Course 2009-2010 a.y.

Course Objectives

Students attending the course are given a broad view on the current tendencies in the world of the moving images,addressing the domain of the visual culture trough the film history, the age of video and thefilmic andpost filmic experience in the new media such in contemporary art, from the second half of the 20th century.

Students also study the constitutive role of the art world, the social and economic institutions and the means of reception through which a work becomes today an aestehtic experience in the age of cultural globalization. In this regard the course surveys thecinema’s history, the global flow of the tv pop-culture, the digital convergence of visual contents in the world wide web, in order to present the contemporary trends ofthe visual cultures.

However, since the course deals as much with film history and film theory as with art, students explore the different historical events, artistic media and philosophical theories that inform the work presented in the class, as movies, film excerpts, shorts, commercial, video art, documentation of performing and visual events.

Detailed Description of Assessment Methods

Written exam

Textbooks

References text books

It is useful to read these chapters:

M. Sturken and L. Cartwright, Practices of Looking, Oxford University Press 2001, chapters 4, 5, 6.

Compulsory Chapters

1) David BordwellC, Film History:

Chapter 20 - from p. 439 to 461;
Part V from p. 512 to 535;
Chapter 24 - from p. 579 to 590;
Part VI - Chapter 27 and 28 - from p. 680 to 720.

2) Robert Stam, Robert Burgoyne, Sandy Flitterman-Lewis, New Vocabularies in Film Semiotics, Routledge, 1992, PartII, III.

3)Francesco Casetti Eye of the century Chapter 2,3,4, Colunmbia University 2008

References textbooks III For student non attendings

Other two articles chosen between:

L. Manovich, Spatial computerisation and film language, OR A. Blunck, «Toward Meaningful Spaces», in New Screen Media Cinema/Art/Narrative, BFI, 2002.

AND

E. Shoat and R. Stam, Narrativizing Visual Culture OR M. Jay, Scopic Regimes of Modernity, in The Visual Culture Reader, N. Mirzoeff, Routledge, 1998.