Film Courses

FILM BC3090 ARTEMIS RISING SHORT COURSE IN FILMMAKING. 1.00 point.

The Artemis Rising Short Course in Filmmaking is a two to four-week course offered each semester on a special topic of filmmaking presented by an Artemis Rising Foundation Filmmaker Fellow (ARFF). This series was endowed by the Artemis Rising Foundation to bring world-class filmmakers with hands-on experience and fresh perspectives to Barnard to connect with students interested in filmmaking as a vocation and media literacy. It can only be taken for pass/fail for 1 point. Students must attend all four class sessions and write a final paper in order to receive credit for this course. To see the dates/times that the Artemis Rising Short Course will meet this semester, the current course description, and the biography of the visiting filmmaker, please visit the ARFF website: https://athenacenter.barnard.edu/arff

FILM BC3091 ARTEMIS RISING SHORT COURSE IN FILM PRODUCTION. 1.00 point.

The Artemis Rising Short Course in Film Production is a one-point credit short workshop presented by an Artemis Rising Foundation Filmmaker Fellow (ARFF). It consists of four workshops on a special aspect of film production and one final project. This series was endowed by the Artemis Rising Foundation to bring world-class filmmakers with hands-on experience and fresh perspectives to Barnard to connect with students interested in filmmaking as a vocation and media literacy. It can only be taken for pass/fail for 1 point. Students must attend all four class workshops and produce one final project in order to receive credit for this course. To see the dates/times that the Artemis Rising Short Course will meet this semester, the current course description, and the biography of the visiting filmmaker, please visit the ARFF website: https://athenacenter.barnard.edu/arff

FILM BC3119 SCREENWRITING FUNDAMENTALS. 3.00 points.

Prerequisites: FILM BC3201 or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 12 students. Priority is given to Film Studies majors/concentrations in order of class seniority.
Corequisites: (Since this is a Film course, it does not count as a writing course for English majors with a Writing Concentration.)
Prerequisites: FILM BC3201 or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 12 students. Priority is given to Film Studies majors/concentrations in order of class seniority. Corequisites: (Since this is a Film course, it does not count as a writing course for English majors with a Writing Concentration.) This course is ideal for writers of their FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD screenplays. The first several weeks will focus on STORY: What it is, what it isn’t, how to recognize the difference. How to find your own individual stories that nobody else in the universe can tell. From there we will make the transition to the highly individualized techniques, the strengths and limitations, the dynamics of telling a SCREEN STORY; what to leave in, what to leave out. As Michelangelo puts it—starting with a block of marble and chipping away everything that isn’t David. Through studies of existing screenplays and films in coordination with and hands-on writing exercises which we will share in class, we will develop our skills in all aspects of screenwriting; building fascinating characters, dialogue, story construction (The BIG PICTURE) and scene construction (The Small Picture) Perfection is not the goal; but rather it is to be able to say truly at the end of each day’s writing, “I did the best I could with what I had at the time. (Phillip Roth quoting heavyweight champion Joe Louis)

FILM BC3120 ADVANCED SCREENWRITING. 3.00 points.

Prerequisites: FILM BC3201 or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 12 students. Priority is given to Film Studies majors/concentrations in order of class seniority.
Corequisites: (Since this is a Film course, it does not count as a writing course for English majors with a Writing Concentration.)
Prerequisite: FILM BC3201 or equivalent. First priority enrollment is given to senior Film Studies majors/concentrations. For more information on this semester's visiting instructor from the Artemis Rising Foundation Filmmaker Fellowship Program, visit: https://athenacenter.barnard.edu/arff This screenwriting seminar provides students an in-depth understanding of the short form which will help them turn their ideas into a short film script (up to 10 pages in length). With a focus on studying contemporary international short films students will learn to write their own short screenplay, as well as learn to give and receive feedback and receive tips on revising their scripts. Homework assignments will include watching films, reading short stories, writing exercises and reading screenplays

FILM BC3200 FILM PRODUCTION. 3.00 points.

