2012–2014

Course selection for Autumn 2014


Course code and title: BMI-FLMD-322E:02 A Philosophy of Vision

Type: Seminar

Course Convenor: Sándor Sajó

Time and place: Tuesday 12 00- 13 30, room 42

This course is going to be a discussion of the sense and significance of vision in experience in general. We shall consider vision both as a mental act and as what is seen and focus not only on what may be called its subjective and active aspect (the fact that I see) but also on its objective and passive aspect (the fact that I am seen). We shall try to question the alleged primacy of vision as opposed to the other senses.

The reading list includes Plato, Berkeley, Diderot, Fiedler, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and others. It goes without saying, I suppose, that a seminar requires not only regular attendance but active participation in the discussions too.

 

Title: Everyday Life in Socialist Hungary  

Code:

Time, place: Tuesday 9:30-11:00, 251, TBA Múzeum krt. 6 – 8., TBA

Course convenor: Ferenc Hammer

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Seminar

The basic premise of the course is that the cultural embeddedness of the East Central European region’s political changes has turned out to be crucial, in terms of the nature and direction of those changes, let them be Stalinist takeovers, socialist reforms, democratic transitions, democratic consolidations or nationalist upheavals. Culture is a key concept in this course – that is, collectively created meanings people associate with their life. Artifacts, rituals and images of everyday life, and their qualitative-anthropological interpretations have occupied a central position in this approach to understand the region’s present and recent past. Students will be exposed to comparative (regional) empirical research results focusing on various cultural studies topics, as well as to key concepts regarding the roots of the region’s paradoxical cultural-historical-political development. Classes will cover issues, such as everyday strategies of power exercise in communism, changes in cultural politics, media history of the period, popular culture, consumption, a critical history of jeans, nonconformist subcultures, etc. Each student is expected to prepare a one- or two-page long position paper (based on the literature or on special assignments) 10 times during the semester. There will not be separate student presentations in the class. The final paper is expected to be ten pages in length on a topic agreed with me beforehand. Unless we agree to something different, the paper will be due at the last class for presentation. At the penultimate class there will be a test on the course readings and the lectures. The composition of the students’ grades will be made up of the following items: 40 % position papers, 40% final test, 20% final paper.

Title: Approaches to Space

Code: BBN-KOM-291#1.18 for BA students; BMA-MEDD-601.20 for MA.

Time, place: Monday 12.30 to 14.00; Múzeum krt. 6 – 8., 2nd floor room 251.

Course convenor: Gabriella Szigethy

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Seminar

This class is a tentative sequel to my earlier Visual Strategies in Modernism that I offered for seven consecutive semesters before this coming 2014/15 Autumn semester.

My experiences with Hungarian and international students in these recent past years have persuaded me to try to move on and offer a more localized, a more geographical insight into the differences that have become so apparent in our approaches to Modernist strategies, visual or otherwise. In this postcolonial intellectual and political climate it may be more rewarding now to have a closer look at our different, personalized experiences and locate them in the context of a language which, in this class, we all speak as a second language and which acts as our lingua franca today.

Thus, my intention in this class is to bring together as many geographically determined literary, political and visual stories as possible and try to have them told in an appropriate and appropriated English. My stories will certainly come from uncanonical genres or the uncanonical adaptations of otherwise canonical instances (Hungarian crime fiction in the 1970’s and 80’s for example) and the untold political and social problems of this country. Hopefully, the students of this class will come up with similarly untold stories.

The reading list of the class will be available at the beginning of the semester and will be completed at our first class with additions from the students.

 

Title: Blogging Budapest

Course convenor: Anna Gács

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Seminar

In this course you will plan, design, edit and write a blog in English that reports on student life in Budapest. Hungarian and international (Erasmus) students will cooperate in developing the concept and producing the content (articles, interviews, photos, videos) of the blog that – hopefully – will keep running after the end of term. Students’ required activities include participation in the editorial work, fieldwork, and producing material in different media.

The blog was established a year ago at: http://lostandfoundinbudapest.wordpress.com/.

Regular attendance is a must. Assessment will be based on course work and the quantity and quality of materials you produce.

The course will be held and all materials should be produced in English. (You have to be able to take part in discussions (in an encouraging atmosphere) and interview people or write in English, but this is not a language course:  you won’t be blamed or receive a low mark for bad English.)

 

Title: Radio documentary production

Course convenor: Henrik Hargitai

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Seminar

We analyze radio documentaries from Glenn Gould’ Solitude trilogy to ABC’s 360 Documentaries. The students select a topic related to cultural, national, ethnic or other identities, create a script and produce a 27 minute long audio documentary, using field recordings and studio voiceover. Two minor projects are 1) writing music introduction and producing a music mix, also related to cultural identities and 2) a series of live studio discussions about identities.

Skills required: none

Maximum absences: 3

Software: we will use Audition for creating the programs

Recorder: we will use Zoom H1, H2 or H4N and studio equipment for recording, the use of mobile phones is not allowed.

 

Course title: Journalismus Praxis

Language: German

Code: Erasm_Komm:01

Course convenor: Károly Vörös T.

