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Mondays
July 13 - August 17
7-10 pm

"If talking film is an art, speech must play a role in conformity with its character as a sign and not appear only as a sound element, which, though privileged as compared with others, is but of secondary importance as compared with the visual element."
(Eric Rohmer)

All filmmakers have a personal obsession that they furiously engage in their cinema, and, for Eric Rohmer, it is the complications of relationships: such as why A. is enamored with B. but B. is enamored with C, or why D. is drawn to E. despite not being in a position to get involved with E. A veteran member of the French New Wave, along with Truffaut, Chabrol, and Godard, he not only wrote and directed films, but played a leading role in the movement as editor of the legendary magazine, Cahiers du cinéma. He developed a distinctive style in which the films revolve around his carefully crafted dialogue and his artful use of cinematic aspects, such as camera work and sound. These filmic elements are never an end in themselves but work together as a means to explore his personal perspective on the human drama. He uncovers the inner emotional and moral conflicts of his characters, conflicts that interfere with interpersonal relationships. There is a powerful sense that people find others to be unknowable and themselves to be a mystery. Another one of his innovations was placing his films within the thematic structure of a larger series of films. We will look at one of Rohmer's most important series, "Comedies and Proverbs," wherein each film is based on a different proverb. As in all of his best work, he appears to be saying that, while it may seem that life can be described in conventional terms, unpredictable experiences inevitably subvert our expectations of how life actually turns out.

James W. Anderson is a faculty member at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and Clinical Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, where he has taught a course on The Psychology of Film. A psychotherapist, he has also published numerous essays on the psychological lives of historical and artistic figures. He has previously taught the courses Remembering Ingmar Bergman: The Darkness Before the Dawn and Ingmar Bergman: Scenes from a Marriage and Beyond at the Facets Film School.

Tuesdays
July 14 - August 18
7-10 pm

"I write to you from a far-off country..." (Chris Marker)

French filmmaker Chris Marker has long been able to stay out of the public spotlight and has clouded his biography in mystery and myth. He is someone whose public persona is defined exclusively through his filmmaking, photography, and occasional writing. This course will explore Marker's impressive artistic output, concentrating on his films and videos but glancing at his other work as well (photographs, installations, CD-ROM, writing). Of course, Marker is best known for the inventive short narrative La Jetée, constructed almost entirely from still images, and his masterwork San Soleil. But the iconoclastic director has more than fifty years of films to his credit, including radical political documentaries, essay works on admired filmmakers (Kurosawa, Tarkovsky, Medvedkin), and playful ruminations on Paris and cats. We will tease out biography, common themes, and Marker's ideas on futurity and his ready use of new technologies. While we may not be able to puncture the myth of the man, we will examine the significant cultural legacy of one of the great artists of cinema.

Patrick Friel was Program Director at Chicago Filmmakers for eleven years (1996-2007) and has been the Programmer of the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival (organized by Chicago Filmmakers) since 2001. He is currently running his own screening series, White Light Cinema, and is the Managing Editor for Cine-File. He has presented freelance programs at many venues and festivals, including the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Pacific Film Archives, Anthology Film Archives, and Aurora Picture Show. Friel has also served as a festival judge, panelist, grant review panelist, and instructor, and has written for Time Out Chicago, Film Comment, and Senses of Cinema. He has an M.A. from Northwestern University and a B.A. from Indiana University. He has previously taught the courses Documentary Film and the Poetic Imagination and Experimental Film: An Introductory Crash Course at the Facets Film School.

Wednesdays
July 15 - August 19
7-10 pm

French cinema has had a long-standing fascination with the outsider, the bandit, the rebel, and the misfit. The outsider, which subsumes all the other categories, has been framed and reframed in French cinema from the vantage point of new wave auteurs, left bank cineastes, feminist directors, and immigrant filmmakers. Each week we will look at a film exploring different aspects of the "outsider." We will examine the various ways in which the figure of the outsider is constructed ranging from the "rules" and order established within the familial unit, to the boundaries established by the law and patriarchy, to the mores of society, to the contours of the French nation established by the mainstream majority population, to the geographical boundaries between metropolitan Paris and its suburbs. Although they are framed from the perspective of an "outsider," these films provide an in-depth view into the inner workings of French culture and society.

Kristen Barnes is a scholar and transactional lawyer. She was awarded her Ph.D. in 2003 from Duke University and her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1990. Her work focuses on the areas of Francophone and African cinema, postcolonial literature and film, comparative law, immigration law, questions of citizenship and identity, and intersections between law, literature, and cinema. She has taught courses on cinema at Northwestern University and Duke University.

Thursdays
July 16-August 20
7-10 pm

Cinema has been fascinated with the concept of voyeurism since the 1950's, especially with the release of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window in 1954. However, recent advances in everyday technology, communication, and even aspects of government have made surveillance a regular part of our lives, and Hollywood has naturally exploited this concept through films such as The Truman Show and Disturbia. Yet as we become more and more enthralled with the prospect of watching others as well as being watched ourselves, it becomes unclear where Big Brother ends and we begin. Therefore, Cinema and Surveillance will examine the films of several acclaimed directors including Francis Ford Coppola, Michelangelo Antonioni, and the great Alfred Hitchcock in order to uncover the reasons behind our very fascination with surveillance, and it will closely observe the ways in which cinema places such provocative twists on notions of scopophilia and the apparatus of the camera itself. Although Orwellian concepts will doubtlessly be discussed, this class will go beyond the totalitarian paranoia of 1984, and by placing the student in the position of the voyeur it will clearly illustrate the inherent connection between film and spectatorship. Cinema and Surveillance will also expose the workings of each film through an investigation of Lacanian and Freudian analysis as well as Laura Mulvey?s celebrated notion of the male gaze, henceforth revealing our society?s obsession with the fear, pleasure, and paranoia that voyeurism provokes.

Kate Balsley has a BFA in Film and Video from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and an MFA in Mass Communication and Media Arts from Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Her film, video, and visual artwork has been exhibited at galleries and film festivals throughout the United States and abroad, and she has presented her own research on cinema at the University of Cincinnati, San Francisco State University, and the University of Iowa. She has taught classes and given lectures at Southern Illinois University, Chicago Filmmakers, and also the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.