This is inspired by PTA's quote about learning cinema history from the present and then backwards, to see where it was the respective film derived from. Personally I would rather see the beginning of the cinema and then watch it progress. I feel this way because if we were to watch films that way, we can learn about the best of the cinema, the movements, etc. and then progress into the 70's, 80's, 90's to see how cinema has went downhill since its golden ages and what have you. What do you think the best teaching method would be? Explain..
i just move back and forth, with different mouvements and directors, depending on what im interested in at the time
because anyone learning film history has already seen modern films, it's been ruined for them... if they had never seen a film, you could start at the begining and work forward, but once they've seen a modern film, it's too late.
Answer to the question is neither.
I don't think PT meant to literally go backward... I think you just didn't understand.
I think it was pretty clear that PTA thought the film class shouldn't start with Potemkin and they should start with something modern and then go backwards to show its influences. And so on. Yes?
I guess my answer would be an amalgam of the above answers.
First, a student of the cinema doesn't exist in a vacuum. I think you must have a love for movies in order to be someone who wants to be taught above movie history. Almost certainly, this love for cinema came while watching popular modern films during your youth.
In other words, a great many people from my generation (I'm 32) probably fell in love movies while watching the films of Spielberg and Lucas.
So that's your starting point. Then (and PTA has mentioned this) you develop an interest in the movies that inspired Spielberg and Lucas. This would, in the case of Lucas, lead you back to Kurosawa.
As far as actual classroom teaching of film history. I agree with the above poster who said that you should bounce back and forth through the eras, in order to touch on different themes, genres, styles, etc. ... A strictly linear progression wouldn't necessarily be the best way to go.
In the one film class I took in college, we bounced around in that exact fashion. ... We saw "Top Gun" very early in the semester, so that we could refresh ourselves with that blockbuster and have a frame of reference for diving backward into film history. Then we bounced all around. From "Citizen Kane" to "Kiss Me Deadly" to "Battleship Potemkin" to "Stroszek" to "The Great Train Robbery" to "Annie Hall."
So, that's my two cents. It's a good topic for discussion.
Thanks. I thought it would get people thinking and its a bit refreshing to me to discuss. I think jumping around themes, movements, etc. is the best formula of teaching but thats why I didn't include that in the discussion since forwards or backwards is more debatable.
And even with the subset of themes, you could debate how to structure the syllabus. For example you could argue that either of these two orders would work:
Plan A
Unforgiven
Stagecoach
High Noon
The Searchers
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Plan B
Stagecoach
High Noon
The Searchers
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Unforgiven
I think you could still go back to the beginning and get a fresh perspective of progression, as long as you don't mind seeing certain movies over again, and are aware that some things will feel inherently dated by what followed them. I also really like the idea of working my way backwards -- except that it's too late already. I think most big film buffs (like us) are so anxious to devour films that we jump around in an almost free associative style. Time collapses in the wake of our voracious cinematic appetite!
But for a class, it's a great idea.
im taking a History of Cinema class right now and I really dig the way the Prof. is handling it. We of course started the theory part from the beginnings of Edison and the Lumiere's and when we started watching film examples to match what he was teaching, he would start showing us the classic films then a modern example. Ex: we watched the great train robbery so we could see examples of simultaneous action, then we watched a clip of Chicago (the beginning) to see how what Porter was pioneering is still being used to date...
so yeah were switching back and forth i guess
probably the best way to do it. what films do u watch in the class?
Wow, it's cool to hear PTA thinks that way cause I've had that theory for years...The way I see it, you start with the movies you like and generally thos emovies are the current movies. I mean I started loving my cintemporary films like E.T. back then, the Spielberg films, Roger Rabbit...then JFK, Silence of the lambs...and so on...Only after getting to know the cinema of the present I was able to digest the different narratives, cinematography and styles of the past. Not necesarily like, backwards or like saying, today we watch Scream and tomorrow we atch Halloween, but just to adjust yourself to the possibilites of it. You start with somethign easy, something you can connect more easily, so you can't start with Eisenstein cause it's totallty alien if you're not prepared....
