Global Art Cinema

3 units

How do art films tell stories? The dominant storytelling genre of the contemporary festival circuit, the art film has since World War Two combined realist and modernist impulses. Influenced by Italian neorealism, art films grant priority to characters from working class, sexual, and other exploited and imperiled minorities. Drawing on the fine arts, literature and music, art films also experiment with modernist themes and formal principles, such as subjectivity, duration, serial structure, denotative ambiguity and reflexivity. This course explores art cinema from a variety of national contexts, analyzing storytelling techniques and themes that challenge the economical and diverting forms associated with mainstream commercial filmmaking. Required Screenings.