French Fantasy on Film

4.0 credits

This course will explore surrealism, the marvelous, science fiction and horror in French cinema, from its very beginnings in the late 1880s to today. Whether tied to social themes (as illustrated by Louis Feuillade, Chris Marker, Agnès Varda and Mati Diop) or a poetic questioning of what lies beyond our perception (Georges Méliès, Alice Guy, and Jean Cocteau), the fantastic calls for redefinitions of reality. At the intersection of film theory, history, and narrative analysis, this course aims to cultivate students’ own daily sense of bewilderment while acquiring technical and historical knowledge of film. Conducted in English.