Introduction to Film Theory

The course critically engages with European and North American texts that have entered the canon of film theory. We will deal with “classical theory,” in which writers and thinkers expressed their hopes, fantasies, and fears about the new medium that had emerged in the late nineteenth century as well as with the methods of analyzing moving images that have developed since the 1960s. The course is accompanied by a mandatory tutorial in which students will practice close readings of the theoretical texts.