I have that same theory for books. I mean they want 12 year old kids reading Shakespeare...first give them Tolkien, and then they will start to like reading enough to try other things, the classics an so on...
We've watched a DVD compilation of several of the Lumiere's first films like :
Employees Leaving the Lumiere Factory
The Sprayer Sprayed
Feeding the Baby
Card Game
Weve also watched Voyage to the Moon by Melies, and Porter's The Great Train Robbery.
Among the modern day examples we've watched clips from Chicago, The Silence of the Lambs, Bram Stoker's Dracula and a David Fincher's video for a Madonna's song. (dont remember the title, but it features Christopher Walken in it)
Tonight were watching the greater part of a film called "Birth of a Nation"
It's funny because I don't know that I would've been as obsessed with films if I saw older films first. When I was really young all I wanted to do was watch movies and that was due to animated disney films and then stuff like raiders, star wars, rocky, karate kid, alot of good films but mostly fun, popcorn films. As I grew up I'd watch anything, and when I got into middle school, and high school, I started getting into films from the 40's-70's. I probably like learning backwards because I did, and still am and I don't know if I would've had the same fascination with films if I saw a film from the 40's when I was five. Instead I saw raiders and I fell in love with movies.
of course ! i mean im sure 99.9% of the film makers and film lovers of today realized their love of film BECAUSE of a film of their time that influenced them..
I personally would start of with the very first films, how it all began, when art and technology met. I would probably then hop to the five national cinema types, which are british, soviet, indian, german, and american. How they have evolved etc...
And then do the different genres in the ages.
Quote from: ***beady***I personally would start of with the very first films, how it all began, when art and technology met. I would probably then hop to the five national cinema types, which are british, soviet, indian, german, and american. How they have evolved etc...
And then do the different genres in the ages.
I think that's ok if you're already a film enthusiast, but it would be great if people had some film education as part of their NORMAL formation. I mean as literatury class on elementary school or high school, not like some sort of hobby, specially in the United States where films are such an important aspect of the nation's culture. But it's hard to follow a silent film if your attention span only knows of Die Hard. Slowly, you go through contemporary movies and then creating a comparison with the old ones, after the person learns to watch movies, as people has to learn to read certain things. I think one of the reasons a lot of people don't read at all has to do with bad experiences as kids...but sometimes is completely insane...I was 11 years old and they gave me Hamlet to read and asked me to write an essay on it, and previous to that I've only read comic books, so it's hard for the kid, the inmediate reaction is that of boredom or simply no interest.
In films it happens the same. I studied Communications and I like films, but not everyone in that career see films as an art form, and is hard to make them understand this. The teacher comes and on the first class shows them The Great Train Robbery and talks about editing and all that stuff, but no one cares. We see Citizen Kane, no one cares, there's no frame of reference. Now if we had started watching, maybe, Pulp Fiction, it woul dbe easy to go "backwards" in a sense, showing older films, showing how things begun, at least to make them understand the artform...maybe a few will fall in love with the medium like myself...
What? No one cares about Citizen kane? Are they mad?
In a perfect teaching world, you could just tell the students to sit back and enjoy the movie the first time they watch "Citizen Kane."
Because it is a damn entertaining flick.
THEN, after they've seen it, talk about how it was created. How it was revolutionary. Talk about Toland. Talk about deep focus. Talk about the famous tracking shots.
And then show it again, so they can appreciate those filmmaking techniques.
If you go into a film being told to pay attention to the editing and the tracking shots and the camera angles, then you're going to focus on all of that stuff and never appreciate the movie as a movie.
Deep focus shots are great. I like a particluar one in Citizen Kane, of the attempted suicide of Susanne Alexander. That ones cool.
