Film-Video (B3)

Teacher: [Claudio Pazienza]

This film history and theory course aims to develop in students a practice of vision: an active, critical, dynamic vision, which would encourage them to question films as much as the history of the moving image, and to connect the works, the intentions, the devices and the experience of the vision... The course aims to stimulate research and discovery, through the presentation of committed and unique proposals.

The course offers a journey through the history of cinema. It is based on the dissemination of numerous documents: fiction films, documentaries, avant-garde cinema, film-essays, scientific cinema, family films, political cinema, artists' films and videos... The corpus from which the course, it is that of the whole of the history of cinema, with the intention of taking into account forms traditionally neglected, rejected in the margins of this one. What these films and videos, as diverse as they are, have in common is their ability to invent forms and uses of cinema (as a territory of formal experimentation or as a place of political resistance, for example) but also to ask questions with the cinema, and in particular on the cinema (whether these proposals were formulated within the framework of the cinema, the visual arts, or outside these two circuits).

There is no linear, homogeneous, harmonious, unique history of cinema. There are many possible stories, always written in the present, and from a multitude of points of view. What interests us here is not to see or review classics, confirming a version of the history of the medium as it is widely celebrated and instituted, but precisely to question this story by following other threads, other trajectories.

If the course strives to historically situate the practices, devices, projects and concepts, taking into account the contexts of production, realization and distribution, the path it offers is not however chronological - favoring other types of connections, thematic or formal, for example. Through a multitude of proposals, questions such as: the border between fiction and documentary, the multiple relationships of cinema to other arts or practices, the status of the author, the specificity of the medium, projection devices, etc. will be addressed. The works that interest us are revolutionary tools, in form and/or content. The notion of experience is central here.

Guests (artists, researchers, critics, programmers) regularly come to present their work and discuss with the students.

The evaluation is based on several analyses / writings spread over the year. These papers will explore one or more issues raised in the course: a question, a concept, a movement, an artist, a group, a work, an idea, etc. The most important thing is for the student to make use of the course content and tools in order to develop a personal and rigorous proposal that establishes links between one or more films seen together and other films, or with works from other disciplines, based in particular on critical and theoretical references provided by the course or by the student him/herself.

For further details, students are invited to consult the UE sheet for this course.