Film Studies Daily Log

Monday, March 28 Mr. P announced that the quiz over early Soviet film will be on Thursday (not Tuesday), that it will be "open handout" and that students should use the next two class periods to make sure their questions about the material are answered. We watched a section of the first reel of Man with a Movie Camera three times: twice to determine our own reading of how juxtaposed images of people doing different kinds of work related to each other (whether by contrast or analogy) and once with Yuri Tsivian's voiceover commentary to hear his read on the question. We also watched two other segments with Tsivian's commentary on the film as a statement on seeing (seeing things anew) and on the preoccupation with the machine. HW due Thursday: Quiz over early Soviet cinema. We then watched part of Ferdinand Leger's modernist film from 1924, Ballet mecanique, and compared it with the Vertov film.