CINE 121-2: Experience, History, & Analysis of Cinema Midterm Prompts (Distributed October 12th, 2017) Binghamton University Cinema Department Professor David LaRocca Due in class on October 19th, 2017 at 2:50 pm. Bring one printed copy, stapled. Complete 6 of the 10 prompts below. 4 of the 6 are required; the other 2 are your choice. Each reply is assessed on the 20-point scale of the Rubric and in relation to its criteria. Please don’t re-type the prompts, but please do reply in the order given (e.g., 1, ?, ?, 8, 9, 10) Each reply should be a typed, single-spaced, half-page (not longer, not shorter) with 1” margins on all sides, Times New Roman 12-point font. Thus, 3 pages of total text (no more, no less). The length limitation is part of the assignment. Write with clarity and purpose. Revise and edit with rigor. Because this course carries a W credit, because film criticism exists in written language, and because this is a take-home assignment, please exhibit special care with grammar, spelling, syntax, diction, etc. Use the language of cinema wherever and whenever possible. Cite the assigned texts (using page numbers in parenthesis). Describe specific scenes and discrete elements of assigned films (vagueness is your enemy). Be sure to address all parts of each question. Like film, writing has form and content: please attend strenuously to both. —Refer to the Rubric in the syllabus for specific descriptions of standards and expectations —Cite relevant assigned texts (written and cinematic) at least once in each reply (e.g., from the film Close-up and the criticism of the film written by Naficy) —When you paraphrase, include a page number in parentheses; and when you offer a direct quotation place it in quotation marks and include a page number in parentheses. —Use the language of film accurately at least once in each reply. —By film “element,” I mean any attribute or aspect of the formal characteristics of cinema (e.g., as represented in the dynamic realm of mise en scène, cinematography, and related medium-specific categories). —In your responses, please draw upon as many films as possible. As noted in the Rubric, range is important; re-using or re-hashing the same film or plot points or film elements from question to question is not advantageous. Be adventuresome in your theorizing! Take some risks! 1. REQUIRED: (a) Identify five different elements of mise en scène in Singin’ in the Rain. (b) How does one of these elements contribute significantly to the meaning of this film’s diegesis (what we call the “world” of the film)? 2. (a) In Rear Window, what does the work of cinematography do for our sense of Jeffrey’s position (e.g., as a character in the film)? (b) How does your response to part (a)—viz., Jeffrey’s position—relate to cinematographically motivated issues such as voyeurism, spectatorship, visual pleasure, schaulust, and the like, that are experienced by the audience (i.e., you, me, and everyone else)? 3. (a) How should we understand authorship in All About My Mother? Given the film’s title, who should we think has written this story? For example, we might ask: all about whose mother? (b) Why might the film’s authorship matter for understanding the film? 4. (a) By attending to the pace (or rhythm) of edits in Man With a Movie Camera— including the use of cuts, slow motion, and prismatic techniques, etc.—what does Vertov’s film say about cinema’s bearing on, or kinship with, modern life? (b) For example, even at nearly ninety-years old, what does his film help reveal to us about our present-day condition? 5. (a) What is the practice of attention—attendance, attending—in this course as articulated during our sessions? (b) Reply to this question with reference to the following three films: Rain (Joris Ivens), The Flicker (Tony Conrad), and Lemon (Hollis Frampton) 6. How should we understand A Movie by Bruce Conner and A Movie by Jen Proctor in relationship to (a) documentary footage, (b) methods of appropriation—including of moving images and sounds, and (c) the meanings of compilation? 7. How would you describe the work of parody in Kanuk Uncovered (as it relates to Flaherty’s Nanook of the North) in terms of our understanding of genre? 8. REQUIRED: How does Martin Arnold transform possible readings of Andy Hardy Meets Debutante (1940) with his manipulation of the film medium in his 1998 work Alone. Life Wastes Andy Hardy? Specifically (a) how is the mise en scène changed by Arnold’s technique, and (b) what kind of reading of that “new” mise en scène (esp. in relation to figure behavior) can you offer—in short, what is a new story that emerges in the wake of Arnold’s intervention? 9. REQUIRED: How does Kiarostami’s Close-up put cinema on trial? 10. REQUIRED: In this, your final prompt, the idea is to have you write about a cinematic work that is new to you, but that should feel obviously and intimately connected to our extended reflections on the varieties of documentary cinema (viz., those works between the train arriving at the station with Lumière and Kiarostami’s close-up of Sabzian). The idea now is to think about this new work—Rossellini’s Rome, Open City—in reference to the prior works we’ve screened, read about, and discussed in class. Therefore, please… (a) identify a film element in Rossellini’s Rome, Open City that is shared with one of the prior films we watched, discussed, and read about that draws upon the techniques and technologies of documentary filmmaking and (b) address specifically how Rossellini’s use of this element contributes to the diegesis of his film (e.g., how is the reality or truth or meaning of the film known as Rome, Open City [1945] related, if at all, to the physical immediacy and historical context of the city of Rome circa 1944?) 
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