Prerequisites: FILM BC3201 or equivalent. Sophomore standing. Priority is given to Film Studies majors/concentrations in order of class seniority. If you are accepted into this course, attending the first day of class is mandatory. If you do not show up, you may be dropped. This workshop introduces the student to all the cinematic tools necessary to produce their own short narrative work. Using what the student has learned in film studies, we'll break down shot syntax, mise-en-scene and editing strategies. We'll include scheduling, budgeting, casting, working with actors and expressive camera work in our process as we build toward a final video project

FILM BC3201 INTRO FILM ＆ MEDIA STUDIES. 3.00 points.

Prerequisites: Open to first-year students. We derive much of our information about the world from visual media. Social networks, television, cinema: all shape our aesthetic sensibilities and our political visions. Yet we often lack a basic understanding of what could be called “visual literacy.” This introductory course gives students the critical tools to analyze how film and other visual media really work – in order to appreciate their artistic and social achievements, as well as to guard against their insidious manipulative devices. In the first part of the semester, we focus on film analysis through a detailed study of the different production phases of filmmaking – from screenwriting and mise-en-scène to editing and film scoring. We pay special attention to the way in which certain stylistic and narrative choices have particular ideological effects. The second part of the course looks at film history through a comprehensive, chronological overview of its main movements and periods, including the coming of sound in Hollywood cinema, post-war Italian Neorealism, the emergence of world auteurs, New Waves of the 1960s and 1970s, etc. Students will use the hermeneutical tools learnt in film analysis to intellectually engage with some masterworks of film history. In the third and final part of the semester, we study the major debates of film theory from perspectives such as auteurism, formalism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, postcolonial and queer studies, etc. Required screenings include Nanook of the North (Flaherty, 1922), Sunrise (Murnau, 1927), Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929), Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942), Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948), Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950), Breathless (Godard, 1960), Belle de Jour (Buñuel, 1967), The Hour of the Furnaces (Solanas, 1968), Seven Beauties (Wertmüller, 1974), Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986), Paris Is Burning (Livingstone, 1990), and Children of Men (Cuarón, 2006)

FILM BC3204 Discussion Section. 0 points.

Enrollment in one of the following sections is required when registering for FILM BC 3201: Introduction to Film and Film Theory.

FILM BC3225 INDEPENDENT CINEMA. 3.00 points.

Prerequisites: FILM BC 3201 or equivalent.
Prerequisites: FILM BC 3201 or equivalent. Some film scholars seem confused when the term “Independent Cinema” is used in academic discussions. “Independent of what?” and “How independent really?” immediately come up as questions to dismiss the term as too general and misleading. Yet Independent Cinema is not a vague concept: quite the contrary, it very specifically designates the terrain where one of the most controversial debates in America’s film history has taken place. In this course, we study 1) the most important alternative film practices in the US during the 1980s and 1990s, assessing their political and aesthetic accomplishments, and 2) the way “Indie” Cinema was simultaneously incorporated, neutralized, and/or neglected by mainstream media conglomerates. For that purpose, we first focus on the development of non-standard modes of production in the 1940s and 1950s – as exemplified in some works by Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger, and John Cassavetes – as well as Hollywood’s commercial strategies to renew its hegemony from the 1960s onwards – we take Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969) as a case study. We then turn to the analysis of “minor” American cinemas, their forms of thinking, and their impact in public debates concerning freedom of speech, civil rights, and the representation of minorities in the screen during the 1980s. In the last part of the semester, we examine the commodification of independent filmmaking in the 1990s (Disney’s takeover of Miramax, cooptation of the Sundance Film Festival, etc) to further understand that subtle division between art and commercialism in recent American cinema. In-class screenings include Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977), Chan Is Missing (Wayne Wang, 1982), Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch, 1986), Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989), sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1989), American Dream (Barbara Kopple, 1990), Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992), and Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen brothers, 2013)

FILM BC3245 American Television Drama. 3 points.

