Film English

Lectured by 劉芳礽
(March 1, 2018)
 Course Description
This course aims to expand students’ knowledge and to develop
their critical thinking skills in film. Genres, styles and periods in
the film history will be covered to introduce the development of
this visual art. Specific topics or concepts will be presented and
discussed in relation to the extracts screened. Each weekly session
therefore is packed with clips from selected European, American
and Asian cinemas to provide students a broad understanding of
film and its wider cultural context, as well as an enhanced
appreciation of film in general.
There will be DVD screenings throughout the course, and excerpts
from a diverse range of exemplary films will be shown in class –
both classic and contemporary, and from Hollywood, Europe as well
as from Asia. For the purposes of analysis, film texts mainly of
horror and thriller genre will be screened and discussed.
 Grading
I. In-Class Performance 20%: Student’s responses to
lectures, discussions and questions.
II. Homework 25%: personal responses and group
discussions to the assigned questions, assigned writing
practices (uploaded to e-learning before the due date)
III. Mid-term project 25%
IV. Final project 30%
 Textbooks
I. Film Text：
1. 盧米埃兄弟的35釐米短片輯選
Selected short films by the Lumière Brothers
2. 喬治‧梅里葉的《月球之旅》
A Trip to the Moon (dir. George Melies, 1902)
3. The Great Train Robbery (dir. Edwin Porter, 1903)
4. 俄國艾森斯坦的《波坦金戰艦》
The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein’s, 1925)
5. Dracula (dir. Terence Fisher, 1958)
6. Kaidan (Dir. Kobayashi Masaki, 1964)
7. The Legend of the Six Dynasty (Dir. Wang Jujin, 1979)
8. Mr. Vampire (Dir. Koon Wai Lau, 1985)

II. Literary Text：

1. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897)
2. Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan (1904)
Film History

 1878: Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), a British

photographer invented locomotion pictures to
capture motion in stills.
 In Flying Horse, 15 cameras were put along the race
track while a horse galloped along beside it.
Flying Horse:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heRuLp7CyTM
1891: William Kenny Dickson’s Kinetoscope
[developed from Thomas Edison’s idea in 1889]
kineto (“movement”) ＋ scopos (“to view”)
Celluloid film developed to captured moving images:
Actuality footage taken of real-life events (without plot and
characters). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBKIdunqSAI
The Lumiere Brothers(1862-1954) invented the *cinematograph,
a device that could capture and project images.

*a motion picture film camera

1895: 1st screening of a projected motion picture in a Paris café.
Films were screened and people paid to see them.
George Melies(1861-1938): French film director who directed 531
films(1896-1913), most of which were first edited films using jump
cuts and other techniques to create illusions.
In The One Man Band(1900), Melies played himself as 7 characters on the
screen in a one-man band. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zez8zihidA
The Four Troublesome Heads (1898) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKQRV4XKZt4
Edwin S. Porter(1870-1941):
An American film pioneer, using parallel actions to show two scenes in two
different locations happening at the same time. This would create tension
and give the audience a point of view. These techniques were used in The
Great Train Robbery and Life of an American Fireman.
D.W. Griffith(1875-1948):
American director, producer, one of the pioneers of modern editing techniques
Representative Film work: The Birth of a Nation (1915): a silent epic film depicting the American
Civil War(1861-65). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3kmVgQHIEY
Russian Filmmakers (1920s): Russian montage theory
Sergei Eisenstein(1898-1948): The stone lions in The Battleship Potemkin(1925)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laJ_1P-Py2k
 3 short films by the Lumières in 1895

 Arrival of a Train at a Station(1895)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9MoAQJFn_8
 Exiting the Factory (1895)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO0EkMKfgJI
 The Sprinkler Sprinkled (1895)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IooPPi1YzkM
Group Discussion:
Watch the films again & discuss the following Qs
Q1: You were born in 1875 and you had never seen any moving images before.
In 1895, you and your friends paid to see the so-called black and white movie made
by the Lumières. What would you immediately react when seeing Arrival of a Train at a
Station?

Q2: Where is the camera in Exiting the Factory, in The Sprinkler Sprinkled and
in Arrival of a Train at a Station ?

Q3: What are the similarities shared by The Sprinkler Sprinkled and
Exiting the Factory?

Q4: What are the differences between The Sprinkler Sprinkled and
Exiting the Factory?
Question

Movie
Cinema
Film
What’s the difference between
the three?