History of film theory

History of film theory

Lectures: 10

Seminars: 20

Tutorials: 0

ECTS credit: 5

Lecturer(s): doc. dr. Petek Polona

History of Film Theory detects a series of the most significant authors in cinematic thought in the 20th century, and then through meticulous reading begins to construct a particular virtual library of crucial concepts of film theory throuhout its history.
Along with film creators (Eisenstein, Epstein, Bresson, Godard, Pasolini…) theoreticians of film from differnt disciplines are considered (philosophers Deleuze and Žižek, art hitorians Gombrich and Panofsky, sociologists baudrillard and Virilio etc.).
A few of these works and authors: Hugo Munsterberg (Film – A Pscyhological Study, 1916), Siegfried Cracauer (From Caligari to Hitler), Lotte Eisner (Demonical Screen); Bela Balazs (Film Culture), Rudolf Arnheim (Film as Art), Andre Bazin (Que est-ce que c'est que le cinema?), Edgar Morin (Cinema ou l'homme imaginaire), Pascal Bonitzer (Le champ aveugle; Decadrages), Michel Chion (Voix dans le cinema, Audiovision), David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson (History of the Cinema).

Theoretical paradigms included:
formalism and structuralism; theory of film apparatus; feminist and post-feminist film theory; psychoanalytical and schizoanalytical film theory; poststructuralism and postmodernism; queer theory and postcolonial film studies.

A wider epistemological, ideological and cultural contextualization of these interventions will be enphasised. So will be specific changes brought by these interventions in film analysisi and interpretation (e.g. a more intensive interest in film sound and a critical reconsideration of hierarchic relation between sound and picture).