Course details

Name: ENFL - 251

Title: SPECIAL TOPIC: NEW YORK IN FILM

Section: 01

Semester: Spring - 2024

Credits: 3

Description:
Between 1960 and 1980, American film—as industry and culture—underwent profound changes. The classical studio era came to an end and the New Hollywood emerged, energized by New Wave experiments and a post-war generation of auteurs who came of age in the Sixties and Seventies. On screen and at the center of many of these changes was New York, a city undergoing its own changes, from a crippling economic crisis to profound demographic shifts. This course explores the intersection of New Hollywood and New York, how filmmakers used the great metropolis to treat issues of class, race, law and order with a film style informed by on-location documentary realism and genre revision. And it was not just commercial cinema that engaged with New York. The aesthetic experiments and underground sensibilities of the avant-garde also trained its lens on New York. Was there still romance in New York or only despair? We will study how films from this period helped define, and not simply reflect, the meaning of New York City. Films to be studied might include West Side Story (1961), The Pawnbroker (1964), Wavelength (1967), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Shaft (1971), Annie Hall (1977), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981). This course will require considerable film-watching outside of class, as well as participation in discussion and written projects.

Last updated on 2023-10-17 By Simon Arthur (simona)

Schedule: Thursday From 2:30 pm To 5:15 pm

Graduation requirements:

• Genre Study (Film)
• Ethnic Studies (3b)
• Class Issues (3d)

Teaching Faculty: Simon Arthur (simona)

Is course canceled: No