CFV 370 Experimental Film & Video History
Grand Valley State University
Winter 2008 – Jennifer Proctor
Film/Reading Response #2
Due ON BLACKBOARD: Thursday, February 21st by 2:30pm
Assignment: For this second response, write 2 ½ - 3 pages in which you discuss your strategy for understanding a film (or set of films) viewed in class. You can choose any film we’ve seen since the last paper; that is, from 1950 through 1970 (Lyrical Film through Structural Film I). As with the last response, your paper should include discussion of the film’s accompanying reading as well.
Because experimental films often defy easy interpretation, your task with this paper is to articulate how you have gone about finding meaning in your selected film. You might describe your expectations of the film, how your expectations changed, your initial vs. extended reaction to the film, how the readings changed your view of the film, or some other aspect of your effort to find meaning in the film. Did you focus on the film’s form? Its content? Metaphor? Aesthetics? Its historical context? Its connection to other art forms? Its relationship to mainstream cinema?
Importantly, you should also describe what is meaningful about the film – what did you conclude about what this film means, or what it is about? How did you make sense of it?
As with the previous response, the most successful papers will expand beyond the material covered in class. Instead, they will:
- Focus on drawing original conclusions and presenting original ideas.
- Integrate direct quotes from the readings as a way of demonstrating your close engagement with the readings. Be sure to include the TITLES of the readings under discussion and to cite the author’s name as appropriate.
- Provide specific examples of scenes or shots from the film.
Paper requirements:
- 2 ½ - 3 pages, 12 point font, 1-inch margins, double spaced
- Grammatically correct, perfectly spelled, proofread and polished
- Uploaded to Blackboard as an attached document in the “Assignments” section of the course website.