TBA

TBA

This course introduces the various methodologies, both recent and traditional, that have governed the study, analysis and criticism of cinematographic works. It presents the epistemological foundations of these different approaches, as well as the historical and cultural context in which they were born. It invites students to take a critical look at these different methods, and to identify the strengths and limitations of each. The course also aims to help students grasp the main stages in the process of researching and structuring the dissertation, in relation to one of the three structuring axes of the profile: production, dissemination, reception.

Analyze and understand the continuities and ruptures that mark the transition from film to digital cinema. The history of the major stages in the development of cinema, from the first inventions to its industrialization, will be covered. The course will also analyze the emergence of digital production methods (from cartoons to feature films), and the common links and specificities between film and digital production methods; the issues and challenges specific to each will also be studied.

A significant proportion of digital technologies have developed through personal devices (smartphones and watches, tablets, wristbands, etc.), which have also become capturing tools in their own right (sound, images and video), to which have been added portable “sports” cameras (GoPro), drones and home surveillance cameras. This course aims to define, analyze and understand the uses and impacts of these capture tools in their aesthetic, social, economic and political contexts. The course will also focus on presenting and analyzing creative works (fiction, documentary and experimental) made with these capture devices. Students will be invited to produce, present and analyze their own productions.

This course offers an in-depth look at the complex and multifaceted issues facing documentary cinema. The focus will be on contemporary documentary. A critical analysis of the various approaches to filmmaking will enable us to question the different conceptions of cinema that are deployed. The specific problematic of documentary, that of the relationship to reality, will be attentive to the inevitable hybridization between the writing of a fictional narrative and the observation of reality. The seminar’s pedagogical approach will consist of a back-and-forth between theoretical texts, film screenings and workshop discussions.

This course offers a diachronic and intermedial reading of the experiments that have marked the history of documentary film, from the earliest days of cinema to the multimedia and interactive proposals disseminated online today. In addition to the formal aspects and aesthetics of the bodies of images analyzed, we’ll be looking at the contexts in which these experiments emerged: within institutions (the NFB), independent artists’ groups (Chris Marker and the SLON collective), commercial productions (the role of private television) or amateur productions (the use of personal capture/broadcast technologies). This exploration will lead us to better understand and situate some of the key notions of documentary: role and place of the filmmaker; editing and documents; prototype and relationship to technology; mass media, form and ideology.

Focusing on a few key works in the history of cinema, this course proposes a series of milestones to situate the major aesthetic movements, technological turning points and different contexts surrounding cinema, from the earliest times to the present day. A chronological journey will take us through passages (institutionalization, the advent of synchronous sound), ruptures (the Nouvelles Vagues), but also cross-references and returns between different eras and styles. The course also aims to develop an aesthetic and thematic awareness of the moving image, as well as an introduction to research methods in film history.