Syllabus Information

5.3. Syllabus

BLOCK A: Photography 

*Section I: The popularization by the professionalization of the invention. Second half of the 19th century.

1.1. The creation of the photographic portrait in the field of early studies: André-Adolphe Disdéri and the carte de visite; Nadar´s Portraits.

1.2 Excursions Daguerriennes. Photography trips.

1.3. Photography as a form of creation. Top positions in favor and against: Charles Baudelaire. Photography and artists: resistance and recognition. The position of Eugène Delacroix. Photography and art movements of the 19th (bonding with the realistic trends).

1.4. The alibi of "artistry" for new scientific and technological achievement. The emergence of Pictorialism in Europe and the United States.

*Section II: Origin of the dichotomy art photography / pure photography. Two ways of conceiving the static image. The birth of the documentary aspect linked to the report. First half of the 20th century.

2.1. The influence of avant-garde movements in the achievement of new creative proposals: Futurism (Bragaglia brothers) and its relationship to experiments on the image in motion (the chronophotography of Étienne-Jules Marey); Abstraction (constructivist proposals, photomontage and poster, new vision: Lazslo Mohol-Nagy; photography at the Bauhaus); the surrealist imagery (Man Ray); Dadaism (photomontage; its political use: John Heartfield).

2.2. The definition of a pure photography's documentary root, humanistic and critical of society before the second World War: Jacob A. Riis and Lewis Hine; August Sander and the post-war Germany; the project of the Farm Security Administration and the political program of the New Deal in the United States (Walker Evans; Dorothea Lange). The works of Paul Strand; Albert Renger-Patzsch. Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.

*Section III: Derivations of the previous proposals from these two lines of development. Second half of the 20th century.

3.1. The settlement of the documentary report as a guideline for the renewal. The importance of a neo-realist shed: Robert Frank and William Klein, United States; Robert Doisneau; Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa in the Magnum Agency; (Afal Almeria Spanish photography groups; School of Madrid and Barcelona, etc.).

3.2. The activity of collective photographers amateur (photographic societies, the Spanish case. The survival of conservative criteria (tardopictorialism) to formal and thematic level from organized competitions).

3.3 New formalist experiments with the photographic medium: the subjective picture of Otto Steinert.

BLOCK B: CINEMA:

*Section I: the invention of cinema and the work of the pioneers. Silent era.

1.1. From optical toys to the chronophotography. The Kinetoscope and the cinematographer. The Lumiere and the series of "views". The Brighton school. The fantastic cinema of Georges Méliès. The first American film directors: Edwin S. Porter, James S. Blackton and Thomas H. Ince.

* Section II: European and American cinema to the rise of the talkies.

2.1. The time gilded in France and film culture. The Italian Colosalism. The fixation of the film story with David W. Griffith. The consolidation of American studies.

2.2. The artistic status of cinema. Early theorists (Riccioto Canudo) and the Foundation of the first film Club. The legitimization of the Film d´Art. The presence of the avant-garde: cinematographic surrealism. The work of Luis Buñuel; German Expressionism (from F.W. Murnau to Fritz Lang); the contribution of the Soviet cinema at the theoretical level (Sergéi W. Eisenstein; Dziga Vertov; Pudovkin and Dovzhenko); the French poetic realism (Marcel Carné, Julien Duvivier; Jean Renoir).

2.3. The configuration of the genres from the American Studio system: the western; the musical; the different variants of the comedy (from Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd to the Marx Brothers); the "noir" film; Cinema of terror, etc.

*Section III: European and American cinema before and after the second World War:

3.1. The meaning of the New Deal Roosevelt. The comedies of Frank Capra. The production code and the action of the Committee on UN-American activities (the period of the witch hunt). The realization of the classical model in the cinematic narrative. The golden age of Hollywood in the hands of directors such as King Vidor, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, John Ford, etc. the singularities of Orson Welles, Elia Kazan and Alfred Hitchcock.

3.2. The approach of the film to reality: the Italian neorealism. The work of Roberto Rosellini and other directors.

*Section IV: The end of classicism in cinema. The bankruptcy of the partial system of studios in Hollywood and the redefinition of film genres.

1. Second generation Directors: Otto Preminger; Nicholas Ray; John Huston; Richard Brooks, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

5.4. Course planning and calendar

-Theoretical Program:

*19-20, September 2016: theoretical explanation in the classroom of the thematic block 1.1 (section I, block of photography).

*26-27, September 2016: theoretical explanation in the classroom of the thematic block 1.2 and start of block 1.3 (section I, photography)

*3-4, October 2016: theoretical explanation of the remaining part of the thematic block 1.3 and 1.4 (section I, photography).

*10-11, October 2016: theoretical explanation in the classroom of the aspects of futurism, abstraction, surrealism and Dadaism, integrated within the block 2.1 (section II, photography).

*17-18, October 2016: theoretical explanation in block class 2.2 (section II, photography).

*24-25, October 2016: theoretical explanation in block classroom 3.1 (section III, photography).

*7-8, November 2016: theoretical explanation in block classroom 3.2 (section III, photography).

*14-15, November 2016: theoretical explanation in block class 3.3 (section III, photography).

*21 November 2016: theoretical explanation in the classroom of the thematic block 1.1 (section I, block of cinema) and 2.1 (section II, cinema).

*22-28, November 2016: theoretical explanation in the classroom of the thematic block 2.2 (section II, cinema).

*29 November - 12 December 2016: theoretical explanation in the classroom of the thematic block 2.3 (section II, cinema).

* 13-19, December 2016: theoretical explanation in the classroom of the thematic block 3.1. (section III, cinema).

* 20 December 2016 - 9 January 2017: theoretical explanation in the classroom of the thematic block 3.2 (section III, cinema).

* 10 January 2017: theoretical explanation in the classroom of the thematic block 4.1 (section IV, cinema).

-Evaluation activities:

* 20 December 2016: the practices of course delivery.

*Date to be determined: global test of the subject (practical theory).