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General Information

Course ID (CB01A and CB01B)
F/TVD042.
Course Title (CB02)
National Cinemas
Course Credit Status
Credit - Degree Applicable
Effective Term
Fall 2024
Course Description
This course analyzes selected national cinemas in terms of major periods, themes, and formal parameters, and in relation to both national and international cultural histories. The national cinema studied changes each quarter (see subtitle in the quarterly class schedule).
Faculty Requirements
Discipline 1
[Film Studies]
FSA
[FHDA FSA - FILM/TV]
Course Family
Not Applicable

Course Justification

This course is a CSU and UC transferable undergraduate course that contributes to the fulfillment of requirements for the Film/Television: Screenwriting A.A. Degree. Focusing on a specific national cinema(s) allows for in-depth study and analysis.

Foothill Equivalency

Does the course have a Foothill equivalent?
No
Foothill Course ID

Course Philosophy

Formerly Statement

Course Development Options

Basic Skill Status (CB08)
Course is not a basic skills course.
Grade Options
  • Letter Grade
  • Pass/No Pass
Repeat Limit
0

Transferability & Gen. Ed. Options

Transferability
Transferable to both UC and CSU

Units and Hours

Summary

Minimum Credit Units
4.0
Maximum Credit Units
4.0

Weekly Student Hours

TypeIn ClassOut of Class
Lecture Hours4.08.0
Laboratory Hours0.00.0

Course Student Hours

Course Duration (Weeks)
12.0
Hours per unit divisor
36.0
Course In-Class (Contact) Hours
Lecture
48.0
Laboratory
0.0
Total
48.0
Course Out-of-Class Hours
Lecture
96.0
Laboratory
0.0
NA
0.0
Total
96.0

Prerequisite(s)

Corequisite(s)

Advisory(ies)

EWRT D001A or EWRT D01AH or ESL D005.

Limitation(s) on Enrollment

Entrance Skill(s)

General Course Statement(s)

Methods of Instruction

Film screenings and facilitated group discussions

In-class essays

Quiz and examination review performed in class

Homework and extended projects

Discussion of assigned reading

In-class exploration of Internet sites

Guest speakers

Lecture and visual aids

Collaborative learning and small group exercises

Assignments

  1. Assigned reading
    1. Required textbook
    2. Film periodicals, journals, and scholarly articles on Internet sites
    3. Instructor-created handouts
  2. Writing
    1. Film analysis, including written portions of the midterm and final exam, requiring students to identify and employ various and appropriate rhetorical forms and strategies and to demonstrate some achievement of course objectives.
    2. Research paper requiring students to evaluate and synthesize facts, opinions, and presentations from various sources about a national-cinema topic utilizing MLA guidelines for formatting, citing sources, and compiling a works cited page; or analytical paper applying a critical methodology learned in class.
  3. Film screenings

Methods of Evaluation

  1. Midterm and two-hour final examination using a combination of objective, short answer, and essay questions to evaluate the student's grasp of the facts, theories, core concepts, and methods of analysis that comprise the course content. The essay component will require critical thinking and analysis.
  2. Written research or critical analysis paper demonstrating the student's abilities to examine a significant issue or problem of national-cinema study. The assignment will involve summary, synthesis, and critical analysis of theoretical perspectives pertaining to the concept of "national cinema" and applied to selected films and artists within a nation-state.
  3. Instructor evaluation of the quality of student participation in classroom discussions, including analyses of in-class film screenings in the context of the facts, theories, core concepts and methods of inquiry that comprise the course content.

Essential Student Materials/Essential College Facilities

Essential Student Materials: 
  • None
Essential College Facilities:
  • Lecture room with DVD/Blu-ray deck, 1/2-inch VHS tape deck, 16mm film projection equipment

Examples of Primary Texts and References

AuthorTitlePublisherDate/EditionISBN
Hjort, Mette, and Scott Mackenzie, eds.Cinema and NationRoutledge2000/1st edition
Vitali, Valentina, and Paul Willemen, eds.Theorising National CinemaBritish Film Institute2019/1st edition

Examples of Supporting Texts and References

None.

