Upper School Performing Arts > Film Studies

Harvard-Westlake Upper School Performing Arts

Location: Film Studies

Courses

Film Studies Courses

1026-1 Cinema Studies I
1026-2 Two Identical Semesters
Grades 11 and 12 Designed as both a course in film appreciation and film history, Cinema Studies I assumes the further intention of looking at how the cinema and the society it reflects interact each with the other. We are both defined by and reflected in many of the cinematic images that have dominated the cinema, especially the American cinema, since its inception. Throughout it all, the course seeks to teach students how to "read" film with an analytical and critical eye. Students are asked to write regularly on the cinema, from an in-depth look at the films of a single director to an analysis of an adapted film's development from novel to screenplay to celluloid. Over thirty films are viewed in the course, several of them in their entirety. Films highlighting the course include the following: Battleship Potemkin, Birth of a Nation, Casablanca, and Gallipoli. Directors studied in-depth include, among others, David Lean, William Wyler, Stanley Kubrick, and Alfred Hitchcock.
1027-1 Cinema Studies II
1027-2 Two Identical Semesters
Grades 11 and 12 Cinema Studies II is designed for the more serious student of film who seeks, through an exploration of the American cinema of the late 20th Century and post-WWII foreign cinema (especially the Italian, the French, and the Swedish), to investigate film in depth-aesthetically, culturally, and politically. Films considered in the course include Raging Bull, Bonnie and Clyde, Midnight Cowboy, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, The Bicycle Thief, 8 1/2, Fellini Satyricon, Fanny and Alexander, and Jules and Jim. Texts will include Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind.
Prerequisite: Cinema Studies I.

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