Close Cinematic Analysis: Poetic Cinema

"What is poetic cinema?" This course begins with theoretical attempts at a definition by such thinkers as Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky, writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, and film scholars Tom Gunning and P. Adams Sitney - along with some of their examples such as Dziga Vertov's documentary A Sixth Part of the World (1926), Michelangelo Antonioni's Red Desert (1964), and the early films of Maya Deren. We will continue to consider these definitions of the poetic mode in relation to specific elements of film such as sound, and films historically proclaimed as "poetic," including Surrealist films, films of the American avant-garde, and the "Poetic School" of Soviet cinema. Other potential sites of poetic cinema we may consider include the Griot poetry system in Nollywood films, song lyrics in Hindi films, and adaptations of long poems such as The Shahnameh. The course has three main goals: to chart and familiarize ourselves with the history of poetic cinema; to recognize and analyze the qualities and elements that tip a film - or part of a film - into the category of film poetry; and, more broadly, to hone our skills of close attention and analysis.