Learning Outcomes and Objectives

Course Objectives

  • Examine the concept of "national cinema" in motion picture art and its role in national and international film history, addressing issues of exile, diaspora, international co-productions, and migrations of creative talent.
  • Analyze the appearance of a specific national cinema, its origins in historical, social, and cultural contexts, its relationship to companion literary, graphic, theatre and cinematic arts, its economics (film production, distribution and consumption), and its evolution and influence in film and national history.
  • Analyze the narrative and stylistic characteristics of a particular national cinema, along with any thematic, philosophical, and political preoccupations, and how these evolve.
  • Discuss and analyze the major film works and textual conventions, nation-state cinema movements, and artists contributing to the development of a specific national cinema.
  • Analyze the representation of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, and socio-economic class issues in the works of cinematic arts screened.
  • Discuss and analyze the extent to which films reflect the social attitudes and political issues of the cultures and time periods in which they were produced.

CSLOs

  • Examine the concept of "national cinema," identify significant films and filmmakers, and explain major trends in the evolution of film within a national cinema.

  • Develop and utilize critical thinking skills to appraise motion pictures produced within the national cinema in aesthetic, technological, economic and socio-historical contexts.

  • Analyze representations of class, race/ethnicity, gender and sexuality, demonstrating an understanding of the politics of representation learned in class.

