Course detail

The Art of Interpreting Film 2

FaVU-TAIF2Acad. year: 2025/2026

Students will learn to look critically at a selection of films from the 60s and 90s (with some excursions to the present) through the prism of politics/ideology and environmental issues.

Language of instruction

English

Number of ECTS credits

Mode of study

Not applicable.

Guarantor

Mgr. et MgA. Barbora Lungová

Department

Department of Art History and Theory (KTDU)

Offered to foreign students

Of all faculties

Entry knowledge

None.

Rules for evaluation and completion of the course

Students will be assesed from discussing and writing short, in-class response papers about the assigned texts. Not having read those texts will count as an absence.
The answered quiz questions regarding each text for homework have to be uploaded to the shared drive a day before the class. Before the last class in the semester, students will have to have fulfilled at least 60% of the assignments in order to be able to finish the remaining assignments by the end of the exam period.
Students will be assessed from the regular, continuous work during the semester.

75% videoconferences must be attended and students must participate actively in a discussion (and/or chat or some other written form) relevant to the film and texgt assigned for the respective week.

Aims

1. Cinefile 2. critical. Although the selection of the films might be subjective and not necessarily always canonical, one of the aims is to show students some noteworthy film production of the 70s and 80s (European and American film only). 2. Students will see the interpretation possibilities of the selected films through approaches which were often contemporary with the films themselves.
Students will look at examples of interpretation methods of film based on a particular thematic framework (politics/ideology, gender, environmental issues) not necessarily explicitely based on the narrative itself.

Study aids

Not applicable.

Prerequisites and corequisites

Not applicable.

Basic literature

Fay, Jennifer. Inhospitable World: Cinema in the Time of the Anthropocene. (EN)
Frederick Jameson: Archaelogies of the Future. (EN)
Sobchack, Vivian. Screening Space: American Science Fiction Film. (EN)

Type of course unit

Lecture

13 hod., optionally

Teacher / Lecturer

Mgr. et MgA. Barbora Lungová

Seminar

26 hod., compulsory

Teacher / Lecturer

Mgr. et MgA. Barbora Lungová

Syllabus

Feministická větev kurzu:

Bernardo Bertolluci: Last Tango in Paris.
Delphine Seyring: Be Pretty and Shut Up; SCUM manifesto
Ridley Scott: Thelma and Louise
Maya Deren
Barbara Hammer
Jane Campion
Agnieszka Holland
Cheryl Dunye: The Watermelon Woman
Andrea Arnold
Lucrecia Martel: The Headless Woman
Desiree Akhavan: The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Todd Haynes: Carol

Environmentální větev kurzu:

1. Vize konců světa: Pavel Juráček: Konec srpna v hotelu Ozon

2. Příroda vs. kultura, lidské vs. nelidské: Ridley Scott: The Alien
3. Vize konců světa: Chris Marker, Rampa. Vize konců světa: Terry Gillian - Dvanáct Opic
4. Příroda vs technika: Ridley Scott: Blade Runner.
5. Vize konců světa: Lars von Trier: Melancholia.
6. Vize konců světa a hřejivé retro: Stranger Things
7. Posthumanismus a sci-fi: Tarkovskij - Solaris.
8. Posthumanismus a sci-fi: Stanley Kubrick: Space Odyssey.
9. Vize konců světa: Interstellar
10. Environmentální krize: Gioffrey di Reggio: Koniaquatsi; Edward Burtynski - Anthropocene.
11. Ghostwood v Twin Peaks
12. Vize konců světa, technosféra v japonském středověku a Ghibli Studios: Princezna Mononoke