Guinea Bissau Conflict. Program examines the guerilla warfare underway in the African country of Guinea Bissau as part of the campaign for independence being waged in that country. Program is divided into two segments: the first consisting of an on-location British film about Guinea Bissau guerilla troop B-30 as it proceeds to an attack site, the second of an interview with Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) representative Gil Fernandes, who discusses his work, background, and the state of the war. Film contains commentary by PAIGC founder Amilcar Cabral. Produced by John Slade. Directed by Russell Tillman.

This text was enthusiastically adapted from Russell Sharman's incredible Moving Pictures, linked here, and was adapted specifically to focus on cinema regarding Tokyo for the purposes of Study Abroad. 

Through the Lens of Post-Colonialism and Cultural Humility

Short Description:
This textbook offers students a way to appreciate and understand film from global civilizations and cultures. The chapters introduce terminology and technology in filmmaking as well as critical methodologies for understanding film as a global art form. Students are encouraged to gain a deeper understanding of world cultures through the perspective of native filmmakers.

Long Description:
In fourteen chapters, An Introduction to World Film explores topics in cinema and films by major international directors including: Akira Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, Abbas Kiarostami, Ousmane Sembène and Haifaa Al-Mansour. Realism, Neorealism and Dramatic Filmmaking techniques are explored and illustrated in the chapters. The book is chronological, beginning with the first film innovators, and the invention of the Cinematographe, by the Lumière brothers in Lyon, France. The book chronicles major stylistic innovations in International Cinema and also offers geographical and political context for the films presented.

Word Count: 19908

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This course examines Israeli identity using a broad array of materials, including popular music, film, documentaries, and art, in addition to academic historical writings. Topics include Israel’s political system and society, ethnic relations, settlement projects, and the Arab minorities in the Jewish state. Students also discuss whether there is a unique Israeli culture and the struggle for Israel’s identity.
Preference is given to students in the MISTI MIT-Israel program.

This class provides an introduction to modern art and theories of modernism and postmodernism. It focuses on the way artists use the tension between fine art and mass culture to mobilize a critique of both. We will examine objects of visual art, including painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, prints, performance and video. These objects will be viewed in their interaction with advertising, caricature, comics, graffiti, television, fashion, folk art, and “primitive” art.

Short Description:
A free and open-source introduction to the art and science of moving pictures, offering in-depth exploration of how cinema communicates, and what, exactly, it is trying to say.

Long Description:
A free and open-source introduction to the art and science of cinema. From the earliest iterations to the latest innovations, this introductory text explores the tools and techniques of mise-en-scene, narrative form, cinematography, editing, sound and acting, how each has contributed to the evolution of cinematic language, and how that evolution implicates critical issues of representation in mass media. Moving Pictures offers in-depth examination of how cinema communicates, and what, exactly, it is trying to say.

Author Contact: russell.sharman@gmail.com

Word Count: 55639

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This course examines works of film in relation to thematic issues of philosophical importance that also occur in other arts, particularly literature and opera. Emphasis is put on film’s ability to represent and express feeling as well as cognition. Both written and cinematic works by Sturges, Shaw, Cocteau, Hitchcock, Joyce, and Bergman, among others, are considered. There are no tests or quizzes, however students write two major papers on media/philosophical research topics of their choosing.

Prosthetic memories are a form of public memory built in public sites. In this audio short, the old abandoned cinemas and their histories & ghosts are explored through the idea of prosthetic memories. What stories have been told in these abandoned buildings? What stories do they tell now?

Written & edited by May Santiago
Audio recordings & sound design by May Santiago

Archival audio of Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894) courtesy of Edision Film Archive via Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Archival audio of Jack’s Joke (1913) courtesy of Edison Film Archive via Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Archival audio of “Aloma” from Aloma of the South Seas (1926) courtesy of Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Archival audio of Universal Newsreel Volume 27, Release 550 (1954) courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
Archival audio of Atom for the Americas (1967) courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
Archival audio of Universal Newsreel Volume 40, Release 59 (1967) courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.
Archival audio of La revolución nacionalista (1950) courtesy of Edgardo Huertas.
Archival audio of “Sara” performed by Quinteto Borinquen from August 3, 1916 courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings & Arhoolie Records.

