Film Courses then, Film Courses now

The lighting situation in the room where I show films for my courses is unacceptable -- two lights on either side of the room (four in total) remain on at all times, creating a great deal of light pollution. I've had to explain to students what happened in scenes that take place at night or in dark rooms. Luckily, the staff here is open to remedying the situation and hopefully a new setup will happen soon.

But it occurred to me that my first experience in film courses (at Indiana University) is quite different than my experiences at other institutions as both a student and as an instructor/professor. At IU in the late 1980s/early 1990s, film courses had their screenings at night; none started before 6 pm. This meant that any room could be used for screenings because even if the sun hadn't gone down completely, the blinds could be closed to make the room dark enough. Furthermore, screenings lasted at least 3 hours and sometimes 4. I first saw Rules of the Game and Breathless back to back in one 3 1/2 hour bloc (and yes, it was an absolutely numbing experience for me). Such double features were not at all uncommon.

I haven't had on a regular basis a three hour bloc for screenings since. Screenings were incorporated into class time at UCLA so that a short lecture could precede multiple films but that depended on the class -- it was common in the German film class but (if I recall correctly) relatively uncommon in the American cinema and French film classes, although we did see more than one film a week in those courses. At Arizona, we had a two hour bloc in which to show films in the late afternoon; students were advised that they might have to stay longer on some occasions (and the university supported this) but generally speaking we had to show films of less than 120 minutes. At Auburn, I have two and a half hours but the screenings are scheduled during the day, which limits the options for where they can be shown (and complicates possible solutions to the aforementioned light problem).

This seems like a problem to me: We don't get enough time to encourage a love of film by showing films back to back. Doing so helps students see connections across time or understand how the stylistic traits of, say, German Expressionism vary across films in that period or how classic Italian neorealism is modulated in La Strada. I recognize that universities have budgeting and credit-hour considerations but it feels to me like the educational part of a film course is attenuated by shortening the time in which students come together to watch films. We should be encouraging, we should be cultivating students' cinephilia, not treating the film as another assignment reducible to the amount of time spent in class.

The problem is, I think, connected to the fact that most film students don't get to watch anything on film anymore. Although many actual prints of films were shown at UCLA, we also used DVDs and even VHS on some occasions. We used only laser discs, VHS and DVD at Arizona and I have never had the opportunity to screen an actual print in any of the classes I have taught myself (although the projectionist at LACC did tell me he could get me a battered print of Citizen Kane if need be). At IU 15 or so years ago, we had mostly films (with the occasional laser disc -- imagine seeing Amarcord for the first time and having it interrupted so the professor could flip the disc). Again, I certainly understand the budgetary reasons for this -- film prints are expensive, they require either special storage facilities or distribution services, etc. But the picture quality on a good print is still better than even that offered by BluRay discs (which still look video-y to me).

And at risk of getting too esoteric, I'd connect this to both my occasional disenchantment with film as an art form and my interest in religion as a social and cultural phenomenon. When I was younger, going to the movies felt almost as though it were a religious experience to me, and this included when I was headed to a classroom full of uncomfortable desk-chair combinations. Not being much of an A/V person (text has always been more important to me than tech) I didn't learn to thread a projector until the end of my undergraduate career so the the machine had a certain mystery about it for me: It was the source of magic (for want of a better word) in the back of the room, we could see the light and feel the heat emanating from it. The entire process felt material. Now all I do is plop a disc into the DVD tray and push a button; the digital code is transferred via cables to an ungainly box suspended from the ceiling which projects the image that feels just somehow wrong. It's cold, it's impersonal. It's not the medium I fell in love with.

My disenchantment is waning as I write, by the way. As an historian, I suppose I always have one eye on the past and those are the films that continue to inspire me. But recent films -- There Will Be Blood, Sunshine, Batman Begins and Children of Men and even films I consider flawed like No Country for Old Men, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight and Munich -- have moments that inspire me. This is a long way of saying that I think my disenchantment might be a result of changes in technology and their impact on me as a scholar and educator. Or perhaps it's a result of my historical bent, a tendency to look into the past and see it as inherently more interesting because it's the past. In any event, lately I've been feeling more vital as a film scholar, film teacher and film fan. If only I could get more time and actual celluloid prints....