This year in studying cinema has really been about broadening our horizons, I think. Abbreviated though it was by Delhi, we've gone into many specialisms and spanned continents.
A large thrust of our teaching this year has been working towards our analytical essays, which meant in depth teaching about cinematography, editing, sound design and production and the analysis thereof. Unfortunately I was off for some of these classes but I caught up with the materials of Moodle and learned a lot by reading the reflective blogs of my classmates.
These subjects are all fertile areas of interest and I would have quite liked to do all of them (in particular I would have loved to analyse Romeo and Juliet's editing in the prologue, it's one of the most electrifying pieces of editing I know of) but I chose to do genre theory, probably the most academic of the possible areas of study. I analysed Inception, I film I loved and wouldn't object to watching many times over (I already had, as a matter of fact) and which I had already been considering in relation to genre, since I wanted to understand where it belonged.
Researching the essay was challenging in that I found very little on the web or in the libraries of the RSAMD or Glasgow University about genre theory particularly relating to heist movies. I had to build most of my analysis from comparison with other heist films and de-constructing their tropes and features. I feel I did well with my essay, I'm not even sick of the sight of Inception (which I'm glad of, it's a film I love and to ruin it with analysis would be sad, and only too possible).
In terms of history we covered the atypical, out of Hollywood movements in filmmaking.
Close to home, we learned about the British New Wave, far less famous than La Nouvelle Vague in France but in it's own way, just as influential. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner was interesting technically, with its sophisticated editing and poetic cinematography but it also stood up as an engaging and enjoyable story.
It allowed me to revisit some films, such as 400 Blows, which I had seen but not properly appreciated before. In the case of The Lives of Others, it let me enjoy a film again, having loved it the first time round. For me, it perfectly shows how a film can be exciting, meaningful and gut wrenchingly moving. The ending, in its beautiful simplicity, ("its for me") makes me cry buckets.
It's a pity we couldn't have gone on with the screenings - Kurosawa's films, while challenging, are very interesting and my enjoyment of them would probably be helped by another, more mature, viewing. Equally, Ingmar Bergman is a director I have meant to look at before but haven't gotten round to; I could describe the scene of death playing chess but I have never seen the seventh seal. I suppose this further education will just have to be on our own initiative.
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