Too many of our teenagers were not read to when they were little and therefore have no nostalgic attachment to nor any interest in reading now. Simply telling them that reading is important to their success will not help these students form the socio-emotional connections to literature they did not make when they were younger. We have to give them the skills to make comprehension and complex literary analysis more gratifying than the mindless consumption of whatever easy entertainment their televisions and computers offer. If we can get them to need stories, and poems, and essays in the same way they seem to need the applications on their cell phones, then we can restore what was lost to the distractions, shortcomings, and traumas of their less than perfect childhoods. To do so, we must make reading feel fun and meaningful again (or for the first time) – rather than something that tortures our students and exposes their ignorance. This unit offers a multicultural exploration of the classic folktale “Little Red Riding Hood” as a path toward nurturing the bonds that literature creates between people and communities, giving us a sense of security, belonging, and purpose.

If words are creativity, then they are art. This is where the discipline of creative writing comes in, as well as that of screenwriting and therefore film-making. The two forms of media, while wholly different, are inextricably linked by that foundational, historic art form – storytelling. In a modern educational landscape where screen is preferred to page, it may be advantageous to stress the importance of both. There are lessons we can get from reading words that no screen will show us; as there are artistic things that can be done with images that could never be accomplished on the page. It is imperative, therefore, to make it clear for students that it is not better to see the movie, but to see the movie too . The simultaneous study of original, written story and its film adaptation can be a powerful learning tool, especially when the film in question is a vast re-imagining, paying concrete due to the original classic story while updating it for the modern imagination and culture. This curricular unit explores this consideration for several classic stories and their modern, reimagined film counterparts, with the intention of allowing students to apply their study of adaptation to their own independent reading.

This seminar explores approaches to representation for distributed cinematic storytelling. The relationship between story creation and story appreciation is analyzed. Readings are drawn from literary and cinematic criticism, as well as from descriptions of interactive, distributed works. Students analyze a range of storytelling techniques; they develop a proposal using visualization techniques; and they prototype a working story experience, culminating in a final project displayed at the end of the semester.

This class deals with interactive art. Visiting artists will discuss their work from a theoretical and practical perspective. Discussions of the history of interactive digital art and contemporary issues in the field will take place. Students will develop an interactive art project for a final exhibition or submit a short paper.

This course investigates relationships between two media, film and literature, studying works linked across the two media by genre, topic, and style. It aims to sharpen appreciation of major works of cinema and of literary narrative. The course explores how artworks challenge and cross cultural, political and aesthetic boundaries. It includes some attention to theory of narrative. Films to be studied include works by Akira Kurosawa, John Ford, Francis Ford Coppolla, Clint Eastwood, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, and Federico Fellini, among others. Literary works include texts by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Honoré de Balzac, Henry James and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The research project of this Ph.D. in Digital Media has as objective the creation of a tool (object of learning) for pedagogical aid in teaching the production of visual effects in audiovisual productions, more specifically in the interactions between real and virtual images (match moving).

The prototype created during the research has the purpose of assisting teachers and students in the practical exercises of interaction between real and virtual images.

The tool has the ability to assist in data collection at the time of live-action filming, given the large amount and complexity of these data, and its vital need for the reproduction of real conditions in the virtual universe later.

In addition, it has the ability to generate a script (in Maxscript language) for its use in 3DS Max graphics software, automating part of the production process.

It is also part of the research, besides the conception and creation of the tool (learning object), its validation in the pedagogical and design bias (user experience and user interface).

