COMM 701.001 Seminar in Film Theory and Criticism
This is a course to introduce you to problems in thinking about film as an art form. In doing that, we are not prizing "art-house" films over other, more commercial, vulgar and business-oriented films. Even at its most business-oriented, film is always a cultural and aesthetic expression as well. And even at its least commercial, film always occurs within economic and cultural frameworks. But many things make understanding and evaluating its expression difficult, not least the clumsy distinction between art (or serious) films and all those other ones.

We will be discussing the ways in which people have approached the problem of trying to understand if film is an art, how it is an art, how to evaluate films and describe them within categories. Sometimes it will be frustrating, because there are no settled answers--there are only debates. Those debates, however, are as much a part of film culture as the films themselves.

The basic reference we will be coming back to is the concept of reality. Film represents, interprets and sometimes changes reality; it also is a reality of its own. Filmmakers, critics and film theorists inevitably bump up against the problem of film's relationship to reality.

We will be using the writings of people who made films and people who never made a film. In general, however, we will be approaching the subject from the viewpoint of how filmmakers have used film, and how that use has triggered debates over its meaning in society.