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Seminar

Journalism course in German with ex chief editor of daily newspaper called Népszabadság.

 

Course code and title: BMI-FLMD-122E.01 Analysis of the Film Image

Type: Seminar

Course Convenor: László  Strausz

Time and place: Wednesday 12 00-13 30, studio

Course description: The goal of the course is to make students familiar with the general principles of film analysis. Throughout the semester, we will discuss various aspects of the filmic image (shots, composition, frame etc.) and the ways in which these elements can be used to create meaning. Each week, after a short overview of the basic terms in relation to the discussed topic, we will collectively analyze scenes from various films in order develop skills to recognize and interpret the function of these elements. From the third week onwards, students will be asked to bring clips to class and hold a presentation on one visual element of the scene in question. The emphasis of the course is the practicing of the skills of film analysis.

Course syllabus

 

Course code and title: BMI-FLMD-122E.02 Film analysis: Editing / Montage

Type: Seminar

Course Convenor: László Strausz

Time and place: Wednesday 14 00-15 30, room -137

The goal of the course is to make students familiar with the general principles of film editing. Throughout the semester, we will discuss various aspects of the syntax of the moving image and the ways in which these techniques can be used to create meaning. Each week, after a short overview of the basic terms in relation to the discussed topic, we will collectively analyze scenes from various films in order develop skills to recognize and interpret the function of these elements. The emphasis of the course is the practicing of the skills of film analysis.

Course syllabus 

 

Course code and title: BMI-FLMD-312E.06 Fate and History: István Szabó’s cinema

Type: Seminar

Course Convenor: Tibor Hirsch

Time and place: Monday 11 00-12 30, room -137

István Szabó in his whole career was focusing on the unprepared individual being forced to meet with the always hostile East-European history. In the films made from the early 60sSzabó depicts different sorts of surviving strategies of the average civilian when this 20th century’s history – unpredictable fate embodied by the series of well-known severe political events – “is arriving”. These strategies here in this geographical region are always desperate, always deniable – and sometimes they are adopted just too late.

Requirements: To complete the course successfully students should prove the basic knowledge of István Szabó’s films, and they should also obtain a social-historical view of the time and the region these films are reflecting on.

Course syllabus 

 

Course code and title: BMI-FLMD-211E.02  Concise History of European and American Cinema from the Silent Era till the 1950’s

Type: Lecture

Course Convenor: Györgyi Vajdovich

Time and place: Friday 12 00-13 30, room -135

The course gives an introduction to the history of silent cinema through the examination of the first moving pictures, the development of film production and distribution and the elaboration of film narration. It will give a brief overview of the formation and operation of the Hollywood film industry until the 1950s and the main genres of early Hollywood cinema. It will discuss certain art-film tendencies coming to life in Europe, like the different avant-garde movements of European cinema in the 1920s or the Italian neo-realist movement.

Course syllabus 

 

Course code and title: BMI-FLMD-312E.07 Contemporary Eastern European Cinemas 

Type: Seminar

Course Convenor: László Strausz

Time and place: Thursday 13 30-15 00 -137

The course will attemp to map the main trends in Eastern European feature film production after 1989. The focus will be on films from the former GDR, former Yugoslavia, Romania and Hungary.

Primarily we will concentrate on the imprints of major social-historical shifts on cinema, i.e. aspects of cultural memory in select countries within the region. Questions in focus include: how does cinema reflect the political changes that accompany the end of the Cold War? Which are the thematic and stylistic elements of the post-communist cinemas? What are the major differences between the various national cinemas and their ways of remembering the past?

We will also investigate some issues that stand at the intersection of historical representation, cinematic memory and film genres. Investigated questions include: how are historical topics or themes dealt with when the past is recreated within a given generic framework? In what ways do genres influence collective memory?

Course syllabus

 

Course selection for Spring 2014


Film analysis: The Image

Code: BMI-FLMD-122E:01

Course convenor: Dr. László Strausz

Time, place: Tuesday 11 30 – 13 00, Múzeum krt. 6 – 8., basement room: -137

Availability: BA

Type: Seminar

Course description: The goal of the course is to make students familiar with the general principles of film analysis. Throughout the semester, we will discuss various aspects of the filmic image (shots, composition, frame etc.) and the ways in which these elements can be used to create meaning. Each week, after a short overview of the basic terms in relation to the discussed topic, we will collectively analyze scenes from various films in order develop skills to recognize and interpret the function of these elements. From the third week onwards, students will be asked to bring clips to class and hold a presentation on one visual element of the scene in question. The emphasis of the course is the practicing of the skills of film analysis.

