This course will focus on Louis CK as an auteur and a case study of the way in which the concept of the auteur filmmaker can be realized in the digital media age. The digital era – which significantly boosted artists' freedom from dependence on the economics of the film industry, thereby expanding the potential of auteur filmmaking – calls for a renewed discussion of auteur theory. The basic assumption in this course is that Louis CK is an auteur – a filmmaker with comprehensive artistic autonomy (writer, producer, editor, actor and even independent distributor of his work); however, the course will not stop at this assumption, but will rather continue to examine Louis CK's auteur filmmaking as a structure that organizes the artistic form and content to create meaning that is rich in contradictions yet, at the same time, coherent.

In this course, we will deal with the auteur aspects of Louis CK's work, in the space between stylistic and genre fluidity and the stable structural-thematic groundwork and meaning; and describe the dynamic relations that structure Louis CK's work in different art spheres – stand-up comedy, cinema, television and new media. We will first map the characteristics of the auteur with respect to the cross-media artistic autonomy enabled by the methods of distribution and production of cinematic content in the internet age; however, we well do so mainly by analyzing the stylistic, formalistic, rhetoric and thematic characteristics of the work; and finally – we will consider the mythical meaning, moral standpoint and worldview that arise from all of this