Cinema Curriculum

The key to understanding the 20th century and the cultural power of the American empire lies in interpreting film, and the infrastructure behind it.

Because the art of cinema naturally lends itself to sensuality, this curriculum is intended for secondary students and undergraduates at a level of maturity where they will not be disturbed by depictions of violence or infatuated with depictions of sexuality.

What was that old saying of the wise? Viewer discretion is advised.

Remember: moving pictures are an illusion of life. Just because it's animated does not mean it has a living spirit. God requires that we do not worship images. We must not love them; we must taste test them instead. Marvelously, imagination mingles with reality. Our enjoyment should be in appreciating how films help us bring reality into focus more clearly. If they fail in that, there is nothing left to do but disparage them.

As such we need to hone our critical faculties; we need to deepen our awareness of historical context and our intertextual hermeneutics to begin to understand what the images we're seeing might ultimately mean and how they are trying to manipulate us emotionally. What makes for a good, meaningful life? Who is beautiful and who is ugly? What is heroic and what is dishonorable? Is providence at work?

Sadly, the vast majority of people today have formed their basic assumptions and moral values and self-conception on what they have seen in film and television. Many of these frames of mind are very bad and should be torn apart in the fear of God.

Because it is so psychological, filmmaking and film criticism is ultimately an act of spiritual warfare. A priestly task. We must test all these symbols and stories we use to make sense of who we are in the universe and how we relate to one another.

With that in mind, welcome to a survey of earth's Primitive Cinematic Neanderthrashings.

Invention & Early Days

General Readings - Melies, Lumiere, Edison

Films to Review:

Early 20th

D.W. Griffith

General Readings

Films to Review:

Foreign Film Industries

German Expressionism

General Readings

Films to Review:

French Impressionism

General Readings

Films to Review:

Soviet Propaganda & Film Theory

Soviet Montage

General Readings

Films to Review:

Jazz Age & Synchronous Sound

Buster Keaton

Jazz Singer

General Readings

Films to Review:

Disney, Monsters, and Propaganda

American World War II Propaganda

National Socialist Propaganda

TechniColor, Wizard of Oz

Snow White

Genre Studies:

Swashbucklers

Westerns

Epics

Noir

Drama

Early Experimental

Musical & Dance

General Readings

Films to Review:

Japanese Cinema

jidaigeki - period drama

gendaigeki - contemporary drama

1937 - Humanity and Paper Balloons

Sadao Yamanaka

Gosho

Shimazu

Naruse

Ozu vs. Mizoguchi - slow vs. fast

Kurosawa

Kaiju

GOJIRA!

General Readings

Films to Review:

The Arthouse

Italian Neorealism

General Readings

Films to Review:

Society of the Spectacle

Widescreen

Epic Adventure, Sword & Sandal Films

50s Masculinity (Theme)

Sci Fi and Cold War Paranoia

50s Musicals

Hitchcock & Auteur Theory

Ingmar Bergman

General Readings

Films to Review:

French New Wave

Cahiers du Cinema

Godard

La Jetee

Tati

Auteur Theory

General Readings

Films to Review:

Documentary & Cinéma vérité

General Readings

Films to Review:

Hollywood Decay - 60s and 70s

lost theatre chains and also had to compete with television; crazy riots and cultural revolution; ticket sales falling;

Exploitation films

Harryhausen

James Bond

Spaghetti Westerns

Youth Adrift (Theme)

American Disillusionment & Vietnam (Theme)

Decay of Cities

White Ethnic American Identity & Masculinity

General Readings

Films to Review:

Blockbusters & New Hollywood Cinema

Spielberg

Coppola

Scorsese

George Lucas

Mike Nichols

General Readings

Films to Review:

Asian Cinema

Hong Kong Kung Fu vs. Mainland Communist censorship

Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Wong Kar Wai

Indian Film and Bollywood

Decline of Japanese Film Industry, Rise of Anime

General Readings

Films to Review:

The 80s

Dominance of the Blockbuster and the Bankable Star

Home Video

The Multinational Corporation

Terry Gilliam

Advances in Sci Fi

One Liners

General Readings

Films to Review:

The 90s

Indie film

3D special effects

Star led pictures

Coen Brothers

Tarantino

Jim Jarmusch

Wes Anderson

Illusory Life (Theme)

Sad Office (Theme)

Rom-Com Golden Age

The Phantom Menace

General Readings

Films to Review:

The 00s

The 00s. Looking back, what a vulgar and depressing era for Hollywood. Some good films were made, but mostly dumb fun with very little iconic or psychological power, and year by year shows a decline in visual quality and overall intelligence.

Remakes & Sequelitis

Decline of Star Power

Rotten Tomatoes and the Rise of Online Reviews

Pre-woke Vulgarity Competitions

The Grimdarkening

The Rise of Netflix

Zombies

Superheroes

General Readings

Films to Review:

Christopher Nolan: The Dark Knight

Wes Anderson: The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Paul Thomas Anderson: There Will Be Blood

Coen Brothers: No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man

American Psycho

Pixar: Monster's Inc, Finding Nemo, Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up

The Harry Potter Films

The Notebook

Sam Raimi Spider Man Films

Napoleon Dynamite

In Bruges

Children of Men

The Road

Singh's The Fall

Shymalan: Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs

Primer