Weekly Schedule:

Week 1, Tuesday 3 October:

Experimental Film from Maya Deren

Pre-film lecture and screening:

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943, 14 minutes) with Alexander Hammid; At Land (1944, 15 minutes);

A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945, 3 minutes); Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946, 14 minutes).

Post-film lecture/discussion

Erik Roraback will lead a discussion of selected texts in Essential Deren: Collected Writings on Film by Maya Deren, in Maya Deren: Incomplete Control by Sarah Keller and in Maya Deren and the American Avant-

Garde ed. by Bill Nichols.

Week 2, Tuesday 10 October:

The Early Sound Soviet Cinema and the Late-Style Quiet Eisenstein

Pre-film lecture and screening:

Portions of Ivan the Terrible, Part One (1945 Russian with English subtitles, 99 minutes); Ivan the Terrible, Part Two (1946, Russian with English subtitles, 85 minutes), dir. Sergei Eisenstein.

Post-film lecture/discussion

Readings: D. Cook: A History, pp. 302–03.

G. Lambert: “Cinema and the Outside” in The Brain is the Screen, pp. 253–92.

E. Roraback: “Dialectical Linkages and Circulations; or, the Moves and Capitals of Silence of

Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, Parts I & II”.

Part of a book being prepared for publication.

Week 3, Date To Be Announced and Week 4, 24 October:

Orson Welles, American Film and the Advent of the Time-Image

Pre-film lecture and screening:

Citizen Kane (1941, 119 min., dir. Orson Welles).

Post-film lecture/discussion

Rdgs: D. Cook: A History, pp. 327–46.

G. Deleuze: Cinema 2, pp. 98–155.

E. Roraback: “A Spheric and Moving Cosmic Form: Cultural Capital and Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941)”. Revised version of a lecture given at the University of Szeged (Hungary, 2003) and of

an article subsequently published in Boston, USA in Parallax: A Journal of International Perspectives (2008), ed. David L. Robbins. As are all the pieces by E.R., it is now a subunit of a volume in

preparation.

The Lost Nirvana and Orson Welles’s Lost Magnum Opus

Pre-film lecture and screening:

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, 82 min., dir. Orson Welles).

Post-film lecture/discussion

Rdgs: D. Cook: A History, pp. 327–46.

G. Deleuze: Cinema 2, pp. 98–155.

E. Roraback: “Multisensorial Evocations & Provocations of Capital Lost: Orson Welles’s The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)”. Revised version of a guest lecture given at the Research

Colloquium of prof. Aleida Assmann, English Department, Universität Konstanz, Germany, 2/2006; invited by prof. Assmann and dr. Michael Frank.

F. Truffaut: “Foreword” to André Bazin’s Orson Welles: A Critical View, pp. 1–27.

Week 5, Tuesday 31 October: Silent Soviet Film, Dialectical Montage and the Camera-Eye

Pre-film lecture and screening:

Man with a Movie Camera (1929, 68 min., Russian intertitles with English subtitles, dir. Dziga

Vertov).

Post-film lecture/discussion

Rdgs: D. Cook: A History, pp. 116–18.

G. Deleuze: Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, pp. 39–43.

E. Roraback, “The Autopoietic Cinema of Big Movement Capitals of Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera, 1929”. Part of a book that is being prepared for publication.

Week 6, Tuesday 7 November: Silent Film and the Close-Up

Pre-film lecture and screening:

The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, 1928, 82 min., French intertitles with

English subtitles, dir. Carl Th. Dreyer).

Post-film lecture/discussion

Rdgs: S. Barber: The Screaming Body, pp. 5–32.

D. Cook: A History, pp. 311–12.

E. Roraback: “The Circulating Movement of the Cultural Capitals of Cinema and of the Spiritual Life: Dreyer’s Early-Style La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928)”. Revised

version of a guest lecture given at The Evergreen State College (USA, 1/2007) on the invitation of prof. Setsuko Tsutsumi. Part of a book that is being prepared for publication.

*Mid-term essay due at the beginning of class during week 7

Week 7, Tuesday 14 November and Week 8, Tuesday 21 November:

Buster Keaton and the Aesthetic of Dizziness

Pre-film talk and screening:

Sherlock, Jr. (1924, silent with English intertitles, 44 min. dir. Buster Keaton).

The General (1926, silent with English intertitles, 75 min., dir. Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman).

Post-film lecture/discussion

Rdgs: L. Bersani and U. Dutoit: Arts of Impoverishment, pp. 1–9.

D. Cook: A History, pp. 176–82.

E. Roraback: “Traversing Utopian Layers of Danger, Dizziness and Silence in the Cinema of Buster Keaton (1920–25)”; revised version of a paper given at the 31^st annual conference of the

International Association for Philosophy and Literature Nicosia, Cyprus, Europe, 4-9 June 2007; conference theme: Layering: Textual, Visual, Spatial, Temporal. A second revised edition of this

paper was also given as a guest lecture in 1/2010 at the Research Colloquium of prof. Aleida Assmann, English Department, Universität Konstanz, Germany; invited by prof. Assmann and dr.

Michael Frank.

Part of a book that is being prepared for publication.

S. Shaviro: The Cinematic Body, pp. 255–69.

Week 9, Tuesday 28 November:

German Expressionism and the Socio-Economic

Pre-film talk and screening:

The Last Laugh (Der letzte Mann, 1924, silent with English intertitles, 91 minutes, dir. F.W.

Murnau).

Post-film lecture/discussion

Rdgs: L. Bersani and U. Dutoit: Arts of Impoverishment, pp. 1–9.

D. Cook: A History of Narrative Film, pp. 100–05.

S. Kracauer: From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of German Film, pp. 99–106.

E. Roraback: “Who Laughs Last?: Or: Brutal Capitalist Structures, Murnau’s Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh/The Last Man, 1924), and Walter Benjamin’s Utopian ’Angelus Novus’”; revised version

of a talk given at a conference in honor of Prof. Peter Demetz’s (Yale Univ.) 85^th Birthday held in Prague, October, 2007 that was later published in Krajina bez vlastností: Literatura a Střední

Evropa/Landschaft ohen, Eigenschaften: Literatur und Mitteleuropa, Peteru Demetzovi k 85. Narozeninám/Festschrift für Peter Demetz zum 85. Geburtstag, eds. Petr A. Bílek, Tomáš Dimter (Praha:

Aktion, 2007/2010). 247–73.

S. Shaviro: The Cinematic Body, pp. 255–69.