Week 8 March 3rd The Post-War Avant-garde

The Post-War Avant-garde and Independent Cinema.Readings: Thompson & Bordwell Chapter 21 Documentary and Experimental Cinema in the Postwar Era 1945-Mid 1960’s pp 478-507. Maya Deren p 490Hayward, Key Concepts Feminist film theory pp97-116; Supplementary Reading: Laura Mulvey “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, (Braudy and Cohen pp 833-844).

Screening: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) Maya Deren/ Alex Hammid; Fireworks (1947) Kenneth Anger; Last Year at Marienbad (1961), Alain Renais;

 

Other important films

Cleo from 5-7 (1961) Agnes Varda; Scorpio Rising (1964) Kenneth Anger;

Chelsea Girls (1966) Andy Warhol Weekend (1967) Jean Luc Godard;

Wavelength (1967) Michael Snow;

Performance (1970) Nicholas Roeg;

Privilege (1990), Yvonne Rainer.

May 68

Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord)

Semiotic Theory (Saussure, Barthes)

The Mirror Stage: Psychoanalysis and cinema. (Christian Metz).

Godard, Ackerman, Jutra, Coppola, Altman

May 1968

Guy Debord and Situationism

Society of the Spectacle Theses

“The entire life of societies in which modern conditions of production reign appears as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was expressed directly has been distanced in a representation.” (Thesis 1)

“Spectacle in general, as the concrete immersion of life is the autonomous movement of the non-living. Spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation between people mediated through images.” (Thesis 4)

“Among other possibilities the cinema lends itself particularly well to studying the present as an historical problem, to dismantling the processes of reification.” ( René Vienet, 1959)

Debord and Godard were interested in a “politicized Brechtian Cinema” Wexman p363A Marxist cinema?The Dziga Vertov GroupImportance of Cahiers du Cinema.Semiology (Discourse on signs) Ferdinand de Saussure Roland Barthes The Death of the Author

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)

Signs

According to Ferdinand De Saussure the Sign consists of:(1) signifier -- the material form of the sign for example the

word red - and (2) the signified -- the concept it represents the colour red

Denotation – denotative (indexical) plane of meaningr.e.d. = colour redConnotation – connotative (iconic and symbolic) plane of meaningRed, rose, love, passion, lust, hot, anger, blood, communism,… endless signification…… hence “the arbitrary nature of the sign”

3 Categories

1. Iconic - a sign which resembles the signified (portrait, photo, diagram, map)

2. Symbolic - a sign which does not resemble the signified but which is purely conventional (the word stop, a red traffic light, or a national flag)

3. Indexical - a sign which is inherently connected in some way (existentially or causally) to the signified (e.g. smoke signifies fire; and all the little symbols on web pages -- mailboxes, speakers, envelopes, arrows).

sound/sense

Roland Barthes: The Death of the Author “the death of the author

ensures the birth of the reader”

Christian Metz (1931 – 1993) The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema

The Mirror Stage The Imaginary, the Symbolic and the RealThe dyad and split subjectivity. The one who is not

one yes seeking the other un petit autre le petit object a in Lacanian terms.

Subjectivity, identity formation and….. misrecognition. I am….. another to myself?!

I seek an other to myself. Jouissance!I am necessarily incomplete until I bond with

another…. and yet this bonding occurs in the realm of the imaginary or the symbolic.

Implications for

1. Spectatorship Desire/Fetishism…..

2. Narrative construction - The Oedipal Trajectory in classical narrative cinema

3. Character formation and identification. You become what you desire……

Jean-Luc Godard

Weekend (1967) released in 1968

Begins: “ a film found on a scrap heap”

Ends with “the end of cinema”

Francis Ford CoppolaThe Conversation (1974)

Robert Altman Nashville (1975)

Chantal Ackerman Je Tu Il Elle;

Claude Jutra 1930 - 1986Mon Oncle Antoine (1971)

V2_: Je Tu Il Elle

Last Year in Marienbad

dir. Alain Renais

Week 9 Contemporary Cinema Since the

1960’sCrime, Horror and Suspense. The Hollywood ‘B’ movie.

Readings: Thompson & Bordwell Chapter 22 Hollywood’s Fall and Rise pp 505-533;

Hayward, Key Concepts Horror pp174-178.

Screening: Bucket of Blood (1960) Roger Corman, Night of the Living Dead (1968) George Romero; Breathless (1960) Jean Luc Godard.