Fall 2014 Seminar: Cinema and Practice--City, Urban Culture and Cinema in Contemporary Asia (tentative syllabus, subject to change)

Lecturer: MA Ran (maran@lit.nagoya-u.ac.jp)

Class: Fridays, 14:45~16:15

Place: School of Letters, Room 131

Office/Hour: Monday~Wednesday, School of Letters Rm.224, appointment via email

Seminar Blog: http://2014nucity.blogspot.jp/

[readings and other course-related materials, notifications would be updated at the course blog]

Description & Objectives:

In this fast-changing, ever globalizing world, the life and existence of human beings are to great extent defined by the urban condition they are enmeshed within and struggling with. This seminar attempts to survey major urban issues and cultural topics in modern societies by engaging with a wide spectrum of cultural texts drawn from films, literary works as well as architecture; in case studies, particular attention is paid to the social context and cities in Asia. City will not only be simply explored as the theme or ambience featured in these texts, following our adventure of “entering” the city, with the socio-historical dimensions of urban space theoretically surveyed, we shall direct our attention to the urbanites and their mental life. A critical journey of wandering in the city as flâneur and encountering other strangers would lead us into the “invisible city” as interwoven with fear, desire, memory, and dream. Finally, the seminar will position the study of urban culture within the heated discourses and debates on globalization. Departing from observations upon Asian metropolises, students are expected to debate and discuss cinematic texts in relation to the urban condition of local, regional and global scales. Through the seminar, students will learn to approach and critique the cultural space of cities by utilising key concepts drawn from various theoretical perspectives such as cultural studies, visual culture and sociology.

Course Approach:

Lectures, screenings, discussions/presentations and oral/written analyses.  Regardless of their previous exposures to cultural theory, students will refine and advance their skills of cultural analysis and critical observation. Students will evaluate argument and evidence in readings and they will practice communicating their ideas effectively via discussions, presentations and in writing assignments.

Evaluation:

35% Attendance & contribution to class discussion/presentation

30% Reading Journal Assignment (x2)

10% In-class Quiz/Take-home Essay

25% Final Paper

Course Assignments:

Reading Journal Assignment:  Due on Nov.14^th/Dec 19^th 10am, via email

For each month between October to December, students are expected to submit one reading journal assignment reflecting upon their reading progress in the previous month (till the date of the submission). They are required to review, evaluate and even critique concepts and arguments by referring to both the required and reference readings (from the previous month) and write a 500~800 word journal. Details will be offered later in class.  

Final Paper: Due on February 7^th, 5pm via email to the lecturer

1,500~2,000 words. (If you wish, you can go over the word limit.)

Please engage with at least two readings or texts from the required or supplementary reading/viewing lists. It should include a bibliography and use the MLA citation style. You should select a topic (text/case/issue/phenomenon) you find most interesting and most curious about, and/or you have confidence in analyzing.

Note on Plagiarism:

Plagiarism: A writer who presents the ideas of words of another as if they were the writer’s own (that is, without proper citation) commits plagiarism. Plagiarism is not tolerable in this course or at Nagoya University. You should avoid making quotes or drawing on figures from nowhere—you must provide sources of reference for quotation and/or citations you use in the paper. This applies to images and media clips as well. Failure to observe this would risk being charged of plagiarism. In this University, plagiarism is a disciplinary offence. Any student who commits the offence is liable to disciplinary action.

SCHEDULE OF CLASSES

Week 1* Oct 3rd Introduction：Objectives; Topics; Approach; Assignments

Screening (part): Sans Soleil, Dir. Chris Marker, 1983

I.              City in Perspective: the Disappearing, the Invisible and the Haunting

Week 2 * Oct 10^th          Prelude: City as Cultural Text

Required Reading

Donald Richie, Tokyo: A View of the City, London, England: Reaktion Books, 1999,11-16

Roland Barthes, “the Eiffel Tower”

Walter Benjamin, “Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century”, 1935

Week 3*Oct 17^th       Arriving in the City: Space, Event and Cinema

Required Reading

Yomi Braester, “Arriving in the City; Touring the City; Watching the City”, Cinema at the City’s Edge:  Film and Urban Networks in East Asia. Yomi Braester, James Tweedie, eds., Hong Kong University Press: 2010.

