- Teacher: Daniel Pope
- Teacher: David Bendiksen
If the cinema is a deeply collaborative artform, what can we learn about a film, or a set of films, by considering the director as an “auteur,” a single creative vision guiding all aspects of the filmmaking process? In this class, we will study the work Alfred Hitchcock in the context of cinema in the early-to-mid-twentieth century. Hitchcock’s prolific career exerts a profound influence on the history of cinema and on filmmaking, television, and pop-culture today. From his origins and early career in Britain, to his move to Hollywood where his thrillers earned him the moniker “Master of Suspense,” to the success of his television projects, Hitchcock pushed against—and past—limits of censorship, filmmaking techniques, and the conventions of both film narrative and of moviegoing culture, cultivating along the way his distinctive “Hitchcockian” style and cinematic sensibility. We will explore a selection of works from Hitchcock’s filmography, contextualize his work in film history, address the dark aspects of his character and career, and examine auteur theory, its value, and its limits.
CW: Hitchcock’s films involve themes of rape, murder, abduction, abuses of power, and often-disturbing attitudes toward race (such as use of blackface).
- Teacher: Daniel Pope
Be part of the audience at the 31st annual Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival, attending to the film introductions by Five Colleges faculty, engaging with the films and media programed around this year’s theme and participating in Q&A sessions following the screenings for events with filmmakers or other guests. We will have weekly posts on the colloquium in Moodle for each event drawing on introductions, films, and Q&As with guests. The festival theme this season is “Peace/War,” bringing together an international program of documentary, feature, animation, and experimental films, from Ukraine, Sudan, South Korea, Nepal, the former East Germany, Colombia, Romania, the Basque country, Catalonia, Italy, France, and Germany that offer ample room for dialogue. The films this season address themes of community-building and personal or political solidarity with those oppressed in dictatorial regimes, alliances for social justice, environmental advocacy, and other endeavors to achieve peace or confront violence and injustice.
- Teacher: Daniel Pope
- Teacher: Barry Spence
- Teacher: Daniel Pope
- Teacher: Barbara Zecchi
- Teacher: Barry Spence