Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Film studies at Mount Holyoke is a liberal arts major like any other.
You can compare it to English, art history, to history.
We have a text that we study, and it is film in this case.
We learn to read it and that's a challenge, because most people
know how to read books, but they seem to absorb films
as if there is not a language at work there.
In relation to the mise en scene, we've got these balloons
and these human heads and the light on them is of a piece.
I came to Mount Holyoke thinking I knew so much about film art already.
We hope build what sometimes I call a dictionary or an encyclopedia of
knowledge about film which I think is necessary
to do any filmmaking.
We have seen a wonderful scene where the telephoto lens was
the most important tool.
And if they want to make films we offer introductory filmmaking classes
at all the Five Colleges, advanced classes. Some students actually get involved
in very sophisticated filmmaking.
Okay she's basically on top of you.
The tailored dress is at least.
We were ecstatic! Two Mount Holyoke students
tied for Best of Show, which is unprecedented.
So this was just enormously gratifying and I think it speaks to
the great filmmaking teachers we've had with Jenny Perlin and Bernadine Mellis.
And also just the growing excitement
around the major.
The thesis can be the most exciting part of a real scholar's career here.
My thesis is on American Identity in Post-9/11 American independent cinema,
and I'm focusing on films that feature some sort of immigrant narrative,
immigrant character, immigrant plot line.
My thesis is sort of an exploration of the current maternal film.
I'm looking at these films try to create a women's structure
and aesthetic within the patriarchal, within mainstream narrative cinema.
I want them to say, as they often do at the end of introduction to film,
you've ruined it for me. So that when they go to see films
they have less tolerance for badly made films, they are more aware of
how they are being manipulated, but on the other end,
and the end that I am really in search of, they have an ability
to appreciate much more sophisticated films and to understand how the medium can be used
to make art and to speak to the culture in much more complex ways.