Hu 300: Arts and Humanities 20 th Century and BEYOND

 Some Central Questions  Tools for Critical Viewing  Cinema and Propaganda  Cinema and Falsity: An Ethical Matter?

Cinema is a collaborative effort, sometimes involving hundreds of people. Which art forms are collaborative and which are created by a single artist?

What’s the difference between a movie and a film?

1. Cinematography 2. Time bending 3. Editing 4. Genre-Bending

 What can the camera tell us that nothing else can?  What is the camera’s point of view, throughout a film or in any given moment?

 A film very rarely occurs in “real time”!  Aside from skipping time (creating lapses, which the viewer fills in mentally), what can a director do with time? Freeze Frame Elongate, as with tracking shots Compress, as with quick cuts Confuse Narrative Sequence

 Standard film editing determines what shots we see and how often those shots change.  Very often it’s editing that tells us what’s going on in the story, rather than actor dialogue!  Consider “The Bourne Supremacy”. Did you find that film difficult to follow? It’s an editing “tour de force”, switching viewpoints at a speed that’s right at the edge of what human beings can visually understand!

Genres: Older Films - Slapstick Farce Film Noir Screen Musical Western Horror/Suspense Documentary Animation Romantic Comedy “Drama”?

 Have you seen the movie “Fight Club”? What is its genre?  Have you seen the movie “Shelter Island”? What’s that genre?

 The first full-length movie “Rebirth of a Nation” addressed reconstruction efforts after the civil war. It contained a positive depiction of the KKK!  Soon afterwards, a director named “Eisenstein” was asked by the new Soviet Union government to make a movie to make the old, overthrown government look bad. This movie included a graphic scene in which the former government slaughtered many innocent men, women and children. The scene was pure invention!

 How much of our sense of history comes from movies? Should we trust what we learn about history from movies?  What do movies tell us about our bodies and our appearance? Should we trust these suggestions?  What do movies tell us about how to be happy? About how to be a good person? Should we trust these suggestions?

 The faces of the actors in “Avatar” were largely “digitized”. Should these actors be eligible for Academy Awards?  Would it bother you to learn that the action scenes from your favorite movie were “digital” rather than real?  Are there ethical problems with movies that misrepresent computer generated images as real?