As our national and international cultures become increasingly dominated by visual culture, we acknowledge the need to become critical viewers, knowledgeable in the history of the most popular art forms of our time and possessing the analytical skills to understand and interpret visual forms of expression. The undergraduate major in film and media studies requires the rigorous study of history and aesthetics in an attempt to understand the creative force of an individual art work, its relation to other artistic production, its place in culture, and its relation to industrial and business practices.

Although the Program in Film and Media Studies is an independent program, many of its courses are cross-listed with American Culture Studies, Art History, Comparative Literature, English, Germanic Languages and Literature, History, Music, Romance Languages, Performing Arts.

Error in the printed Fall 2008 Course Book.

Moving Images and Sound (L53 230) will be taught on Wednesday, 4:00pm - 7:00pm NOT Thursday. Sorry for the confusion.

New Senior Appointment

We are delighted to announce that Professor Gaylyn Studlar has accepted a full-time appointment to the Film and Media Studies program, of which she will become Director. Her many publications include This Mad Masquerade: Stardom and Masculinity in the Jazz Age, and, as editor, volumes on topics ranging from John Ford’s Westerns to Orientalism in Film. Professor Studlar will take up the post in January 2009.

Another New Appointment

The Faculty has been further strengthened by the recent appointment of Dr Hunter Vaughan as full-time Lecturer, for two years from Fall 2008. In addition to Freshman seminars, he will teach a class in the Fall on French Film Culture, thus resuming an important topic that we have been unable to offer in recent years. For more on Dr Vaughan, see the Faculty pages.

DECENT GRADES? Up-and-coming (and soon gone!) noteworthy films, as reviewed by your devoted faculty...

CHICAGO 10
Twenty years ago (echoes of today?), an active war machine, a promising black leader, a democratic convention... and for this film, the trial of eight activists who with their two lawyers challenge the sixties' status-quo. The words of the trial transcript become illuminated, and literally animated, as we revisit one of the liveliest examples of political theater. By all means necessary!---> A (p.m.)

PARANOID PARK
Riding on the casual freshness of non-actors, Van Sant's latest work circles around the psyche of a skateboarder skirting around his fate. Chris Doyle, the famed cinematographer of Wong-Kar Wai's colorful films, makes the images breathe and bloom. In a clever mixture of tension and looseness, the film carves out, as a skateboarder would, an exquisite horizontal structure of time and space---> A (pm)

STOP-LOSS
Unless we have relatives or friends involved, we might feel as if we were sleepwalking through this particular aspect of our lives. Did we even know we could ask such a question as "should we stop stop-loss"? This fiction film, confronts us with the reality and urgency of such inquiries. Yes, Iraq is not entertaining, but the seeds of a contemporary classic film are there, living moment by moment the lives of people most of us are too removed from to ever acknowledge---> A (p.m.)

FLANDERS
This story is so cleverly told that its particulars become almost irrelevant, even if we leave the Flanders to some nondescript Arab country war. Like most masterful filmmaking this film projects us onto a front-row view of the human psyche, sure to sting our soul. Cannes Grand Prix winner---> A+ (p.m.)

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