American Underground Cinema

 Instructions

 This essay should be 3000 words long.

• See module outline/departmental website for departmental guidelines on presentation, referencing, word counts etc.
• You CANNOT WRITE ON THE SAME TOPIC or on the SAME FILMMAKER’S WORK that you wrote on for your first essay. If, for instance, you wrote on a film by Brakhage, you can’t write on a different film by Brakhage. If you analysed masculinity you can’t analyse masculinity in a different film.

Feedback

All coursework is marked in accordance with the College Marking Framework and the School’s Marking Criteria, which are available for you to view online:

• Undergraduate:

It is College Policy to provide you with a deadline by which all feedback will be delivered; normally this will be no longer than four weeks from the submission deadline.

Essay Specific Guidelines

 

• Essays need to engage in independent formal analysis. Please look over the guidelines for the first essay again and remember that formal analysis is most effective when it is incorporated into critical discussion throughout the essay.
• Because this is a longer essay, you should endeavor to engage in depth with the ideas and theoretical-conceptual frameworks of other scholars. Don’t spread yourself too thin. You won’t be able to examine the work of more than three or four other scholars in depth. You may, however, demonstrate wider reading through brief reference to the work of other writers (as appropriate for making your arguments). Note that not all of this writing has to be about the films you are analysing. If you write about humour, for instance, you may find it useful to examine critical-theoretical writing on different types of humour: e.g. irony, parody, slapstick. One of your sources can also be writing by, or an interview with, the filmmaker.
• Although many essay topics direct you to think about the ‘formal treatment’ of a specific aspect of a film or films, this does not, of course, mean that you can’t engage with the social and political implications of what you are analysing. On the contrary. Likewise, although one topic explicitly directs you to engage with the politics of representation, your arguments will only be persuasive/effective if the claims you make about the film or films are supported by formal analysis.

Essay Topics

You must write on films studied on this module. These include:

• All films in Weeks 2-6.
• Martina’s Playhouse (Peggy Ahwesh, 1989)
• The Connection (Shirley Clarke, 1961)

 

1. Analyse the formal elements of Pull My Daisy and Little Stabs at Happiness that draw attention to the process of making the films.
2. Analyse one or two films on the module that share techniques in common with other art practices (e.g. music, poetry, painting [abstraction expressionism]). You can make the comparison between film and just one other art practice if you wish.

 Who or what is the protagonist of Window Water Baby Moving?

* You may also wish to compare Window Water Baby Moving with Cat’s Cradle.

Analyse the formal treatment of femininity or masculinity in one or two of the films studied on the module.

 Analyse the ways that The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes positions spectators in relationship to the film’s subject matter.

Analyse the formal treatment and sensuous and affective* appeal of popular culture in one or two of the films studied on the module.

* Of or relating to the affections or emotions, especially as contrasted with the intellect or rational faculty; emotional.

Analyse performance in one or two films studied on the module.

 Analyse the formal treatment of sexuality in one or two films studied on the module.

Critically reflect on Carolee Schneeman’s suggestion that Fuses is in conversation with Window Water Baby Moving.

Analyse the use of split-screen in Chelsea Girls. Questions to consider include (but are not limited to): what implications does the use of split-screen have for spectatorship?

Critically reflect on the politics of representation in any film or two films on the module (paying attention to the intersection of any pairing of sexuality, gender, class, and race [remembering that analysis of representation may include engaging with issues relating to cultural appropriation, and that to think about race may include thinking about whiteness]).

Analyse the mix of documentary and narrative fiction modes in any two films on the module.