Outline

  1. Examine the concept of "national cinema" in motion picture art and its role in national and international film history, addressing issues of exile, diaspora, international co-productions, and migrations of creative talent.
    1. Textual/aesthetic/formal versus contextual/historical approaches to cinematic arts
    2. National cinema as primary category of context-shared history, culture, industry, "imagined community"
    3. Complications to simple models of "national cinema" due to exile, diasporic film production, international co-productions and transatlantic and trans-hemispheric migrations of talent
      1. Involuntary exile of filmmakers such as Argentines Fernando Solanas, Gerardo Vallejo, Octavio Getino, and Fernando Birri
      2. Diasporic productions, such as the 176 Chilean films made in France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Great Britain, Germany, and elsewhere following the 1973 coup d'état
      3. Rise of Latinx cinemas in North America, which challenge national and regional paradigms through concepts of "migrancy" and border crossings
      4. Film production in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and elsewhere that enlisted Europeans -- primarily Italian, French and Spanish filmmakers
      5. Prevalence of co-production strategies in the 1980s and 1990s, which complicated the goal of autonomy due to sustained foreign-funding contributions
      6. Production of independent cinemas, including Latinx cinemas in the United States and Canada
      7. Works of cinematic arts produced for or licensed by Netflix, Amazon Studios, YouTube, Vimeo, and other streaming platforms for global distribution and consumption
  2. Analyze the appearance of a specific national cinema, its origins in historical, social, and cultural contexts, its relationship to companion literary, graphic, theatre and cinematic arts, its economics (film production, distribution and consumption), and its evolution and influence in film and national history.
    1. The mother country, its cultural norms, behaviors, beliefs and objects, and the notion of transculturation
      1. The impact of an external (mother country under colonial regime or as the dominant country in a neocolonial situation) and internal metropolis
      2. The mutual transformation of visitor and visited by their encounter, and how exile both reinforces and reflects national identity
    2. Relationship to companion arts, such as the Soviet Cinema of the 1920s and literature (Gorky and the Symbolists), graphics (Constructivism), theatre (Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre) and film (influence of D. W. Griffith)
    3. Film historiography, production, distribution and consumption
      1. Political, ideological, critical, theoretical, and methodological discourses regarding cinematic traditions and practices, such as the four phases of Ibero-American film history: silent period, consolidation of national cinemas after the introduction of sound, development of counter-cinemas, and the realignment of commercial and committed cinemas in the face of television, video, and digital formats
      2. Industrial, studio-based production prioritizing profit versus artisanal, personal modes of production emphasizing values/social benefits
      3. Distribution of traditional filmmaking in conventional movie theaters with passive audiences (United States) versus distribution of oppositional filmmaking that includes organized, mobile cinema projects for remote areas (Argentina during the late 1960s and early 1970s), organized discussions and debates, and broadly disseminated media literacy programs (Cuba)
      4. State intervention and regulation of production, distribution, and exhibition
  3. Analyze the narrative and stylistic characteristics of a particular national cinema, along with any thematic, philosophical, and political preoccupations, and how these evolve.
    1. Narrative characteristics
      1. Traditional Aristotelian structure and individual protagonist-hero typical of the Classic Hollywood Narrative System or the elliptical, plotless narratives and anti-heroes of the French New Wave of the late 1950s and New American Cinema of the late 1960s
      2. The collective hero and character types characteristic of Soviet films of the 1920s, postwar Italian Neorealism, and other national cinemas and movements reinforcing Marxist ideology
      3. Issues concerning tradition, cultural identity, and stereotypes
    2. Stylistics
      1. Documentary influences in Soviet, Italian, Latin American, and Iranian cinemas
      2. Montage: primacy of editing, collision, graphic, rhythmic, tonal, polyphonic in Soviet Cinema of the 1920s
    3. Thematic, philosophical, and political preoccupations
      1. First Cinema (mainstream Hollywood, Japanese, Hong Kong, and Indian; industrial): popular cinema generally upholds notions of a unified nation; requires large amounts of capital, complex infrastructure with equipment, studio sets, professional actors, polished scripts, fixed shooting schedules, large crews
      2. Second Cinema (European art cinema; auteurist): artistic cinema tends to offer critiques of the nation-state and its associated economic, social, political, and cultural discourses and institutions
      3. Third Cinema (emerging cinemas of the Africa continent, Asia, South America, the Middle East; guerrilla or "imperfect" cinema): scrutinizes the meta-narratives of the nation-state and draws attention to silenced voices, emergent and oppositional discourse; varied financing (personal loans, local co-operatives, international co-productions, partial or complete state subsidy), location shooting, non-professional actors or a mix of professionals and non-improvised scripts, a less technologically mediated style of filming, process-oriented cinema that exposes and questions
      4. Media in the era of globalization: film festivals, television, DVDs, satellite, the Internet and streaming services
  4. Discuss and analyze the major film works and textual conventions, nation-state cinema movements, and artists contributing to the development of a specific national cinema.
    1. Major works of cinematic arts and textual conventions, such as culturally specific genres (melodrama in Nigerian or Latin American cinemas)
    2. Major nation-state cinema movements, such as Italian Neorealism, French New Wave, Iranian New Wave, and Fifth Generation Chinese Cinema
    3. Major artists, such as the Italians Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica, the French Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, the Argentines Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, the Chinese Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, and from the African continent, Senegalese Ousmane Sembene and Malian Souleymane Cissé
  5. Analyze the representation of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability, and socio-economic class issues in the works of cinematic arts screened.
    1. Examine the filmic representations and cinematic histories of specific groups
    2. Identify and analyze stereotypical images, tracing the emergence of important issues about representation and difference, the power structure and labor practices of the industry, spectatorship and identification, and the relationship between cinematic arts and culture
    3. Compare the relationship of stereotypes to broad historical and political processes
  6. Discuss and analyze the extent to which films reflect the social attitudes and political issues of the cultures and time periods in which they were produced.
    1. Examine how cinematic arts preserve audiovisual information, functioning as a social and historical document
    2. Analyze how popular films comprise a record of the aspirations, obsessions, and frustrations of those spending time and money while making or viewing them
    3. Appraise how cinema mirrors and shapes a society
      1. Record the frequency with which various social types crop up in the cinematic arts of a particular time and place
      2. Interpret the way groups are depicted and, therefore, valued
      3. Question how cinematic arts become the mechanism for massive dissemination of significant cultural and ideological values
    4. Recognize how government policies affect popular expression, including funding, censorship, and attempts to control the Internet
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