FMS 255 History of Popular Cinema

This course is a survey of the major trends in film history from the advent of cinema in 1895 to the present. Progressing chronologically, the course builds an overall view of film and the film industry across cultures. Students will also become familiar with key concepts in film studies including realism, expressionism, auteurism, mise en scene, and genre. As students acquire a better familiarity with cinematic history and the developments in film criticism, they will become better prepared to form surer and sounder judgments about their own film experiences and to speak and write about those judgments with greater clarity and skill.