The course is part of the mandatory classes for the Film and Media Studies program of the DAMS BA. If the program generally gives the historical and theoretical background to understand all audiovisual forms, the aim of this class (dedicated to first-year students) is to teach the main frameworks for the analysis and interpretation of film and audiovisual texts. The class opts for a historical perspective, which accounts for the different theories, aesthetics, and cultural models involved in the analysis of the various linguistic solutions, film styles and forms from different moments in film history (i.e., classical Hollywood cinema, modern art cinema, postmodernism, post-classic cinema). The course aims to give to its students the framework needed to understand by themselves which modes of analysis are more effective in considering a specific audiovisual text. In conclusion, the class aims to explain how films and images produce their meaning.
teacher profile teaching materials
The final syllabus and program will be published at the beginning of the course.
Collection of essays edited by the teacher.
The final filmography will be published during the course; it can include the following films:
Bringing Up Baby, Howard Hawks, 1938
Written on the Wind, Douglas Sirk, 1958
La dolce vita, Federico Fellini, 1960
L’avventura, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960
Prima della rivoluzione, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1964
Die Hard, John McTiernan, 1988
Twin Peaks, David Lynch e Mark Frost, ABC, 1990-1991 | Showtime, 2017
Mulholland Drive, David Lynch, 2001
Babel, Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006
Programme
The course addresses film narrative and stylistic forms, from classic Hollywood to contemporary cinema. Through the analysis of specific sequences and films, the course addresses classic cinema from the 1930s, the melodramatic style from the 1950s, film modernity (in particular Italian art film from the 1960s), postmodern cinema, postclassic films, mind-game films, and "global films". The last part of the course is dedicated to complex and vast narratives, especially television series. The film analysis will be conducted through various methods and approaches. Among them: structuralism and semiotics, formal analysis and style, psychoanalysis, feminist film theory. Cultural studies and approaches will be considered in order to address modernity, postmodernism, and contemporary mediascapes.The final syllabus and program will be published at the beginning of the course.
Core Documentation
Veronica Pravadelli, Dal classico al postmoderno al global. Teoria e analisi delle forme filmiche, Marsilio, Venezia 2019.Collection of essays edited by the teacher.
The final filmography will be published during the course; it can include the following films:
Bringing Up Baby, Howard Hawks, 1938
Written on the Wind, Douglas Sirk, 1958
La dolce vita, Federico Fellini, 1960
L’avventura, Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960
Prima della rivoluzione, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1964
Die Hard, John McTiernan, 1988
Twin Peaks, David Lynch e Mark Frost, ABC, 1990-1991 | Showtime, 2017
Mulholland Drive, David Lynch, 2001
Babel, Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2006
Reference Bibliography
The teacher can give other bibliographic references during classes.Type of delivery of the course
42 hours of frontal lessonsAttendance
The course will be held in presence; attendance is suggested but not mandatory.Type of evaluation
The exam is written and composed by a few open questions. The questions will focus on the main analytic frames described during class and will ask for visual examples from the case studies proposed by the filmography, as well as for explaining the main theoretical issues addressed during the lessons and in the bibliography.