The course provides an introduction to film and to the fundamentals of how it communicates as an art form and a cultural medium. Screenings in the course are chosen to emphasize the variety of narrative film by including literary adaptations of fiction and drama, classical American movies, foreign-language films, and examples of independent and silent cinema. The course aims to help students acquire skills of watching and responding that will enable them to become more knowledgeable and perceptive viewers, more aware of how movies work to shape our ideas about life and social experience. This course satisfies a Category B general education requirement.

This course is intended to engage students with the study of film as art as a unique technological form. The course includes a brief overview of genres and movements throughout global film history and a survey of various critical approaches to analyzing film. Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to: Recognize common characteristics of various film genres; Discuss the evolution of technological advances in the history of film production; Examine 20th and 21st Century global film movements; Analyze formal elements of the moving image such as light, shot composition, space/time, editing, sound, narrative and acting; Distinguish the differences between studying the art of film and conducting cultural critical analyses of cinema and the film industry.