230596 Silent Cinema: Birth of an Art Form (S) (WiSe 2010/2011)

The early days of cinema offer us a unique opportunity to observe the beginnings of a new artform, one that would rapidly become the most dominant and distinctively modern artform of the 20th century. In a remarkably short space of time, film went from a cheap novelty to an artform that captured the imagination of the world. In this seminar, we will look at the birth of film in a transnational context, studying films from the USA, Russia, France, Germany, and other countries to see how different filmmakers experimented with this new medium and how they created the basic visual grammar of film. We will also look at different approaches to financing and marketing films, and how the twin pressures of art and commerce helped forge the studio system and the subsequent development of film around the world. The overall aim of the course is to develop an understanding of film as both art and industry and the many different aspects of filmmaking that have to be taken into account when thinking about or studying cinema.