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, Blockbusters & New Hollywood Cinema: 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 (Theme): Saturday Night Fever
George Lucas: THX 1138, American Graffiti, Star Wars
Mike Nichols
General Readings
Films to Review:
Spielberg: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws
Kubrick: 2001 A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lnyndon, The Shining
Francis Ford Coppola: The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation
Altman
Mike Nichols: The Graduate
Rocky
Network
Paper Moon
Gates of Heaven
Jeremiah Johnson
Patton
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
Advances in Sci Fi
One Liners
General Readings
Films to Review:
Epic Fantasy: Willow, Neverending Story
Spielberg: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, Goonies
Terry Gilliam: Time Bandits, Baron Munchausen
Babette's Feast
Chariots of Fire
The Right Stuff
The Mission
Batman Miyazaki: Nausicaa, Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service
True Stories
My Dinner with Andre
The 90s
Indie film
3D special effects
Star led pictures
Coen Brothers: Barton Fink, Hudsucker Proxy
Tarantino
Jim Jarmusch
Wes Anderson: Bottle Rocket
Illusory Life (Theme): Truman Show, Matrix, Dark City
Sad Office (Theme)
Rom-Com Golden Age
The Phantom Menace
General Readings
Films to Review:
Misery
The Fugitive
Gattaca
Miyazaki: Mononoke, Porco Rosso
Babe
The Remains of the Day
Whit Stillman: Metropolitan, Barcelona, Last Days of Disco
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