Film 136A
Experimental Film and Video
Spring 2009
Professor: David Crane
office: Communications 102 Lectures
& screenings:
hours: T&Th 4:00-5:00pm & by appt. T&Th
6:00-7:45pm
phone: 9-3991
Comm 150
email:
dwcrane@ucsc.edu
Teaching Assistants: Logan Walker, Troy Allman
course website: http://artstream.ucsc.edu/film136a
Discussion
sections (all in
Communications 121; sections will meet first week of class!)
01A Th 12:30-1:30pm 01C Th 3:00-4:00pm
01B Th 1:45-2:45pm 01D
Th 4:15-5:15pm
COURSE
DESCRIPTION
This course
examines various experimental styles and practices in film and video,
addressing their historical development and situating them in relations to
larger artistic and avant-garde traditions. It also examines the conditions of production, distribution,
exhibition, and reception of these works, as well as their engagement with
issues of location, performance, activism, and identity.
COURSE
COMPONENTS
Lectures
and screenings: The semi-weekly hour-and-forty-five-minute
class sessions will be a combination of screening, lecture, and discussion
– not necessarily in that order.
Because the films and videos are of various lengths, the format of the
class sessions will not always be the same. Attendance is required during the lectures and the
screenings. In addition, some of
the films and videos are being rented, and thus will not be available at the
Film and Music Center for viewing, so the class period is your only time to see
them.
Discussion
sections: Most of your discussion in the course
will take place in the weekly discussion sections. Because both the written and visual material is quite
difficult, the sections are especially important for your engagement with and
understanding of the material. Any
unexcused absence, as well as repeated lateness, will lower your evaluation for
the course. Missing more than
two sections will result in automatic failure.
Readings: The readings will help set the conceptual agenda for each
weeks topic and work along with the lectures and screenings. Sometimes the readings will provide
historical background on an artist, style, or movement. Sometimes they will offer theoretical
backgrounds and frameworks for understanding the visual material. Sometimes they give the perspectives of
a film- and/or video-maker.
Sometimes they will do all of these things. All readings should be completed prior to the day indicated
in the schedule. If it appears
that the readings are not being completed, we reserve the option for quizzes.
REQUIRED
TEXTS
A course
reader available from Bay Tree Bookstore.
Readings will also be available on electronic reserves through the
McHenry Library (http://eres.ucsc.edu/);
the password is experiment.
ASSIGNMENTS
AND EXPECTATIONS
a
viewing journal; you should write between 1 & 2 pages per week in it and
bring it to section. There will be
periodic spot checks of it and it will be collected twice during the quarter (20% of grade)
a
take-home midterm exam (questions given week 5, answers submitted week 6) (20% of grade)
a
final paper (8-10 pages), due the 10th week of class, that will
involve both research and close textual analysis; I will provide more specific
guidelines on this later in the quarter; a 1-page proposal, worth 10% of the
paper, is also required (30% of grade)
thoughtful
and constructive participation in sections (10% of grade)
final
exam: Tuesday, June 9, noon-3:00, Comm 150 (20% of grade)
Academic
misconduct, such as
submitting someone elses work as if it were your own, will be dealt with
severely. It will result in
automatic failure and possible expulsion from school.
Late assignments will not be
accepted; missed exams will not be rescheduled
CLASS SCHEDULE
Readings
must be completed prior to the day indicated.
Screenings are subject to change.
T Mar. 31 Font of Duchamp
Reading: Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in
the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Screening: Anemic Cinema (Marcel Duchamp, 1926) 8m
Emak Bakia Cinpom (Man Ray, 1926) 14m
Vormittagsspuk (Hans Richter, 1927) 7m
Th Apr. 2 Revolutionary
avant-garde
Reading: Dziga Vertov, "We"
Screening: Kino-Eye (Dziga Vertov, 1924) [portion]
Chelovek s kinoapparatom [Man with a Movie Camera] (Dziga Vertov, 1929) [first part]
68m
T Apr. 7 Dadaists & Futurists
Reading: Selections
from Art in Cinema
Peter Brger, On the Problem of the
Autonomy of Art in Bourgeois Society
Screening: more of Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
Entract (Ren Clair, 1924) 15m
Th Apr. 9 The cinematic unconscious
Reading: Germaine
Dulac, The Essence of the Cinema
Andr Breton, First Surrealist
Manifesto
Screening: Un Chien
andalou (Luis
Buuel & Savador Dal, 1929) 16m
La Coquille et le Clergyman(Germaine Dulac, 1928) 31m
T Apr. 14 Innovations & invocations
Reading: Maya Deren, An
Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form, and Film [portions]
Jonas Mekas, The Experimental Film in America
David James, The Forties: Maya
Deren and Her Acolytes, Wizards of the Id
Screening: Ritual in
Transfigured Time
(Maya Deren, 1946) 16m
Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1962) 13m
A Movie (Bruce Conner, 1958) 16m
Th Apr. 16 Rituals of transgression
Reading: Juan Antonio Surez, The 1960s Underground as Political
Postmodernism
Screening: Lost, Lost, Lost and Walden (Jonas Mekas, 1976 & 1969) [portions]
Flaming Creatures (Jack Smith, 1963) [portion]
Kustom Kar Kommandos (Kenneth Anger, 1965) 6m
Two Four (Veronica Majano, 2002) 2.5m
I Reminisce (Veronica Majano, 2004)
2.5m
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (Kenneth Anger, 1954) 38m
T Apr. 21 The long derve
Reading: Thomas Y.
