Course: Introduction to Film Aesthetics and Analysis CNPH 10100, required for the the Documentary Studies and Production BA degree
Professor: Dr. Patricia R. Zimmermann, Charles A. Dana Professor of Screen Studies and Director, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival
Attributes and Designations: Diversity, Liberal Arts (LA)
When do students enroll:
Doc Studies and Production majors usually take this course in the Fall semester of their first year in the program.
What it covers:
Introduction to Film Aesthetics and Analysis is a critical studies course conceived with wide-reaching, expansive international perspective with films from India, the United States, France, Germany, Mexico, the United Kingdom, China, the Czech republic, Russia, Japan, Canada, Senegal, South Africa, Cuba, and more. Films studied mix together feature-length narrative, documentary, experimental shorts, and hybrid forms. The course provides a survey of the aesthetics, histories, social/national contexts, economics, and critical theoretical models of cinema.
How it is taught:
This is a large lecture course that is team-taught by two of the most senior full professors in the Roy H. Park School, Dr. Patricia Zimmermann and Dr. Stephen Tropiano, who is also Director of the Ithaca College Los Angeles Program. The course features lectures and also large group discussion.
The course work includes essay examinations that assess students full immersion in the films and concepts and also works to transition students to college-level analytical writing. Course ambassadors, who are sophomore, junior, and senior students with outstanding academic achievement in the course and in their degrees, assist student learning and academic skills development with weekly drop-in hours and learning skills group skills.
Why I teach this course:
I love creating intellectual and programming structures that juxtapose multiple styles and approaches to cinema that jolt students into a deeper engagement with and a more critical, intellectual approach to the complexities of world cinema that disrupts expectations of the popular culture, American-centric view of cinema.
First-year students burst open with curiosity, passion, open minds, and a quest for entering into a new world of international cinemas--and their energy propels us as faculty. What they think about cinema at the start of the course changes by the end. I've spent most of my long career primarily teaching first-year students. In fact, working with first-year students is 85% of my load: my passion is to create a course that propels and entices students into critical thinking and the exciting energies of large group discussions about all forms of cinema.