Mark Shiel. “Cinema and the City in History and Theory”, Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context, ed. Tony Fitzmaurice and Mark Shiel, 2001

Reference Reading

Bernard Tschumi, “Six Concepts”, Architecture and Disjunction, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996.227-259

Film for discussion: Sans Soleil, Dir. Chris Marker, 1983

(also refer to Tokyo-ga, Dir. Wim Wenders, 1985)

The Disappearing City: Ruins & Monuments I

Week 4*Oct 24^th Screening: Hiroshima Mon Amour, Dir. Alain Resnais, 1959

OCTOBER 31 (lecturer’s business trip)

Screening:

Respite, Dir. Harun Farocki, 39min, 2007, Jeonju Digital Project (“Memories”)

A Letter from Hiroshima, Dir. Suwa Nobuhiro, 37min, 2002, Jeonju Digital Project (“After War”)

Week 6* Nov 7^th Seminar Session      

Required Readings

Mercken-Spaas, Godelieve “Destruction and Reconstruction in Hiroshima, Mon Amour”, Literature/Film Quarterly, 1980 Vol. 8, No. 4, p244-250

James Tweedie, “Walking in the City”, The Age Of New Waves: Art Cinema And The Staging Of Globalization, Oxford University Press, 2013, p83-128

Moses, John W., “Vision Denied in Night and Fog and Hiroshima Mon Amour”. Literature Film Quarterly. 1987, Vol. 15 Issue 3, p159. 5p.

Week 7 * Nov 14^th  the Disappearing City: Ruins & Monuments II

Required Reading

Sheldon H. Lu, “Tear Down The City: Reconstructing Urban Space In Contemporary Chinese Popular Cinema and Avant-Garde Art”, The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema And Society At The Turn Of The Twenty-First Century, eds. Zhang Zhen, 2007

Film for discussion: 100 Flowers Hidden Deep, Dir.:Chen Kaige (available at YouTube); Shower, Dir. Zhang Yang, 1999

SCREENING OF Shower:

Nov 10^th (Monday), Venue: Rm 131, Time: 4:30pm~

★Reading Journal Assignment NO.1 Due

Week8 *Nov 21^st         NO CLASS; UNIVERSITY ENTRANCE EXAM

Invisible City: Dream, Desire & Memory I

Screening: 2046, Dir. Wong Kar-wai, 2004, 129 min

Time: Nov 17^th Monday, 4:30pm             Venue: School of Letters 131

Week 9 * Nov 28^th        Seminar Session

Required Reading

Georg Simmel: “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, 1903

Ackbar Abbas, “Affective Spaces in Hong Kong/Chinese Cinema”, Cinema at the City’s Edge:  Film and Urban Networks in East Asia. Yomi Braester, James Tweedie, eds., Hong Kong University Press: 2010.

Week 10 * Dec 5^th      Invisible City: Dream, Desire & Memory II—Case Study of Tsai Mingliang’s films

Required Reading:

Kenneth Chan. “Goodbye Dragon Inn: Tsai Ming-liang’s political aesthetics of nostalgia, place, and lingering”, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Vol No.1 Issue 2, 2007

“Leaving The Cinema: Metacinematic Cruising in Tsai Ming-liang’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn”, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, Jump Cut, No. 50, spring 2008

Film for discussion: Goodbye Dragon Inn, Dir. Tsai Ming-liang, 2003  

Week 11* Dec 12^th   Haunting Cities: the Uncanny and the Ghostly 

Required Readings

Freud, “Uncanny”, 1919

Dudley Andrew, “Ghost Towns”, Cinema at the City’s Edge:  Film and Urban Networks in East Asia. Yomi Braester, James Tweedie, eds., Hong Kong University Press: 2010.

