History. Theory. Production.
Welcome to Film Studies at Michigan State University. We offer interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs in the Department of English that engage students in the history, theory, and aesthetics of international cinema. Courses examine cinema across a range of national contexts, and encourage students to understand cinema as an art, a business, and a technology of representation informed by race, gender, sexuality, politics, and economics. Our classes consider the historical emergence and technological transformations of motion pictures, as well as their relationship to the other visual and literary arts. Film theory and criticism also inform our two production-oriented specializations in Fiction Film Production and Documentary Expression.
PLEASE NOTE: The CAL Film Studies specialization has been phased out and replaced by the Minor in Film Studies under the aegis of the Department of English. Students who were planning on graduating in fall 2009 or spring 2010 with a film studies specialization should contact Ruth Mowry or Ned Watts about their status.
Contact Information
Ned Watts, Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies in English: wattse@msu.edu
Ruth Mowry, Undergraduate Advisor in English:mowry@msu.edu
THE MSU FILM COLLECTIVE
We are the professors, students, filmmakers, screenwriters, and cinephiles at MSU who gather weekly to watch and discuss good films. In the spirit of the Cinématèque Française and the generation of film critics and French New Wave directors it inspired, our collective abides by the principle that good film writing and good filmmaking (and just plain good living) begin with serious film watching.
Spring 2012 Series | What Moves in Motion Pictures?
In the wake of challenges to the ontology of cinema posed by digital technologies, and the explosion of moving-image technologies in galleries and museums, film historians and scholars have become newly interested in cinema’s foundational relationship to movement—a connection that persists despite cinema’s departure from celluloid-based claims to the real. Our spring program will be comprised of films that explore, in various ways, cinema’s capacity to capture movement, to animate bodies, and in the process, to move spectators affectively and politically. How have industrial practices and technological advances allowed for the illusion of life-like movement? How have films explored the relationship between camera movement and processes of perception; or between movement within the frame and the historical migrations and displacements of people; or between editing rhythms and the articulation of political or aesthetic “movements”? How have refusals of realistic movement, or cinematic returns to stillness or “the slow,” been linked to aesthetic innovations or claims to political relevance?
Proseminar option:
MSU undergraduates can enroll in a one-credit proseminar (ENG 490), attached to the Collective’s spring program. Interested students should request paperwork from Ned Watts, chair of undergraduate studie. Professor Nieland will serve as faculty of record for the proseminar. The requirements for the proseminar are regular attendance at the spring screenings and active participation in the post-screening discussions.
For the full spring schedule, click here.
Thursday, March 29th
Ten (2002) Dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 91 minutes
Comprised of ten shots from two car-mounted digital cameras, Ten follows the movements and emotions of a female cab driver through the streets of Tehran.
Professor Swarnavel Pillai will introduce the film (shown on DVD) and lead a short discussion afterwards.
Contact Information
Ned Watts, Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies in English: wattse@msu.edu
Ruth Mowry, Undergraduate Advisor in English:mowry@msu.edu
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