This course will focus on topics in the history, theory and aesthetics of sound cinema.

Film 30: Film Aesthetics—Contemporary Experimental Interventions focuses on the practices of a diverse range of contemporary (post-1968) filmmakers. While these filmmakers are predominantly situated within the North Atlantic region, their filmic experimentations traverse black, indigenous, diasporic, feminist and queer artistic movements and contexts that exceed and trouble discrete regional and national frames. The course focuses on contemporary genres of experimental filmmaking, with an eye towards situating their significance within the much longer history of the modern world. In particular, the course addresses the politics, aesthetics, and historical conditions that inform the intersections of transnational and minoritarian filmmaking. The political dimensions of these themes will often be taken up through questions of style, with particular attention given to matters of film aesthetics, production and post-production editing techniques. Students will learn how these analytics can be brought to bear on the aesthetic significance and cultural development of diverse yet interconnected filmmaking practices (both narrative and non-narrative). Additionally, the course will enable students to think about how cinema and contemporary post-cinematic art practices inherit and share themes of social and political struggle. Finally, we will explore some of the very recent interventions in experimental and avant-garde film and media, including practitioners who engage with new media practices. Key themes may include: the body; non-narrativity; abstraction; surrealism; spectatorship; materiality; race, gender, and the politics of representation; the relationships between the politics of belonging and aesthetics more generally.

Credit Restrictions

Students will receive no credit for FILM 30 after completing FILM 25B. A deficient grade in FILM 30 may be removed by taking FILM 25B.

Repeat Rules

Course is not repeatable for credit.