This course provides an overview of film theory and its connection to the aesthetics of film for graduate students. The course is designed to provide a foundation in academic film study in the context of contemporary film research.Film Film is a seminar/workshop that explores aspects of film as a celluloid material. Through critical analysis including readings, screenings, and a series of hands on workshops, we will investigate what remains relevant today about the idea and practice of film—a light sensitive celluloid material. What does it mean to focus on the light? How does what we find inform our thinking and making of the moving image today? We will look beyond the history of such categories as experimental film, and narrative film, to find poetic, intimate, risky, and perhaps even spiritual forms of making; to quote the film theorist Laura Marks “to restore the flow between the haptic and the optical that our culture is currently lacking.” Finally we will consider the material movement from film to video, what does this mean, how does it look, how does this make sense—as much of contemporary projection is now in video. We will take field trips and have guest speakers; students will present their work in class. The culmination of our investigations will take the form of collaborative student works that will be projected, with Jim Campbell’s guidance, on the Sales Force Tower at the end of the semester.

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