Climate Change in Narrative Film

Short Description:
Explores the history and impact of the “Cli-Fi Film,” or Climate Fiction Film, a sub-genre of narrative cinema that depicts, on some level, the effects of climate change on the Earth and its inhabitants.

Long Description:
Telling Stories to Save the World: Climate Change in Narrative Film explores – through text, images, and video – the history and impact of the “Cli-Fi Film,” or Climate Fiction Film, a subgenre of narrative cinema that depicts, on some level, the effects of climate change on the Earth and its inhabitants. This openly-licensed resource covers the following topics: overview of climate change; rationale for the focus on narrative, or feature, film; definition and context of the “Cli-Fi Film”; history and impact of major narrative films focused on climate change, from Soylent Green (1973) to Don’t Look Up (2021). The resource concludes with a consideration of the future direction of Cli-Fi Films. Along the way, learners read about the author and some effects of climate change on her own life, inspiring her to create this resource and hopefully inciting those who use it to action.

Word Count: 23112

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21G.031 examines the terms “avant garde” and “Kulturindustrie” in French and German culture of the early twentieth century. Considering the origins of these concepts in surrealist and dadaist literature, art, and cinema, the course then expands to engage parallel formations across Europe, particularly in the former Soviet Union. Emphasis on the specific historical conditions that enabled these interventions. Guiding questions are these: What was original about the historical avant-garde? What connections between art and revolution did avant-garde writers and artists imagine? What strategies did they deploy to meet their modernist imperatives? To what extent did their projects maintain a critical stance towards the culture industry?
Surveying key interventions in the fields of poetry, painting, sculpture, photography, film, and music, the readings also include signal moments in critical thought of the last century. Figures to be considered are: Adorno, Aragon, Bataille, Beckett, Brecht, Breton, Bürger, Duchamp, Eisenstein, Ernst, Jünger, Greenberg, Kandinsky, Malevich, Mayakovsky, and Tzara. Taught in English, but students are encouraged to consult original sources when possible.

Book Three: Senses of Place and Space

Short Description:
Today, as the increasing accessibility, prevalence, and affordability of VR technology grows, so does a need to revisit theories of virtual space. Virtual Interiorities brings together scholars from the allied fields of built environment, humanities, art, and media. This collection of essays catalogs the moments of collision and collusion between parallel universes of spatio-visual media as they shift into and extend one another.

Long Description:
Contemporary virtual reality is often discussed in terms of popular consumer hardware. Yet the virtual we increasingly experience comes in many forms and is often more complex than wearable signifiers. This three-volume collection of essays examines the virtual beyond the headset. Virtual Interiorities offers multiple, sometimes unexpected entry points to virtuality—theme parks, video games, gyms, pilgrimage sites, theater, art installations, screens, drones, film, and even national identity. What all these virtual interiorities share are compelling cultural perspectives on distinct moments of environmental collision and collusion, liminality, and shifting modes of inhabitation, which challenge more conventional architectural conceptions of space. Senses of Place and Space steps beyond environments to look more closely at inhabitation, time, non-space, and placelessness. Each piece gathered in this final volume touches on how we exist—or might exist—in emerging virtual constructs, as well as how those constructs shift our perceptions through fluidity, pervasiveness, and altered vantages.

Word Count: 189719

ISBN: 978-1-387-49250-3

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This course is an invitation to German film-making since the end of the Second World War. We investigate how German cinema captured the atmosphere of the immediate post-war years and discuss extensively major works of the “New German Cinema” of the Sixties and Seventies. We also look at examples of East Germany’s film production and finally observe the very different roads German cinema has been taking from the 1990’s into the present.

This list presents a basic set of vocabulary words that deal with categories of media and the arts, including verbs and nouns that deal with cinema, song, dance, plays, and film criticism. The list also contains verbs and nouns that cover key aspects of broadcast media. The majority of words contained within the website are nouns, and some verbs are interspersed. The words and verbs are presented in both Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian colloquial. All words feature Arabic script and transliteration.