CMAa06 Introduction to Film Theories

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2024
Extent and Intensity
1/1/0. 5 credit(s). Type of Completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
doc. Mgr. Pavel Skopal, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
doc. Mgr. Pavel Skopal, Ph.D.
Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Supplier department: Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Timetable
Wed 12:00–13:40 C34, except Wed 17. 4.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is only offered to the students of the study fields the course is directly associated with.

The capacity limit for the course is 40 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 20/40, only registered: 1/40
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
The course will analyse significant discourses on cinema as they formed during the decades and across various cultural and national areas. The students will be introduced to wide spectrum of contemporary arguments and will learn to interpret period texts in a wider cultural, social and political context.
Learning outcomes
After finishing this course, students will be able to formulate the main changes in the theoretical, critical and methodological reflection of cinema, as well as understand them in the relevant historical context. The knowledge provided by the lectures will give the students the capacity to understand how the history of discourses on cinema can be analysed. Besides, they will acquire the competence for understanding the contemporary research tendencies in a wider perspective and recognize continuities, as well as paradigmatic changes.
Syllabus
  • 1. Cinema and Modernity
  • 2. Soviet avant-garde, Soviet montage, and Dziga Vertov
  • 3. Film Realism and Neorealism
  • 4. Film Semiotics and Post-Semiotics
  • 5. Cognitivism
  • 6. Auteur Theory
  • 9. Theory of Field vs. Art Worlds
  • 10. Production Studies
  • 11. Representation
Literature
    required literature
  • Dziga Vertov: WE: Variant of a Manifesto; On the Significance of Newsreel; kinopravda; The Birth of Kino-Eye; From Kino-Eye t Radio-Eye. In: Annette Michelson (ed.), Kino-Eye. The Writings of Dziga Vertov. Berkeley – Los Angeles – London: University of C
    recommended literature
  • Janet Staiger, Authorship Approaches. In: David A. Gerstener – Janet Staiger (eds.), Authorship and Film: Trafficking with Hollywood. Routledge, 2003
  • Malcolm Turvey: The Filming of Modern Life. European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s. MIT Press, 2011
  • Francesco Casetti: Theories of Cinema, 1945-1995. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999
  • Melodrama and modernity : early sensational cinema and its contexts. Edited by Ben Singer. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001, xiv, 363. ISBN 0231113293. info
  • ABEL, Richard. French cinema : the first wave, 1915-1929. 1st Princeton pbk. print. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1987, xxi, 672. ISBN 0691008132. info
Teaching methods
The lectures include discussion over obligatory reading, as well as a collective analysis of textual fragments and film clips.
Assessment methods
Brief tests checking the knowledge of seminar reading and understanding of the lecture – 20 points; final written test – 50 points; an outline of a research project – 30 points. To pass the exam, the student has to reach the score of 60% in each of the three categories.
Language of instruction
English
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2023, Spring 2025.
  • Enrolment Statistics (recent)
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