170175 VO+UE D.W. Griffith, Film History and Curatorship (2010W)

Topics of the Course
Film curatorship may be defined as the art of interpreting the aesthetics, history, and technology of cinema through the selective collection, preservation, and documentation of films and their exhibition in archival presentations. This theoretical framework finds its concrete expression in a set of intellectual and economic choices surrounding the practice of studying and explaining cinematic events in a public context through the screening of films. The creative output of D.W. Griffith (1875-1948) - one of the most prominent and controversial filmmakers of all time - will be adopted as a case study in order to highlight the principles, strategies and procedures of curatorship in its making, with a special emphasis on the cultural and ideological implications of presenting film history to scholarly and non-specialized audiences in a museum. In the course of the program, students will be introduced to the actual process of understanding a filmmaker's work - and his or her cultural environment - through a close analysis of some key films, the conditions of their survival, and their showcasing to a collective audience.