Levin, Dismantling the Spectacle: The Cinema of Guy Debord
Selected texts and documents by the
Situationist International
Screening: La
Sociti du spectacle
(Guy Debord, 1973) [portion]
La
Dialectique peut-elle casser des briques? (Ren Vinet, 1973) [portion]
The
Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal (Matt McCormick, 2001) 16min
Shut the Fuck Up (General Idea, 1985) 14m
Th Apr. 23 Caginess, fluxus, and video theatrics
Reading: John Burris,
Did the Portapak Cause Video Art?
David Ross, A Provisional Overview of Artists Television
in the US
Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman, Videa, Vidiot,
Videology [recommended]
Robert Stefanotty, Kissing the
Unique Object Good-Bye [recommended]
Screening: selected works of Nam June Paik
Vertical Roll (Joan Jonas, 1972) 20m
Week 5 Phenomenologies
of space
T Apr. 28 Technologies of perception & experience
Reading: Alain
Fleischer, Michael Snows Cinemachine
The Life and Times of Michael Snow
(interview with Joe Mejuck)
Screening: Three Transitions (Peter Campus, 1973) 6m
Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1966-67) 45m
Th Apr. 30 Dislocations
take-home midterm questions
distributed
Reading: Margaret
Morse, Video Installation Art
Melinda Barlow, Theres No Place Like Home
Bill Viola, selections from Reasons
for Knocking at an Empty House [recommended]
Screening: Boomerang (Richard Serra & Nancy Holt,
1974) [portion)
Re dis appearing (Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, 1977) 3m
Anthem (Bill Viola, 1983) 12min
Ohio at
Giverny (Mary
Lucier, 1983) 19m
midterms due in class Tuesday
T May 5 Pleasures & dangers
Reading: Kate Haug,
An Interview with Carolee Schneemann
Caroline Koebel, From Danger to
Ascendancy
Screening: Fuses (Carolee Schneemann, 1967) 23m
Looking for Langston (Isaac Julien/Sankofa 1989) 45m
Th May 7 The voyeur & the narcissist
Reading: Roy
Grundmann, Gay Masculinity between (De)construction and Demontage
Rosalind Krauss, Video: The
Aesthetics of Narcissism
Screening: Blow Job (Andy Warhol, 1963) 35m
Centers (Vito Acconci, 1971) 23m
III. FORMS OF ENGAGEMENT
T May 12 Art and politics of the everyday
Reading: Christine
Tamblyn, Qualifying the Quotidian
Martha Rosler, Video: Shedding the
Utopian Moment
Screening: Lives of
Performers: A Melodrama (Yvonne Rainer, 1972) [portion]
Semiotics of the Kitchen (Martha Rosler, 1975) 6m
Memories from the Department of Amnesia (Janice Tanaka, 1989) 14m
samples of work by Adrian Piper
Th May 14 Countercultural productions
Reading: Dierdre Boyle, From Portapak to Camcorder
Patricia Mellencamp, Video and the
Counterculture
Screening: Four More
Years (Top Value
Television [TVTV], 1972) [portion]
The Eternal Frame (Ant Farm & T.R. Uthco, 1975) 24m
Sapphire and the Slave Girl (Leah Gilliam, 1995) 18m
selections from Paper Tiger Television
T May 19 Historicized trauma
Reading: Jeffrey Skoller, Introduction, Shadows,
Specters, Shards
Screening: El da que me quieras (Leandro Katz, 1997) 30m
Th May 21 Melancholic documentary
Reading: Skoller,
Obsessive Returns: Filmmaking as Mourning Work
Sigmund Freud, Mourning and
Melancholia
Screening: Chile, la memoria obstanada (Patricio Guzmn, 1997) 58m
IV. FORMATS OF IDENTITY
Reading: Trinh T.
Minh-ha, Difference: A Special Third World Women Issue
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dicte [portion]
Screening: Surname
Vit, Given Name Nam
(Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1989) [portion]
Mouth to Mouth (Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, 1975) 8m
Vidome (Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, 1976) 3m
Th May 28 The split subject of desire
Reading: Mia Carter, The Politics of Pleasure
Screening: works by
Sadie Benning:
Living Inside (1989) 5m
A Place Called Lovely (1991) 14m
It Wasn't Love (1992) 20m
Flat Is Beautiful (1998) [portion]
Let's Play Prisoners (Julie Zando, 1988) 22m
T June 2 Remembering, repeating, and working through
Reading: Akira Mizuta
Lippit, Cinemnesis
Julia Bryan-Wilson, Some Kind of
Grace: An Interview with Miranda July
Screening: Dead
Weight of a Quarrel Hangs (Walid Raad, 1996-1998) 17m
The Amateurist (Miranda July, 1998) 14m
Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy (Martin Arnold, 1998) 15m
Th June 4 Resolutions
Reading: none
Screening: TBA