone at Home? Itinerant Identities in European Cinema of the 1990s” in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, Volume 43, Number 2, 2002, pp. 201—212.

Gokturk, D. (2002) "Beyond Paternalism: Turkish German Traffic in Cinema", in Bergfelder, T.; Carter, E. & Gokturk, D. (eds) The German Cinema Book, London: BFI, pp. 248-256.

Gokturk, D. (2002) "Turkish delight - German fright: Migrant identities in transnational cinemas", in Derman, D. and Ross, K. (eds) Mapping the Margins: Identity Politics and the Media, London: Hampton Press.

Ceylan, N. (1999) “Ordinary Stories of Ordinary People” in Cinemaya, Number 43, pp. 22—23.

Week Six (September 5^th): Diasporic Desire

This week we profile the career of transnational film director Mira Nair. You may have seen her latest film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012), that has just finished a season at Dendy. In this lecture (and tutes) we look at two of her earlier films, Salaam Bombay! and Monsoon Wedding which present two sides of India that are in stark opposition. Salaam Bombay! depicts a brief moment in the life a little boy, ‘Chaipau’ who lives on the streets and in the brothels of Bombay. In contrast Monsoon Wedding takes place in New Delhi when a group of middle class NRIs (non-resident Indians) from a large Punjabi family return for a wedding. MW became one of the highest grossing foreign films in the US and won the Golden Lion at Venice but lost the Oscar nomination to Lagaan (Desai 2004, 213).

To what extent do you think Nair’s cinematic representation of Indian subalterns in Salaam Bombay! is ‘touristic’ and ‘voyeuristic’ (Naficy 2001, p. 69)?  In comparison to Salaam Bombay, how are societal divisions (class, gender, generational) manifested in Monsoon Wedding? What role does colour, lighting and sound play in representing these divisions? What does Hamid Naficy mean by the term ‘accented cinema’? Do you agree with Patricia Uberoi’s claim that this film was successful because it did not display the vulgarity associated with commercial Bollywood made for working class Indians (Desai 2004; p. 218)

Screening: Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair, 2002) with excerpts from Salaam Bombay (Mira Nair, 1988), Mississippi Masala (Mira Nair, 1992) and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Mira Nair 2012)

Required Readings:

Naficy, H. (2001) An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, pp. 68—70. 

Desai, J. (2004) “Conclusion: Migrant Brides, Feminist Films and Transnational Desires”, Beyond Bollywood: the Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film, London & New York: Routledge, pp. 211-229.

Recommended Readings:

Capp, R. (2001) “Delhi deluge of colour and movement in Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding” in Senses of Cinema, number 18, 2001. http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/18/monsoon_wedding.html

Apparduarai, A (1990) “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy” in Featherstone, M. (ed) Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalisation and Modernity, London: Sage.

Macnab, G. (2002) “Henna and Cellphones” in Sight and Sound, Number 12, January 2002, pp. 18—20.

Karena, C. (2002) “Monsoon Wedding: Raining on Tradition” in Film as Text, pp. 117—119.

Geller, C. (2002) “Monsoon Wedding” (Review) in Cineaste, Fall 2002, pp. 43—44.

Dwyer, R. (2000) All You Want is Money, All You Need is Love: Sex and Romance in Modern India, London and New York: Cassell.

Chapman, J. (2003) “The Challenge of Third Cinema” & “Bollywood and Beyond” in his Cinemas of the World, London: Reaktion Books, pp. 305—321, 322—353.

Week Seven (September 12^th): Bollywood, Nationhood & Cricket

It has often been argued that the only thing holding the Indian nation-state together is Bollywood and cricket. The central premise of this week’s screening, Lagaan (‘tax’ in Hindi), set at the end of the 19^th century, concerns a cricket game of epic proportions between some Indian villagers and British colonials.

According to Grant Farred, how does this film articulate a ‘double temporality’? And what role does the feringhee (the white woman) play in this film? Using Lagaan and your readings to guide you, what are some of the stylistic preoccupations of Bollywood cinema? Could Bollywood cinema be described as a ‘national cinema’? Is the spectator-subject differently positioned in popular Hindi cinema in comparison to much filmmaking from ‘the west’? If so, how? To what extent do you think its possible for viewers in Sydney to appreciate Bollywood films? Have you seen Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008) and if so, how does Lagaan compare?

Screening: Lagaan (Ashutosh Gowarika, 2001)

Required Readings:

Farred, G. (2004) “The Double Temporality of Lagaan: Cultural Struggle and Postcolonialism”, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, Volume 28, Number 2, May 2004, pp. 93-114.

Vick, T. (2007) “India: All that and then Some”, Asian Cinema: A Field Guide, New York: Harper Collins, pp. 87-93.

Recommended Readings:

Athique, A. (2008) “The Crossover audience: Mediated Multiculturalism and the Indian Film”, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Volume 22, Number 3, June 2008, pp. 299-311.

