Film Studies Daily Log

Tuesday, August 31

Day 1

Students received the course syllabus. We discussed some key points in it, and students were asked to read through it tonight and come to class Wednesday with questions about it.

Mr. P introduced the course briefly, stressing that we will not be watching recent films, but rather classics from the earliest cinema on up, most of them black and white, many of them silent.

Mr. P set the stage by reading to the class about a signal event in cinema history: the screening of selected shorts by the Lumiere brothers at the Grand Cafe, Paris, on December 28, 1895. We watched two of those "actualities" and then a couple of slightly later films which exploit film's capacity for creating illusions. The two poles inherent in the medium -- photographic realism and illusionistic fantasy -- went hand in hand from cinema's earliest days.

Students received a small packet of readings on early cinema.

HW due Thursday:
Read the packet handed out today and prepare for a quiz over it in class Thursday.