Between prestige and streaming, the medium of television has never covered a wider breadth of narratives, voices, and concerns. This course will take a closer look at the format of the American Drama and how it has served as a cultural tool since its inception, reflecting the concerns of the time in one form or another. Through theoretical readings and sociological texts, the course will survey and sharpen our understanding of the power of the medium when placed in conversation with the greater American discourse.

FILM BC3250 ADAPTATION. 3.00 points.

In the same way that there can never be a single objective account of an historical event, using one medium to convey a story first told in another is never as straightforward as it might seem. Translating the essence of an existing story to the screen may require making significant changes to the events or characters as they were originally presented. As a screenwriter faced with such an adaptation, you must understand the idiosyncrasies of your craft well enough to recognize what to keep, what to change, and what to leave behind. This course will explore what makes a screen story work, balancing faithfulness and invention

FILM BC3260 WRITING FOR TELEVISION: SHORT FORM. 3.00 points.

Corequisites: Please note that since this is a Film course, it does not count as a writing course for English majors with a Writing Concentration.
[Prerequisite: FILM BC3201 or equivalent. Please note that since this is a Film Studies course, it does not count as a creative writing course for English majors with a creative writing concentration.] This course will focus on the primary pillar of television production: the teleplay. Through a number of creative exercises, students will learn the intricacies of the unique screenwriting formats that are the half-hour and hour-long teleplays. Together we will cover the differences between an episode arc and a seasonal one, the requirements of A/B/C story plotting, and how to write an effective show bible. We will survey the existing pantheon of great television writing in order to help students narrow in on their individual sensibilities. By the end of the course, students will have a written original pilot and a mini series bible

FILM BC3265 The Producer's Role. 3 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

This course follows a producer's role from the selection of material through its development, preproduction, production and post-production to the delivery of the completed work. Once a project has been developed and financed and is in pre-production, a producer organizes and provides the best possible support system and equipment for the director. S/he is responsible for providing all the elements, human and material, as well as her/his own experience, professional judgment and assistance, to carry out the combined vision of the film's writer, director and producer. When budgets are low the producer often has to do script revisions; casting; finding props and wardrobe; obtaining equipment at low rates; legal and accounting work; collaborating with the director and editor during the shoot and post-production, and plan marketing and distribution.  Producing low-budget fiction and non-fiction films/videos offers invaluable experience in learning how to handle larger productions: how to arrive at a compelling storyline, judge the talents and skills of above and below-the-line personnel and supervise the production. Guests include a Director and Editor. Students choose a project they want to produce, “pitch it to the class,” and then write a professional proposal for it.

FILM BC3275 NONFIC DIGTL VIDEO PRODCTN. 3.00 points.

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 12 students. Registering for the course only through myBarnard or SSOL will NOT ensure your enrollment. Attend first class for instructor permission. Lab section required.
Nonfiction Digital Video Production: Enrollment limited to 12 students. Registering for the course only through myBarnard or SSOL will NOT ensure your enrollment. Attend first class for instructor permission. Lab section required. This workshop course is designed to familiarize students with digital video technologies while they investigate various aesthetic and theoretical concepts related to nonfiction cinema and its engagement with the real. Through weekly readings, discussions, screenings, critiques, and practical exercises, students will develop a solid understanding of how to use digital video as an expressive tool. The course will culminate in the completion of a short video work by each student. Students should be both self-directed and interested in developing a support system for each others work

FILM BC3278 DIGITAL PRODUCTION. 3.00 points.

Prerequisites: both FILM BC3201 (or equivalent) and FILM BC3200 (or equivalent). Digital Production offers visual storytellers an incredible medium to connect and build an audience. It is an inexpensive, accessible platform to launch micro-budget concepts. Developing the storytellers voice inexpensively is critical to the evolution of any student, no matter their starting point. The Digital Series course is intended to take students from story ideation through creation of an independent digital series. Emanating from a writers room setting, all steps of the process will be explored and supported by in-class discussion, examples and workshops. This hands-on class revolves around the TV series production model: breaking story, writing pages, preproduction planning, filming and post-production review. We will emphasize the writers voice, construction of series storytelling, and establishing realistic scopes of production

FILM BC3279 UNSEEN MASTERWORKS OF WORLD CINEMA. 3.00 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

This course examines the portrayal of significant themes in international cinema. Through a selection of diverse cinematic works from various countries, students will analyze different cultural, historical, and political perspectives. The course aims to enhance students' understanding of complex topics, their impact on individuals and societies, and the ethical questions they evoke. Through critical analysis and discussion, students will engage with a range of cinematic works that offer alternative narratives and perspectives

FILM BC3280 Truffaut and Rohmer: From Page to Screen. 4.00 points.

