124262 KO Critical Media Analysis (2016W)

Already at the turn of the turn of the twentieth century, when The Countryman and the Cinematograph (1901) and The Big Swallow (1901) first raised questions about the power of the then-new cinematic medium, films exhibited a self-reflexive interest in their own condition as fiction and artefact. Fast forward a century, and we can observe that this interest has by now means diminished: The Artist (2011), Hugo (2011), Hitchcock (2012), Saving Mr. Banks (2013), Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015), … Recent years have delivered a plethora of metafilms – films about films, films about filmmaking, films about film-viewing, etc. – which foreground the inherent artifice of the medium.

This course will introduce students to the study of film and its history through metafilms, which act as critics, theorists and/or historians of their own medium. The discussion of films that are all metareferential to varying degrees will be complemented by readings, which will range from more general approaches to theorizing film to more specific discussions of metacinema. In the process, students will be familiarized with (1) the vocabulary of film studies and the techniques of cinema by exploring how metafilms lay bare the modes of representation and signifying devices unique to the medium, (2) the history of film by considering cinema’s fascination with its own past, and (3) various theoretical models and methodological concepts relevant to the study of film.