Apparduarai, A. (1997) “Playing with Modernity: the Decolonization of Indian Cricket” in his Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Naficy, H. (1996) “Theorising ‘Third World’ Spectatorship” in Wide Angle, Volume 18, Number 4, October 1996, pp. 3—26.

Madhava Prasad, M. (1998) Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction, Oxford University Press: Delhi.

Munni Kabir, N. (2001) Bollywood: The Indian Cinema Story, London & Oxford: Pan Macmillan.

Dwyer, R. & Patel, D. (2002) Cinema India: The Visual Culture of Hindi Film, London: Reaktion Books.

Mishra, V (2002) Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire, London & New York: Routledge.

Brosius, C. & Butcher, M. (1999) Image Journeys: Audio-visual Media and cultural Change in India, New Delhi, Thousand Oaks and London: Sage.

Mishra, V (2002) “Inventing Bombay Cinema” in his Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire, London & New York: Routlege, pp. 1—33

** MID SEMESTER BREAK **

Week Eight (October 3^rd): Spike Lee & ethnicity

This week continues our exploration of ‘divided communities and forbidden desire’. We look at the work of one of the US’s most prolific directors, Spike Lee. Spike Lee’s films are often viewed as controversial not only in their representation of ethnicity, but also in the way that gender and ethnicity intersect. Why do Lee’s films provoke such controversy? Do you agree with Saltman’s views about Jungle Fever in your 3^rd reading for this week?

Screening: Jungle Fever (Spike Lee, 1991), with excerpts from his She’s Gotta Have it (1986) and Do the Right Thing (1989).

Required Readings:

Denzin, N. (1992) “Do the Right Thing: Race in the USA “ in Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theory and Contemporary Cinema, Sage Publications, pp. 125-136

Diawara, M. (2000) "Black America Cinema: The New Realism" in Film and Theory: An Anthology, Stam, R & Miller, T pp. 236-256

Saltman, B (1991) “Jungle Fever (review)” in Film Quarterly, vol. 45, # 2, Winter, pp. 37-41.

Recommended Readings:

Johnson, V.E. (1992) "Do The Right Thing", Film Quarterly Vol. 43, No.2, Winter 1989/90, 35-40

hooks, bell (1996) Reel to real: race, sex, and class at the movies, New York, NY: Routledge.

Dyer, R. (1997) White, London: New York: Routledge.

Week Nine (October 10^th): Resisting conformity: Tanaka-San will not do callistenics

This week we begin our final module on non-conformists. We’ll be hearing from doco-maker Maree Delofski and seeing her film, Tanaka-san will not do callistenics (2008). In this lecture and tutorial we’ll be exploring the doco-subject/filmmaker relationship, the perils and triumphs of shoe-string-budget filmmaking and also how this informs style, production and subject matter. This is also the first doco-feature Delofski embarked on without receiving a pre-sale from a broadcaster or government film body.

The subject of Delofski’s film is 63-year-old Tanaka Testuro who was dismissed from his job in Japan more than 30 years ago for refusing to do his morning callistenics. “Tanaka has been singing as a form of protest, every morning at the entrance to the company factory ever since. In his signature cowboy hat and guitar, with no mobile phone, internet or facebook, Tanaka continues his struggle and demands an apology and re-instatement every year.”

Screening: Tanaka-san will not do callistenics (Maree Delofski, 2008), and Julian (Matthew Moore, 2012)

Delofski, M, 2009, 'Dreaming a Connection - Reflections on the Documentary Subject/Filmmaker Relationship', Scan, 6/3 December 2009, http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display.php?journal_id=143

See the website for the film: www.tanakafilm.com 

Week Ten (October 17^th): Post-TV viewing & The Wire (episode one & episode on media)

With its complex narratives and impenetrable lingo, David Simon’s series of The Wire (HBO 2002-2008) has been described as “a challenging and serious piece of contemporary art” much more suited to post-TV viewing (Sharma 2011) which subverts the usual consumption of TV. The director, David Simon, who worked as a journalist before producing TV, doesn’t believe in pandering to audience expectation. “F&^%ck the average audience”, he once said in an interview.  Sharma argues that The Wire is different to other recent TV series which have received cult following (The Sopranos, Six Feet Under) because of ‘the intellectual demands of the series, especially its sociologically driven analysis of contemporary urban society. In this respect, the show has been of interest not just to television studies scholars, but to academics from very diverse fields of study.’ How is The Wire ‘more real than reality’ and ‘an open textual machine’? What is the film’s explicit political agenda? How is race an absent presence in the film?

Required Reading:

Ash Sharma, 2011. “Editorial: ‘All the pieces matter’ – introductory notes on The Wire” in “The Wire Files” issue of Dark Matter: In the ruins of Imperial Culture, http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/category/journal/issues/4-the-wire/

Oliver Burkeman, 2009, “Arrogant? Moi?” Interview with David Simon in The Guardian, 28 March 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/28/david-simon-the-wire-interview

Please have a look at the other essays in this issue of Dark Matter: http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/category/journal/issues/4-the-wire/

Week Eleven (October 24^th): NITV - beyond good/should/bad?