A comparative analysis between a literary source and its film adaptation can be a useful tool to understand how both cinema and literature work. In this course, we focus on five outstanding adaptations written and directed by French auteurs François Truffaut and Éric Rohmer during the 1970s: The Wild Child (1970), Two English Girls (1971), The Story of Adèle H. (1975), The Marquise of O... (1976), and Perceval (1978). By carefully examining the literary texts and their transpositions to the screen, we study the specific qualities of film adaptations and discuss seminal ideas on originality, authorship, and hybridization in the arts. We start by reading three “classical” essays on film and literature –Sergei Eisenstein’s “Dickens, Griffith, and the Film Today” (1944), André Bazin’s “For an Impure Cinema: In Defense of Adaptation” (1952), and George Bluestone’s “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film” (1957)– in order to recognize the affinities and differences between “the concept of the mental image” in literature and “the percept of the visual image” in cinema. We then pay attention to the different methods used by Truffaut and Rohmer to translate the original texts to the screen. For that purpose, before watching each film, we closely read its “source”: a medieval romance (Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, the Story of the Grail, 1191), a medical report (Jean Itard’s The Education of a Savage Man, 1798), a Romantic novella (Heinrich von Kleist’s The Marquise of O..., 1808), a secret diary (Adèle Hugo’s Journal of Exile, 1866), and a semi-autobiographical novel (Henri-Pierre Roché’s Two English Girls and the Continent, 1952). Each reading is followed by an in-depth analysis of Truffaut’s and Rohmer’s films, with emphasis on the significant changes in narrative structure, point of view, and characterization – which, in turn, allow for audio-visual patterning appropriate to film. The study of the directors’ styles (camera movement, lighting techniques, use of sound and music, montage, etc) will enable us to verify to what extent the serious film adaptor becomes a creator in his own right

FILM BC3301 Advanced Production. 3 points.

Prerequisites: FILM BC3201 or equivalent. Sophomore standing. Enrollment limited to 12 students. Attend first class for instructor permission.

Advanced Film Production will teach students how to create a short narrative film; emphasizing the steps taken in pre-production, production and post-production. Through hands-on workshops and theory, students will learn narrative editing, shot progression, camera lenses, lighting and audio equipment. Students will work in teams of four, learning the roles and responsibilities of the different crew members.

FILM BC3610 NEW CINEMAS IN LATIN AMERICA. 3.00 points.

This seminar will analyze the historical similarities and differences between the two major “New Wave” periods of Latin America cinema. The first part of this course will examine the emergence of the 1960s nuevos cines in Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, Argentina, and Chile through an in-depth analysis of landmark films such as Jomi García Ascot’s and María Luisa Elío’s "On the Empty Balcony" (1962), Glauber Rocha’s "Entranced Earth" (1967), and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s "Memories of Underdevelopment" (1968). Some key concepts in Benedict Anderson’s book "Imagined Communities" will help us to understand why “national identities” played such a primordial role among Latin American film intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s. Special attention will be paid to the manifestos written by Julio García Espinosa, Fernando Solanas, and Octavio Getino, and to how they confronted Hollywood’s hegemony in order to create an auteurist film tradition in the region. In the second part of the seminar, we will study the global success of the Latin American cinemas of the 2000s from a transnational perspective: features such as Alfonso Cuarón’s "Y tu mamá también" (2001), Lucrecia Martel’s "The Swamp" (2001), and Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund’s "City of God" (2002) will be examined in relation to the political and aesthetic traditions discussed in part one. We will explore how these contemporary Latin American filmmakers have shifted their interests from national identities to questions of gender, race, class, and sexuality. The critical interpretation of these films will allow us to redefine the idea of "national cinemas" and to reexamine the historical tensions between state control, commercialism, and independent cinema in Latin America

FILM BC3702 MAJOR WOMEN FILMMAKERS. 4.00 points.

