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.
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.
Welcome to earth's Primitive Cinematic Neanderthrashings.
Invention & Early Days
Melies, Lumiere, Edison
Early 20th
D.W. Griffith
Foreign Film Industries
German Expressionism
French Impressionism
Soviet Propaganda & Film Theory
Soviet Montage
Jazz Age & Synchronous Sound
Buster Keaton
Jazz Singer
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
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!
The Arthouse
Italian Neorealism
Society of the Spectacle
Widescreen
Epic Adventure, Sword & Sandal Films
50s Masculinity
Sci Fi and Cold War Paranoia
50s Musicals
Hitchcock & Auteur Theory
Ingmar Bergman
French New Wave
Cahiers du Cinema
Godard
La Jetee
Tati
Auteur Theory
Documentary & Cinéma vérité
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
New Hollywood Cinema
Spielberg
Coppola
Scorsese
George Lucas
Mike Nichols & The Graduate