Film for discussion: Take Care of My Cat, Dir. Jeong Jae-eun, 2001

II.            ENCOUNTERS: FLÂNEUR AND STRANGER

Week 12* Dec 19^th   Flâneur and Dérive: Roaming in The City 

Required Readings

Walter Benjamin, “On Some Motifs on Baudelaire”

Linda Chiu-Han Lai, “Whither The Walker Goes: Spatial Practices And Negative Poetics In 1990s Chinese Urban Cinema”, The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema And Society At The Turn Of The Twenty-First Century, eds. Zhang Zhen, 2007

Reference Reading

Marshall Berman, “Baudelaire: Modernism in the Streets”

 

Thomas, Mcdonough. “the derive and Situationist Paris”, Situacionistas/Situationists: Arte, Politica, Urbanismo/Art, Politics, Urbanism

 

Film for discussion: Suzhou River, Dir. Lou Ye, 2000 

★Reading Journal Assignment NO.2 Due

Dec 28^th~Jan 7^th Winter Break

Week 13 * Jan 9^th       Strangerhood in the Metropolis

Required Readings

Georg Simmel, “the Stranger”

Also available online at:

http://midiacidada.org/img/O_Estrangeiro_SIMMEL.pdf

Film for discussion: Lost in Translation, Dir. Sophia Coppola, 2003

Week 14* Jan 16^th                  No Class

Week 15*Jan 23 Border Transgressed: Minority, Diaspora and Refugee

Screening: Over There, dir. Zhang Lu, 2013

Jan 30^th    Lecture + Seminar Session:

Required Readings

Trinh T. Minh-ha, “An Acoustic Journey”, Elsewhere, Within Here: Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event, Routledge, 2011

Reference Reading

Rob Wilson. “Spectral Critiques: Tracking ‘Uncanny’ Filmic Paths Towards A Bio-Poetics Of Trans-Pacific Globalization”, ‪Hong Kong Connections: ‪Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema, eds. Meaghan Morris, Siu Leung Li, Stephen Ching-kiu Chan, University of Hong Kong Press, 2005

Films for Discussion:

Over There, Dir. Zhang LÜ.2013

Dooman River, Dir. Zhang LÜ.2010

FILMOGRAPHY:

100 Flowers Hidden Deep, Dir.:Chen Kaige (available at YouTube)

2046, Dir. Wong Kar-wai, 2004

Dooman River, Dir. Zhang Lu, 2010

Goodbye Dragon Inn, Dir. Tsai Ming-liang, 2003

Hiroshima Mon Amour, Dir. Alain Resnais, 1959

A Letter from Hiroshima, Dir. Suwa Nobuhiro, 2002

Lost in Translation, Dir. Sophia Coppola, 2003

Over There, dir. Zhang Lu, 2013

Respite, Dir. Harun Farocki, 2007

Sans Soleil, Dir. Chris Marker, 1983

Shower, Dir. Zhang Yang, 1999

Suzhou River, Dir. Lou Ye, 2000 

Take Care of My Cat, Dir. Jeong Jae-eun, 2001

READING LIST

Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance.

Georg Simmel, On Individuality and Social Forms.

Tony Fitzmaurice and Mark Shiel, eds. Cinema and the City: Film and Urban Societies in a Global Context, 2001

Yomi Breaster & James Tweedie. eds. Film and Urban Networks in East Asia. Hong Kong University Press: 2010.

Walter Benjamin, Charles Baudelaire, A Lyrical Poet in the Era of High Capitalism.

FURTHER READINGS

Frances Guerin and Roger Hallas. eds. The Image and the Witness: Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture, 2007

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, 2002

Jenny Kwok Wah Lau eds. Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural East Asia. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003

Malcolm Miles, et.al.. eds, The City Culture Reader. London; New York: Routledge, 2000

Roland Barthes, The Empire of Signs.