Traditional film history has consigned a multitude of cinema practices to an inferior position. By accepting Hollywood’s narrative model as central, film scholars have often relegated non-male, non-white, non-Western films to a secondary role. Often described as “marginal” or “peripheral” cinemas, the outcomes of these film practices have been systematically excluded from the canon. Yet… are these motion pictures really “secondary”? In relation to what? And according to whom? This course looks at major films by women filmmakers of the 20th Century within a tradition of political cinema that 1) directly confronts the hegemonic masculinity of the Hollywood film industry, and 2) relocates the so-called “alternative women’s cinema” at the core of film history. Unlike conventional feminist film courses, which tend to be contemporary and anglocentric, this class adopts a historical and worldwide perspective; rather than focusing on female directors working in America today, we trace the origins of women’s cinema in different cities of the world (Berlin, Paris, New York) during the silent period, and, from there, we move forward to study major works by international radical directors such as Lorenza Mazzetti, Agnès Varda, Forough Farrokhzad, Věra Chytilová, Chantal Akerman, Liliana Cavani, Barbara Kopple, Larisa Shepitko, and Mira Nair. We analyse how these filmmakers have explored womanhood not only as a source of oppresion (critique of patriarchal phallocentrism, challenge to heteronormativity, etc) but, most importantly, as a source of empowerment (defense of matriarchy, equal rights, lesbian love, inter- and transexuality...). Required readings include seminal texts of feminist film theory by Claire Johnston, Laura Mulvey, Ann Kaplan, bell hooks, and Judith Butler. Among the films screened in the classroom are: silent movies –"Suspense" (Lois Weber, 1913), "The Smiling Madame Beudet" (Germaine Dulac, 1922)—, early independent and experimental cinema –"Girls in Uniform" (Leontine Sagan, 1931), "Ritual in Transfigured Time" (Maya Deren, 1946)—, “new wave” films of the 1950s and 1960s –"Together" (Mazzetti, 1956), "Cléo from 5 to 7" (Varda, 1962), "Daisies" (Chytilová, 1966)–, auteur cinema of the 1970s – "Jeanne Dielman" (Akerman, 1975), "The Ascent" (Shepitko, 1977)–, and documentary films –"Harlan County, USA" (Kopple, 1976), "Paris Is Burning" (Jennie Livingston, 1990)

ANTH V3824 Fantasy, Film, and Fiction in Archaeology. 4 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

ANTH W4625 Anthropology and Film. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

FREN BC3062 Women in French Cinema since the 60s. 3 points.

This course traces the evolving nature of the relationship between women and society in French cinema from the New Wave of the 60's to the present. Attitudes of women and towards women will be examined in the light of the changing social, political, and intellectual context. FREN BC1204: French Intermediate II or the equivalent level is required.

FREN BC3064 France on Film. 3 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Films on and of the period from the 1930s to the present, focusing on the interplay between history, ideology, and culture. FREN BC1204: French Intermediate II or the equivalent level is required. 

FREN BC3065 SURREALISM. 3.00 points.

An examination of the relationship between traditional & avant-garde literature and visual culture; the use of word-play & language games as tools of artistic expression; the thematization of the unconscious and dreams; the vexed relationship between aesthetics & politics; the poetics and politics of sexuality & gender.  Authors and artists will include Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, Man Ray, Dorothea Tanning, and Salvador Dali. FREN BC1204: French Intermediate II or the equivalent level is required.

FREN BC3073 Africa in Cinema. 3 points.

Considerations of African-directed twentieth century films concerning French-speaking, sub-Saharan West Africa. Reflections on tradition and modernity, politics and popular culture, the status of women, youth problems, identity construction. Placement of African film within its own tradition. Class taught in English.