FILMEDIA 450: Screened Thought

Course Description

This seminar considers the varied ways film represents thought. What forms of thinking do films enable and forestall? How do particular films, and film genres, activate or elide characters' cognition, interiority, self-consciousness, reflection, etc.? How do formal techniques such as point-of-view, superimposition, flashbacks, framing, and voiceover change the image of thought that cinema inherits from philosophy, literature and other artistic traditions? We'll consider these questions through a range of films and film theory as well as critical and philosophical texts.