* subdirectories : lessons
(old) Textbook: How to read a Film, Jim Monaco 1. Film as Art
2. Technology
3. Film Language
4. History
5. Theory
6. Media
7. MultiMedia
appendix
Richard Gilman referred to How to Read a Film as simply "the best single work of its kind." Janet Maslin of The New York Times Book Review marveled at James Monaco's ability to collect "an enormous amount of useful information and assemble it in an exhilaratingly simple and systematic way." And Richard Roud, Director of the New York Film Festival stated, "Anyone who writes about film, who is interested in film seriously, just has to have it." Clearly, few books on film have met with such critical acclaim as How to Read a Film. Since its original publication in 1977, this hugely popular book has become the definitive source on film and media. Now, James Monaco offers a completely revised and rewritten third edition that brings every major aspect of this dynamic medium right up to the present day. Looking at film from many vantage points, Monaco discusses the elements necessary to understand how a film conveys its meaning, and, more importantly, how the audience can best discern all that a film is attempting to communicate. He begins by setting movies in the context of the more traditional arts such as the novel, painting, photography, theater--even music--demonstrating that film as a narrative technique is directly comparable to these older mediums. He points out that much of what we see and experience in film can be traced directly back to other art forms. Accordingly, as film is a technology as well as an art, he examines the intriguing science of cinema and follows the development of the electronic media and its parallel growth with film during this century. A new chapter on multimedia brings media criticism into the late 1990s with a thorough discussion of such topics as virtual reality and cyberspace and their relationship to film. Monaco goes on to show how film operates as a language, describing the various techniques and concepts responsible for the often visceral reactions that only film can elicit.
Cinema and Soviet Society : From the Revolution to the Death of Stalin (KINO - The Russian Cinema) * The story of Soviet film in the period covered by Peter Kenez is central to the history of world cinema. The author explores the roots of Soviet cinema in the film heritage of pre-Revolutionary Russia; the changes in content, style, technical means, and production capacities generated by the Revolution of 1917; the constraints on form and subject imposed from the 1930s in the name of Socialist Realism; the relative freedom of expression accorded to film-makers during World War Two; and the extraordinary repression during the final years of the Stalin era.
I have problems; one of them is my students, especislly, film students. They "watch" movies, which is already bad enough + they do not read books! As a result they do not know how to think. When you cna't think, you not caple of writing...
* the textbook page? How to use it.
Should the "books" page in each directory be around the required reading, leaving the subject/topic pages in BOOKS directory for general listing?
"books" pages at filmplus.org :
...
Summary
Other books pages and books directories! Each subdirectory has "books" page!
Get yourself "How to Read a Film" by James Monaco and read everything ahead of class (Spring 2003)!
Questions
How to use the textbook? And what is the homework!
"In art economy is always beauty." --Henry James
Notes
Textbook and my related webpages.
With a good script a good director can produce a masterpiece; with the same script a mediocre director can make a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can't possibly make a good film. For truly cinematic expression, the camera and the microphone must be able to cross both fire and water. That is what makes a real movie. The script must be something that has the power to do this. Kurosawa
Films: The Passion of the Christ. "Protestantism is inherently non-visual." American Christianity: Christmas over Easter. Birth over Death?
Who does believe in Satan? Not us. "Sweet Juses"... (and -- In Islam, Jesus does not die on the cross because such a fate is considered unfitting for a prophet of Allah.)
... a nation of Bible readers, not just Bible owners?
Check the books directory @ Film-North and the Mining Film (books and links). I will continue to list the titles in biblio (I try to use Amazon links for recommended reading).
How to help them (students) to navigate the extra-reading, according to their personal interests? Directors, actors, English majors...
"I am often asked why I don't pass on to young people what I have accomplished over the years. Actually, I would like very much to do so. Ninety-nine percent of those who worked as my assistant directors have now become directors in their own right. But I don't think any of them took the trouble to learn the most important things." Akira Kurosawa
There are many good film books -- and I try to keep the links in references or/and appendix + other service pages. Of course, I have no time to comment on them. Many are laying around open, because I have no time to finish reading them...
There are many great online texts, many I discovered not long ago -- since Google began its search in Russian. I place some texts and URLs, hopping that one day I will find the time to translate the segments. Turovsky on Tarkovsky -- http://kinocenter.rsuh.ru/tarkov.htm [ see film.vtheatre.net/ru.html>film.vtheatre.net/ru ]
"Ivan" -- "Движение картины все время идет через катастрофы. Тому, что мы привыкли называть "переживаниями", почти нет места. Убийство матери -- травма, его нельзя пережить слезами и горем. Война -- травма, к ней нельзя привыкнуть. Насилие над душевным миром человека тотально. Но именно из этой тотальности, из практической невозможности простого, человеческого рождается почти нестерпимая духовная потребность в идеальном. Из абсолютной дисгармонии -- мечта об абсолютной гармонии."