This week we look at the National Indigenous Television (NITV) and the role that it’s played in nurturing young talent and in providing alternative viewing options to our public and commercial broadcasters. NITV emerged out of twenty years of a successful but highly dispersed grass-roots, community-based media system that had regional control.

In tutes and lectures, we will look at questions such as, how can Indigenous media play a greater role in the Australian public sphere? Can locally controlled media offer national narratives? Where does industry development begin and end? We’ll also examine some of the issues that Therese Davis raises in her short paper on the way in which students regard indigenous films.  

Screening: The Sapphires (Wayne Blair, 2011) with excerpts from First Australians (Rachel Perkins, SBS TV, 2008), Redfern Now (ABC TV 2012), Mabo (Rachel Perkins, 2008), Radiance (Rachel Perkins, 1998) and Green Bush (Warwick Thornton, 2005)

Required Readings:

Davis, T., 2010, “Beyond good/should/bad: teaching Australian Indigenous film and television”, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies [P], vol 24, issue 5, October 2010, Routledge, United Kingdom, pp. 799-804.

Rennie, E. and Featherstone, D. 2008, “The potential diversity of things we call TV': Indigenous community television, self-determination and NITV”. Media International Australia (129). pp. 52-66.

Recommended Readings:

Inge Kral, 2010, “Plugged in: Remote Australian Indigenous Youth and Digital Culture”, Australian National University, CAEPR Working Paper No. 69/2010

Langton, M. (1993) "Well, I heard it on the radio and I saw it on the television ...": an essay for the Australian Film Commission on the politics and aesthetics of filmmaking by and about Aboriginal people and things, North Sydney, NSW: Australian Film Commission.

Week Twelve (October 31^st): New Hollywood’s non-conformists and the tradition of the road

Many of the films we’ve looked at in MAS304 so far are road movies of sorts (Ten, Day After Tomorrow, Head On, Lilya-4-Ever, The Sapphires). Our final week examines new Hollywood’s tradition of the road and we look at Dennis Hopper’s boy’s-own-adventure, Easy Rider.

Screening: Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, 1969)

Required Readings:

Barbara Klinger, “Landscaping the Nation: The Road to Dystopia in Easy Rider,” in Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, ed., The Road Movie Book (London: Routledge, 1997): 179-203

Recommended Readings:

Dennis Hopper, “Midsection ‘68/’88,” Film Comment 24, 4 (1988): 31.

L. M. Kit Carson, “Easy Rider: A Very American Thing,” Evergreen Review 13, 72 (November 1969): 24, 26-27, 70-72.

Lee Hill, Easy Rider (London: BFI, 1996): 8-15, 66-73.

Chris Hugo, “Easy Rider and Hollywood in the ‘70s,” Movie 32 (1986): 67-71.

Paul Warshow, “Easy Rider,” Sight and Sound (Winter 1969/1970): 36-38.

David Cook, Lost Illusions: American Cinema in the Shadow of Watergate and Vietnam 1970-1979 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2000): 67-72, 133, 156-157.

Thomas Elsaesser, “The Pathos of Failure: American Films in the 70s: Notes on the Unmotivated Hero” Monogram 6 (1975): 13-19.

MAS304: Screens, Images, Ideas engages with some of the influential ideas, issues and theories in contemporary cinema and explores the ways in which social and political contexts impact the style, content, characters and form of film.

Each week of study integrates screenings of selected films with discussions of specific readings. The course complements and develops concepts introduced in MAS205. In this course you will be offered a series of methods for developing your analytical approach to screen texts, with a focus on some key theoretical debates in cinema over the last 30 years. These three things (film, lecture, readings) constitute our curriculum. MAS304 aims to:

• contribute to your viewing background by introducing you to films that (in many cases) may fall outside of your normal viewing;
• consider the relationship between screen theories and screen practices;
• equip you with conceptual skills for a more informed and confident engagement with a visually saturated world.
• generate discussion about film forms and the cross currents between them;
• bring you into contact with forms of essayistic writing you might not have encountered in your everyday reading on film and cultural matters
• place you in an intellectual space that prompts you to consider some  significant critical and cultural discourses that have attached to these films in the course of their cultural lives.

From the various approaches introduced in this course you are encouraged to build up your own way of understanding films. This course has been organised as a series of four modules:

Ø  Module One (Weeks One – Four): Politics and Filmmaking

Ø  Module Two (Weeks Five- Seven): The New Hollywood

Ø  Module Three (Weeks Eight – Ten): Contemporary American Cinema

Ø  Module Four (Weeks Eleven – Thirteen): Cult Cinema

These topics are, of course, not mutually exclusive. MAS304 aims to generate debate and discussion both within and across these modules. The material presented in this course is not meant to be exhaustive but is structured to give you a taste of some of the incredibly diverse, creative and challenging work that is out there.