So it's almost time for me to pick out my classes for summer and fall and I was able to find a film class to fulfill one of my general electives. I'm going to sign up for it once I can, and it will be for the summer. The class takes place at the Cinema Center downtown Fort Wayne on Thursday night from 7-10:20. The broader aspect of the class is about film and society; however they usually have a more narrow topic to go along with that, and this time around it's Hollywood Leading Men. This might not sound like such an intellectual class by just the title, but if you take into consideration what might be shown film-wise and how the discussions would fit into society and how society views leading men in Hollywood these days, it seems way more fascinating. I have only ever taken one other film class when I went to Purdue University several years ago now, and it was a German film class, which was completely awesome. The films in that class ranged from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligiari and Metropolis all the way up to more modern things such as Nowhere in Africa. It was even more interesting as I almost have a minor in German and know the language fairly well, would say I am semi-fluent. This got me thinking though of how many different possibilities for film classes there are. I would like to start a discussion to see if anyone would like to post as to other film classes they have taken and what they liked and/or didn't like about the class. Also, if anyone wants to brainstorm to come up with an interesting topic for a film class, by all means shoot it out there, and then we can discuss on possibilities of what that film class might entail in its curriculum, i.e. films to be watched, discussions to be had.
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I'm not sure if I totally buy film needs to be molded into the placards of the ivory tower. I've read some scholarly film analysis and find it a bit tedious. That is not to say intelligence cannot be brought to film analysis. I'd prefer a hands on class on how to light a scene properly or a crash course in which lenses are best suited for crash zooms etc. Or writing courses pertaining to screenwriting. Theory is nice but ultimately it seems like belated exercises in semantics and vocabulary.
ReplyDeleteFair enough. It can definitely be pretentious and cumbersome when it comes to even almost over-analyzing things at times. For example, listening to the Cinecast podcast the other day, I heard one of the guys go in-depth about The Green Hornet and talking about this and that and how Gondry had a bit of genius in this scene or that. While Gondry does have his wit and Eternal Sunshine was amazing, The Green Hornet was not and it seemed to me they were giving credit to Gondry placing this or that into a scene with such minutia, when in fact to me it was more like that's how the scene played and they took way more from it than was meant to get out of it. On the other side, I can also see when it comes to certain films, more on the artsy side of cinema, that certain things relate better to topics of discussion and analysis when it comes to today's society and culture. Speaking from that German film class I took, one of the movies we watched called Girls in Uniform, while not the most amazing movie of its time, stuck out and was very powerful for me mostly due to the emphasis it placed on the fascist regime controlling Germany's current government and society at the time. The movie didn't have any Nazis involved with it, that I recall anyway, however the whole thing played out as if that's exactly what it was about. There comes a point of course when the analysis becomes so deeply involved that it over extends what it is really reaching to bring to the surface though.
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