Film History:

Appeal:

• Accessibility (eBay)

• Old films are hypotexts

• Trans-historicity

Basic approaches:

• Biographical history: directors, starts, photographers

• Industrial and economic history: organisation and business

• Aesthetic history: form, style and genre• Technological history: materials and machines• Social/cultural/political history: the context

• > Combinations and dialectics

Basic filmhistorical questions:

1. How have different ways of using the film medium become common and widespread through the times?

Narrative structures and styles with specific uses of mise-en-scene, light, locations, costumes, camera, editing, sound and genres

Basic filmhistorical questions:

2. How have the conditions of the film industry – production, distribution, projections – influenced the use of the medium?

E.g.:The studio-system with division of labour, independent filmmakers, delays of technology and ways of projections

Basic filmhistorical questions:

3. How have international tendencies arisen and become dominant in the use of the medium of film in the film market?

E.g.:

The national and the international

The western genre:

samurai films, spaghetti western, potato western, Klöse western

Periods:

1. Early film:1880s - 1919

2. Late silent period: 1919-1929

3. Development of sound: 1926-1945

4. The periods after WWII : 1946-1960s

5. Contemporary film: 1960s – now

From Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History An Introduction

Structures:

Chronology, what becomes before what?

Structures:

Chronology, what becomes before what?

+

Causality:

Individuals: methodological individualism (the great man)

Groups: methodological collectivism (institutions, movements, schools)

Structures :

Chronology, what becomes before what?

+

Causality:

Individuals: methodological individualism (the great man)

Groups: methodological collectivism (institutions, movements, schools)

+

Influence (e.g. from one director to another)

Structures :Chronology, what becomes before what?+Causality: Individuals: methodological individualism (the great man)Groups: methodological collectivism (institutions, movements, schools) +Influence (e.g. from one director to another)+Tendencies and generalizations: hypotheses that are verified, e.g. the spread of colour

film between 1940 and 1960

Structures :Chronology, what becomes before what?+Causality: Individuals: methodological individualism (the great man)Groups: methodological collectivism (institutions, movements, schools) +Influence (e.g. from one director to another)+Tendencies and generalizations: hypotheses that are verified, e.g. the spread of colour

film between 1940 and 1960+Periods: internal and external, (overlapping)

Structures :Chronology, what becomes before what?+Causality: Individuals: methodological individualism (the great man)Groups: methodological collectivism (institutions, movements, schools) +Influence (e.g. from one director to another)+Tendencies and generalizations: hypotheses that are verified, e.g. the spread of colour

film between 1940 and 1960+Periods: internal and external, (overlapping)+Importance: monuments of film history, based on:Artistic valueInfluenceThe typical example

MonstrologyFrom Carroll, Noël, The Philosophy of Horror, Routledge, London 1990

• Monsters:• challenge human cognition and mode of thinking• come from outside the human world• are disgusting

• Three types of monsters:• Fusion monsters, e.g. a zombie which is fusion of both living and

dead• Fission monsters, e.g. a werewolf, which fusion of human and

wolf, but separated by time: a wolf by full moon only• Magnification monsters: large and many, e.g. giant ants