Film & Media Studies

This course examines digital technologies while exploring the motion picture as an artistic medium for creative self-expression, visual experimentation, critical commentary, social engagement, and personal storytelling. It covers lighting, framing, focus, camera positioning, color, movement, editing, sound design, space, time, motion, montage, short treatments, scripts, storyboards, festival publicity material, as well as narrative structure in fiction and nonfiction film. It explores ideas and concepts from other art forms such as fine art, literature, drama, dance, architecture and music in order to effectively communicate meaning on screen.

The first films of the Skladanowsky brothers in Germany and the Lumières in France were documentaries: recordings of circus acts, workers leaving a factory, a train arriving at a station. This course examines the history of ùnon-fiction filmmaking, or what has been termed reality-driven representation, from 1895 to the present. Students concentrate on landmark films from America, Russia, Britain and France to examine the different ways in which documentary filmmakers have engaged with contemporary society and asserted the truth value of cinema. Focusing on Robert Flahertys and Dziga Vertovs pioneering work in the 1920s, British Free Cinema of the 1950s, cinéma vérité and Direct Cinema of the 1960s, the essay film of the 1980s, and concluding with examples of contemporary practices (the recent work of Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, for example), political, social, and historical issues are addressed alongside more theoretical concerns. 

This course is designed as introductory lecture on both theoretical and practical topics related to use of sound and music in film. Topics include: basic terminology of soundtrack aesthetics; René Clair and nostalgia in diegesis; Soviet school of montage and conceptual approach to sound; Fritz Lang, acousmatic use of sound, and exploration of diegetic space; classical Hollywood, the way mainstream is built; evolution after WWII, decline of paradigm, and Italian cinema; cinema of the 60s; New Hollywood and cinema of early 70s; restoration of classical paradigm and Hollywood in the late 70s; action in contemporary cinema; postmodern cinema; and the study of digressions: alternate approaches and falsification of previously stated.

This is an internship opportunity through the Central European Studies Program that responds to a clear necessity among multicultural societies to educate young people abroad in a professional working environment. Apart from onsite work experience, the Internship Program has a strong and challenging academic component exposing students to the world of non-governmental organizations, education, and the social services sector in the Czech Republic and EU as well as developing personal, interpersonal, and intercultural competencies. Qualified students choose from several pre-screened internship positions with local, mostly non-governmental organizations, which may be involved in education, film, organization of international political conferences, local and global human rights issues, and library and administrative work in the field of economics.  International professional experiences are broadened through a series of guided discussions, a reflective journal, and presentations. Students explore major relevant topics, such as organization theory, and develop their intercultural skills through interactive workshops and reflection of their work experience in the host culture.

This course examines the discourse on arts and media specificities and relations between arts and media from a theoretical perspective, with an eye to the historical dimensions. It covers how can media be combined; how can media content or form be transferred from one medium to another; how do media refer to one another; how do we define media specificity and media borders; how do media represent each other or even stage each other; and how do media work together to build complex possible worlds.

This course examines the composition and direction of films and the relationship/position between the director and the audience.