107-487 Film, Modernity and the Avant-Garde

Formerly available as 107-095. Students who have completed 107-095 are not eligible to enrol in this subject.

Admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth-year honours in cinema studies or cultural studies, see Honours entry.

This subject will explore the relationship between film, modernity and the avant-garde. Students should develop a knowledge of the history of the cinema and its origins in new visual forms of modernity, such as photography and 19th century visual devices, such as the diorama, zoetrope and viviscope. Particular reference will be given to the writings of Freud and related aspects of modernity such as the shock of the new, the double, war and horror, the city and depersonalisation, the body and nostalgia. The European avant-garde will be compared briefly to developments in later avant-garde cinema. Concepts such as time, speed, travel and space will be explored in relation to key films, such as Nosferatu, Blood of a Poet, L'Age D'or, Metropolis, The Student of Prague, Pandora's Box, Last Year at Marienbad, India Song and Weekend.