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3. History of Cinema I
4. Style and Culture of National Cinema

Description

In the first thirty-five years of the cinema, between 1895 and 1930, there were inventors and innovators working on motion pictures throughout the world, often developing very unique approaches to the technical and creative aspects of the motion picture. Cinema produced in one nation might be made in a different context than films produced in a different nation. And the purpose of filmmaking reflects or determines the stylistic conventions used in the making of a body of films.

Prompt

1. Select a film from the following list produced in a nation other than the United States.
2. Analyze at least one, but no more than two, stylistic device(s). Stylistic devices may include one of the following: narration, mise-en-scéne, cinematography, or editing.
3. Relate the overall use of the stylistic device(s) to the national context in which the film was produced. You may compare the use of style to a film produced in the United States around the same time.

Films

Soviet Union

• The Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
• Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
• October (Ten Days that Shook the World) (Sergei Eisenstein, 1928)
• Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)

France

• Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1927)
• Un Chien Andalou (Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, 1927)
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
• Entracte (Rene Clair, 1924)
• Seashell and the Clergyman (Germaine Dulac, 1928)
• Ballet mecanique (Fernand Leger, 1924)

Germany

• Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (Carl Mayer, 1920)
• Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922)
• The Last Laugh (F.W. Murnau, 1924)
• Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926)

Submission Guidelines

• Your paper must be exactly 500 words in length.
• Your paper must be typed and double-spaced
• Your paper must have page numbers
• Your paper must include your name on the first page
• You must submitted in two forms:
  • Bring a stapled, hard copy to class. If I have to print your paper, you will lost five points of your assignment grade.
  • Upload a PDF of your paper to the Assignments section of Blackboard.
• Your paper is due in class and on Blackboard on Thursday May 2.

Citations

Please cite any sources you used, including the textsbooks or any websites. At a minimum, you should at least cite with a parenthetical note.

For direct quotes

”Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua" (Gunning 14).

When paraphrasing

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.(Thompson and Bordwell 31).

Alternately, you may also use the specifications of the MLA Handbook or the Chicago Manual of Style. You’re also free to use other style guides.