The Major Film Theories: An Introduction
Dudley Andrew is a master at making the world of film theory accessible to a largely mystified public. Since the publication of his Major Film Theories , a classic in the field, the sophistication of the debate concerning the proper approach to film has grown. It is now the province of critics and universities instead of directors and artists, and this book concentrates on the main areas of the debate rather than on the individual figures. Andrew provides lucid explanations of theories which involve perceptual psychology and structuralism; semiotics and psychoanalysis; hermeneutics and genre study. Throughout he presents his own strong views on the relationship of film theory to criticism, history, and analysis. His clear approach to often obscure theories goes a long way towards bringing an important area of cultural discussion out of its academic exile.
An Introduction to Film Studies
Jill Nelmes is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and Cultural Studies at the University of East London.
Reinventing Film Studies
This anthology of specially-commissioned essays introduces the film student to some of the central questions and debates that have concerned the development of film studies. Written by a team of noted scholars, the collection focuses on issues that confront us today, assessing the impact on the discipline of recent technological, cultural, and social developments; challenging received thinking, and reinventing film studies for the post-film era. In each of five thematic sections, early essays open up key problems, issues, and debates while a case study offers concrete examples of what various approaches can deliver. Covering all major topics and fully up-to-date, this reader will be a key text for all serious undergraduate and graduate students who want to understand where film is going in its second century.
Watch the movies before we see the fragments in class!
Keep your NOTES while watching! This "W" class, writing-intensive!
200-words reactions are required on each title on our list!
The Oxford Guide to Film Studies
Comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date, this volume is an indispensable guide to the study of film. Top international contributors provide an overview of the main disciplinary approaches to film studies, an explanation of the core concepts and methods involved in film analysis, a survey of the major issues and debates in the study of film, and critical discussion of key areas.
The Film Studies Reader
Ranging from the mass culture critics to postcolonial and queer theory, this reader is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the main theoretical approaches within film studies. It provides students with an opportunity to engage with primary sources in the form of extracts from key critics while also offering a general introduction and chapter introductions that help to locate the extracts in historical contexts and explain their contributions to, and interventions in, debates within the study of film. Among the distinguished contributors are Tom Gunning, Steven Cohan, Janet Staiger, James Naremore, Jim Kitses, Carol Clover, and Jane Gaines.
The Complete Guide to American Film Schools and Cinema and Television Courses
A Companion to Film Theory (Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies)
Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema (Asia-Pacific.)
The films of Akira Kurosawa have had an immense effect on the way the Japanese have viewed themselves as a nation and on the way the West has viewed Japan. In this comprehensive and theoretically informed study of the influential director’s cinema, Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto definitively analyzes Kurosawa’s entire body of work, from 1943’s Sanshiro Sugata to 1993’s Madadayo. In scrutinizing this oeuvre, Yoshimoto shifts the ground upon which the scholarship on Japanese cinema has been built and questions its dominant interpretive frameworks and critical assumptions.
Arguing that Kurosawa’s films arouse anxiety in Japanese and Western critics because the films problematize Japan’s self-image and the West’s image of Japan, Yoshimoto challenges widely circulating clichйs about the films and shows how these works constitute narrative answers to sociocultural contradictions and institutional dilemmas. While fully acknowledging the achievement of Kurosawa as a filmmaker, Yoshimoto uses the director’s work to reflect on and rethink a variety of larger issues, from Japanese film history, modern Japanese history, and cultural production to national identity and the global circulation of cultural capital. He examines how Japanese cinema has been “invented” in the discipline of film studies for specific ideological purposes and analyzes Kurosawa’s role in that process of invention. Demonstrating the richness of both this director’s work and Japanese cinema in general, Yoshimoto’s nuanced study illuminates an array of thematic and stylistic aspects of the films in addition to their social and historical contexts.
Beyond aficionados of Kurosawa and Japanese film, this book will interest those engaged with cultural studies, postcolonial studies, cultural globalization, film studies, Asian studies, and the formation of academic disciplines.
There is no much difference between BOOKS and BIBLIO pages:
... only recently I began to place in biblio the titles I quote from on my pages.
"I am often asked why I don't pass on to young people what I have accomplished over the years. Actually, I would like very much to do so. Ninety-nine percent of those who worked as my assistant directors have now become directors in their own right. But I don't think any of them took the trouble to learn the most important things." Akira Kurosawa
