Mise-en-scene, key light, fill light, Lars von Trier, Jean-Luc Godard. These are among the many cinematic names and elements that students taking the class Film Analysis/Visual Culture learned about last semester.

A first-year course taught by Media and Cultural Studies professor Morgan Adamson, Film Analysis is a compelling mixture of theory and viewing. “It’s very rewarding to read scholarly work about a cinematic movement and then watch a film from the movement,” says Sebastian Eising ’19 (Rochester, Minn.).

Although Millennials are veteran viewers, most haven’t previously mastered the academic tools needed to analyze film. “I loved the idea of finding meanings and purposes to what is at first glance purely entertainment,” says Erika Aguiluz Ramirez ’19 (Los Angeles).

Adamson’s students were “not always expecting all the academic parts along with the movie watching,” she says. But once they adjusted to that, they were a joy to teach. “They’ve all actually done the reading and want to talk about it,” she says.

And there was plenty to talk about, with the class covering everything from D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation to Steve McQueen’s Twelve Years a Slave. Along the way, class members learn cinematic history as well as technical concepts such as lighting, sound, cinematography, etc.

Then there are the additional requirements of any first-year course: “getting them comfortable with academic work and writing, introducing them to college life and the library, etc.,” says Adamson.

Exploring the rich film world of the Twin Cities was another key part of the course. One of the students’ assignments was to attend a film at a local micro-cinema, such as the Trylon Cinema in South Minneapolis (which in late December was showing the 1934 film The Thin Man). The class also visited the Walker Art Center, where they saw a screening of the Senegalese film Black Girl by Ousmane Sembene and enjoyed a demonstration of the center’s new multimedia room, designed by Anthony Tran ’11, a New Media Initiatives technologist there.

Although the Film Analysis students didn’t share a residence hall floor, as some first-year classmates do, they developed a tight community nevertheless. Sunday night film screenings helped, accompanied as they often were by dinner or popcorn, as did regular field trips. Adamson helped bring the group together, too, “always asking us how our week was going and…[being] very attentive,” says Aguiluz Ramirez. Adds Eising, “She set the bar very high for the next four years.”

The same might be said for the course itself, a compelling one for most students. “It’s so much easier to read hundreds of pages when you’re interested in the topic,” says Aguiluz Ramirez.  Says Eising, “I was surprised by the number of directions our class discussions have gone. Film can be the starting point for so many different conversations.”

February 15 2016

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