Watch:
The Last Angel of History (John Akomfrah, 1996) https://docuseek2.com/cart/product/1106
Create Tradition. “Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death (Arthur Jafa, 2016) Kanye West Ultra Light Beam.” YouTube, 3 Aug. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR8DsmLMX04.
Read:
Read: Kara Keeling, “Black Cinema and Questions Concerning Film/Media/Technology,” Queer Times, Black Futures. New York University Press, 2019. Pp 118-144.
I. Screening Notes
Goal: Connect formal and stylistic elements to broader questions such as:
What is the film’s tone or attitude toward (digital) technology?
What values does the film promote?
What desires does its fantasy address/fulfill?
What bio/psych/social problems does it resolve or escape from or suspiciously omit?
What power relations or structures does it represent/reinforce/challenge?
Notes: (200+ words)
While watching, take note of what catches or holds your attention, evokes feelings/reactions/thoughts, and reveals meaningful information about the themes, story, or characters and try to explain how the film achieves these effects by describing what you see and hear. I recommend writing very brief notes during the film that you elaborate on immediately after and add details by rewatching specific scenes.
Organize your notes according to the following categories. You can refer to the same things across categories but try to comment on different elements in multiple categories. Notes need to be comprehensible, but not polished writing. Bullet points are fine. Include Film Title (Director, year) at the top of your notes. Include screenshots to support your analysis, if possible.
Film Form – patterns that set up expectations, familiar conventions, turning points, cause and effect, unity/disunity between parts (shots, scenes, sequences, acts), genre, structure, etc.
Narrative Form – how story information is delivered (narrator, characters, third-person camera); it can be unrestricted or restricted to the perception or subjectivity of character(s); plot (what you see and hear onscreen), story (plot + parts of the story that you infer, don’t see/hear onscreen), etc.
Mise-en-scene – setting, costume, makeup, lighting, props, staging, motifs, etc.
Cinematography – camera/frame movement, tracking, panning, tilting, angles and perspectives, 180 degree rule/axis of action, etc.
Editing – transitions between shots (cut, dissolve, fade, wipe, iris), continuity/discontinuity of space and time, relations between shots (graphic, rhythmic, temporal, spatial patterns/contrasts/matches)
Sound – musical score, diegetic and non-diegetic, dialogue, sound effects
Film Analysis terminology resources: https://filmanalysis.yale.edu/Links to an external site.; https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/movie-film-terms/Links to an external site.
Reflection (200+ words) Explain how your screening notes address at least one of the questions listed above.
II. Reading Notes
Goal: To understand and evaluate the purpose of the text, how its parts serve that purpose, and how it relates to other course materials and questions.
Complete for each assigned text.
Notes: (200+ words)
Include full citations for the assigned text and include page numbers for paraphrases and quotations.
Paraphrase/quote the thesis or purpose
Describe major claims and explain how they are (or are not) substantiated or supported and how they relate to the thesis/purpose.
Describe significant case studies or examples and explain how they support (or fail to support) the thesis/purpose.
Describe the methods and rhetorical style of the author. Are they credible and persuasive?
What terminology or concepts did you need to look up?
What remains unclear, unconvincing, or problematic?
III. Overall Connections: (200+ words; answer at least one)
What connections did you make between the materials (readings, films, videos, etc.) assigned this week?
What connections did you make between this week’s materials and the readings or screenings from other weeks?
