LFU:online

Department of American Studies Department of American Studies

Gastprof. Ph.D. Michael Scott Curtis Gastprof. Ph.D. Michael Scott Curtis

610017

Critical Interfaces: American Cultures: Useful Cinema: A History of Non-Theatrical Film

PS 2

5

weekly

each semester

English

To familiarize students with interdisciplinary approaches to the study of American culture, focusing especially on diverse research methods for the study of American film history and theory.

The past decade has seen a growing scholarly interest in the previously untapped area of what we might call “useful cinema”: films that are made primarily with their utility value (as opposed to entertainment value) in mind. Educational films, industrial films, advertising films, even scientific research films all fall under this rubric, which as a class of filmmaking has always existed in the shadow of the more visible entertainment industry, even if the sheer number of “useful” films vastly overwhelms theatrical feature filmmaking in any given year. Often “orphaned” by their producers after they served their typically ephemeral purpose, these films are scattered in a variety of collections and formats, usually without any accompanying paper documentation. So how do we write their history? What is their relationship to Hollywood? How has the emphasis on film-as-entertainment skewed our understanding of the history of cinema, or even our understanding of what cinema is? By charting an alternative history of American film that focuses not on Hollywood, but on its “shadow,” this course will force us to think about the moving image beyond theoretical and historical frameworks dominated by the theatrical feature film.

Reading and writing assignments, screenings, discussions, presentations

Active participation, presentation, research paper

13.03.2013