Quote from: ***beady***What? No one cares about Citizen kane? Are they mad?
Belive me, no one cared...but that's the point i'm trying to tell, I'm talking about normal people, not film freaks like us. Normal people who go to the movies and see maybe Just Married and think is funny. This is not because they are idiots, is because that's the culture we're living. There's no real film appreciation. It is not a perfect film teaching world, it's a world where most people don¿t see movies as an art form, they're just something to do on weekends...What I'm saying is that it would be great if as a part of your normal education, you had some appreciation to the aesthetics of film, or for that matter any art form...
like someone wiser said: aesthetics of today are the ethics of tomorrow
Quote from: Alexandro
I think that's ok if you're already a film enthusiast, but it would be great if people had some film education as part of their NORMAL formation. I mean as literatury class on elementary school or high school, not like some sort of hobby, specially in the United States where films are such an important aspect of the nation's culture.
Film isn't highly regarded like sculpture, painting, literature, and music. We learn about Mozart and Picasso in school, but not about Kurosawa. This is probably because film is only a little over 100 years old.
QuoteBut it's hard to follow a silent film if your attention span only knows of Die Hard.
Sure, if you show Birth of a Nation as someone's first silent film. Silent comedy is easy to enjoy, especially since dialogue-free comedy sometimes occurs in today's sitcoms and movies.
A good idea would be to compare a popular teen film like Ferris Bueller's Day Off to Mr. Hulot's Holiday. Drawing comparisons to classics will show them that film didn't begin with Spielberg and Tarantino (not a knock at either of these directors).
I've been doing a self-run sort of course, choosing what I want, when I want, and just watching it.
Usually I do it director by director, two directors at a time [usually linked by a common theme or story, for example, Orson Welles and Akira Kurosawa tied together by Macbeth], either watching the films in chronological order of their work, or in any other order I see fit.
It's a weird system, jumping all over the shot, but it works.
we watched the greater part of birth of a nation... it wasnt that hard to watch honestly..
and for its time, i have to say, DW Griffith OWN3D!
:-D :lol:
Quote from: AlexandroNow if we had started watching, maybe, Pulp Fiction, it woul dbe easy to go "backwards" in a sense, showing older films, showing how things begun, at least to make them understand the artform...maybe a few will fall in love with the medium like myself...
exactly! is really hard to get the attetion of a kid who felt falling in love with films as Boogie Nights or Traffic and then tell him that he must to love Metropolis or The Kid by Chaplin because are good films and bla bla bla...well some people would get it but not everyone, i think
Alexandro is right...
and
Cinephile: a very good topic!!!
Quote from: ***beady***I would probably then hop to the five national cinema types, which are british, soviet, indian, german, and american. How they have evolved etc...
And especially how early German films influenced American art films. Huge influence there that's not talked about enough.
No, it isn't actually talked about much at all. I really like german films. One of my faves is 'The Tin Drum'. (Volker Schlondorff). 1979. That film holds a lot.
It's always best to start at the beginning. For example, one can better understand the Renaissance if you understand the Greeks.
A really excellent one-volume book about film that I think is esssential is Katz's Film Encyclopedia. This might be the most essential book of all, in my opinion. I've learned more from this one book than from any other book.
I always loved the quote by Godard saying cinema is a mystery...i believe that's what he said...so i believe you should simply jump around, watching films from periods of the silent era to modern cinema and deciphering the history as it pleases you...don't go in a straight line...watch what intrigues you along the lines....the history of film is important, but i think it's best to visit those early films when you see fit to do so...when you are ready to enter into those earlier films, do so....it's best to allow film to be sort of a puzzle and not a temple being built from earlier makers....i'm sorry if that sounded incredibly idiotic, but i think it's best to learn cinema how you'd like to learn it...jump around and edit your own perception of film history...find your own influences and movements.., etc., etc....
p.s.--i am aware of the irony of my post....