Courses

Summer Sessions 2009


For more information on registration and tuition fees, visit the main UC Davis Summer Session Website: summer-sessions.ucdavis.edu

SESSION ONE

Film Studies 124: Topics in U.S. Film History (4 Units) CRN 60893
Twist(ed) Ending in Suspense Film Past and Present
Course Flyer

Lecture/Discussion: TR 11:00-1:30
Film Viewing: TR 2:10-4:40

Who is Tyler Durden? Today, the twist ending is a mainstay in Hollywood as well as world cinema. In this course, we will examine the role of the surprise ending in film-making past and present. Films that employ shocking and/or twist endings completely change audience understandings of plot, characterization, and motivation. In fact, many of these films use the surprise ending to ask questions about storytelling, or narrative itself. This course will focus on twist endings from directors using the surprise element not as a gimmick, but rather as essential to the topics addressed by each film – themes that range from a Freudian division of the psyche, to a criticism of fear-based politics.

The course will include films such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), David Fincher’s Fight Club (2000), Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000), M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999), Chan-Wook Park’s Oldboy (2003), and Alejandro Amenabar’s Open Your Eyes (1997).

Instructor: Brian Young (bpyoung@ucdavis.edu)

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Film Studies 125: Topics in Film Genre (4 Units) CRN 54766
Italian "Spaghetti" Westerns
Course Flyer

Lecture Discussion: MWF 8:00-9:40
Film Viewing: MWF 10:00-11:40

This course is intended as an introduction to the phenomenon of the Italian “Spaghetti” Westerns that were produced over a fifteen-year period from ca. 1960 to ca. 1975. At a time when the Western as a genre in America was fading, it received new life from a series of European filmmakers, notably the Italians. We will be focusing on topics such as: how did the Italian Westerns differ from what American audiences had been used to [plot, landscape, the concept of the hero, violence, etc.]? What made directors such as Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci stand out from a myriad of other Italian filmmakers with respect to their Western films? To what extent were American audiences “ready” for the “Spaghetti” Westerns? What “worked” and what did not “work” among the Italian Westerns?

Among the films to be viewed in their entirety are those that catapulted Clint Eastwood into fame and fortune: Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Sergio Corbucci’s Django began a “Django” trend, and his later film, The Great Silence, was banned in Great Britain and not released in the United States because distributors here felt that it would be a total flop. Both of these films will be viewed in this course. Other titles include Navajo Joe (with a very young Burt Reynolds), The Big Gundown (with the great Lee Van Cleef), and Leone’s neo-Wagnerian tribute to the end of the mythological West, Once Upon a Time in the West.

Instructor: Winder McConnell, Professor of German (wamcconnell@ucdavis.edu)

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SESSION TWO

Film Studies 125: Topics in Film Genre (4 Units) CRN 80191
Women on Screen

Lecture/Discussion: TWR 2:10-3:50
Film Viewing: TWR 4:10-5:50

Instructor: Sara Bernstein (stbernstein@ucdavis.edu)

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Film Studies 127: Film Theory (4 Units) CRN 80251
Postcolonial-Transnational Film & Theory
Course Flyer

Lecture Discussion: MWF 10:00-11:40
Film Viewing: MF 12:10-2:40

Postcolonial cinemas and theories examine the past and ongoing impact of colonialisms in a globalized world. In this course, we will explore the ways postcolonial film-makers and theorists use, and discuss, film. The following questions will frame our course readings, screenings and discussions. How does film make visible the dynamics of colonialism and its legacies in the contemporary world? How does film do this differently from other media (written word, sound and music)? How do film-makers from formerly colonized cultures speak back through the medium of film? And how can film also screen out, or simplify, realities of postcoloniality? We'll work through the emergence of postcolonial film theory toward a discussion of contemporary transnationalisms and the complexities of lives and relationships that emerge in urban spaces today.

Potential Film List: Ousmane Sembène (dir), Black Girl (1966) [Senegal] • Djibril Diop Mambéty (dir), Touki Bouki (1973) [Senegal] • Claire Denis (dir), J’ai pas sommeil (1995) [France] • Mathieu Kassovitz (dir), La Haine (1995) [France] • Luc Dardenne (dir), La Promesse (1996) [Belgium] • Abderrahmane Sissako (dir), Life on Earth 2000 Seen By... (1998) [Mali] • Joel Hopkins (dir), Jump Tomorrow (2001) [set in U.S.] • Michael Haneke (dir), Caché (2005) [France] • Sofia Coppola (dir), Lost in Translation (2003) [set in Japan] • Peter Jackson (dir), King Kong (2005) [set in U.S. & on Skull Island] • Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud (dir), Persepolis (2007) [Iran] • Thomas McCarthy (dir), The Visitor (2007) [set in U.S.]

All foreign language films will be subtitled in English.

Instructor: Daphne Potts (dapotts@ucdavis.edu)