Download course syllabus »

American Cinema in the 1930s and 40s

Code: FLM-241:31

Course convenor: Dr. Tibor Hirsch

Time, place: Monday 11 30 – 13 00, Múzeum krt. 6 – 8, basement, studio

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Lecture

Course description: The course introduces students to the most important tendencies of the American film-history between 1927 and 1946. The lectures use two main approaches to understand historical developments of the Hollywood Cinema. The first approach focuses on the social-historical aspect: looking more closely at the changing economic characteristics of the film industry, the changing social and political expectations of the so called “pre-code” and “post-code years” of the examined period, and also the rising genres of the early talkies like the horror, like the mob- and cop movies, the musical, the screwball comedy, the early film noir. The other approach puts the emphasis on the most remarkable filmmakers and their special influence in the age:  e.g. on Hawks, Ford, Capra or Lubitsch. We will also discuss the effects and reflections of the most important political and economical impacts on American Cinema within the two decades: such as the Great Depression or the World War II.
During the course students will also get a general picture of the most important directors of the age: about e.g. Hawks, Ford, Capra, Lubitsch etc.

Download course syllabus »

Contemporary Global Cinema: authors and nations (Genres and authors in contemporary global cinema)

Course convenor: Dr. László Strausz

Time, place: Tuesday 13 30 – 15 00, Múzeum krt. 6 – 8., ground floor, room: 34.

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Lecture

Course description: This class is designed as a selective course for global contemporary film after Italian Neorealism. It does not attempt to cover the development of the medium in a comprehensive way, but rather engages with chosen authors and/or national cinemas that proved influential from a stylistic/narrative perspective. The english-language course is recommended for students as an introduction to contemporary cinema.

Download course syllabus »

History of Hungarian Cinema in a Cultural Context

Code: BBN-FLM-403:32

Course convenor: Dr. Györgyi Vajdovich

Time, place: Thursday 14 00 – 15 30, Múzeum krt. 6 – 8., basement, room: -137

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Lecture

Course description: The course presents the history of Hungarian cinema till 1989 in the context of Hungarian and East-European culture. It will discuss certain trends and phenomena like author films or genre films, the relation of film to literature, the influence of avant-garde artists, characteristics of the Hungarian New Wave, the relationship between short films and feature films, etc. The course will also present certain films or artists who became influential in European or world cinema, either through festival circuits, or by co-productions, or by immigrating to other countries and becoming famous producers, directors or cinematographers in Western Europe or in the USA. Students will also get a brief insight into the different trends of Hungarian animated films.

Download course syllabus »

Domestic Melodramas in American Cinema (Family and Ideology)

Course convenor: Dr. László Strausz

Code: FLMD 322:30

Time, place: Wednesday 14 00 – 15 30, Múzeum krt. 6 – 8., basement, room: -137

Availability: MA

Type: Seminar

Course description: This seminar works with the assumption that in a large majority of American domestic melodramas the middle-class family represents a miniature model of society. Through an investigation of the development of the genre, we will interrogate issues of sexuality, gender and ethnic- and class identities in American society across the 20th-century.
The first part of the class focuses mainly on theoretical questions, which will be followed by a historically motivated study of the various transformations of domestic melodrama, from its beginnings towards the contemporary remakes.
In last section of the course, we will examine conceptual issues related to genre theory, and attempt to locate the position of melodramas amongst other traditional genres within American cinema.

Download course syllabus »

Intercultural Adaptation in Contemporary Anime

Course convenor: Beáta Pusztai

Code: FLM-403:36

Time, place: Friday, 11 00–13 00, Múzeum krt. 6 – 8., basement, room: -137

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Seminar

Course content: ”The genius of the Japanese lies not in invention but in adaptation [that is, the integration of diverse influences]” – argues Joseph J. Tobin. This course aims to delineate the dynamics of intercultural borrowing between Japan and ”the West” that has defined the national self-identity of the Japanese since the mid-19th century. We will focus on the strategies anime developed to transform cultural products and practices of the West into something specifically ”Japanese” – something that is simultanously exotic and familiar in the eyes of the Japanese, as well as in the eyes of the West.

Download course syllabus »

English language courses provided by the Department of Communication and Media Studies:

Theory and Practice in Radio Production

Course convenor: Henrik Hargitai assistant professor

Time and place: Friday 10 00 – 11 00 Radio Studio, basement

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Seminar

We investigate the evolution of electronic media from radio to television to new media in the former East Block countries, with special focus on Hungary and the Soviet Union. We investigate the evolution of both the institutional background and the content structurization (formatting), the main players and the peripherical ones. We will also discuss clandestine operations during war and peace. In addition, students create their own radio program.

Approaches to Space

Code: BBN-KOM-291#1.18

Course convenor: Gabriella Szigethy

Time, place: Monday 10.00, Múzeum krt. 6 – 8., room: 251. (second floor).

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Seminar

This class is a tentative sequel to my earlier Visual Strategies in Modernism that I offered for six consecutive semesters before this coming 2013/14 Spring semester.
My experiences with Hungarian and international students in these recent past years have persuaded me to try to move on and offer a more localized, a more geographical insight into the differences that have become so apparent in our approaches to Modernist strategies, visual or otherwise. In this postcolonial intellectual and political climate it may be more rewarding now to have a closer look at our different, personalized experiences and locate them in the context of a language which, in this class, we all speak as a second language and which acts as our lingua franca today.
Thus, my intention in this class is to bring together as many geographically determined literary, political and visual stories as possible and try to have them told in an appropriate and appropriated English. My stories will certainly come from uncanonical genres or the uncanonical adaptations of otherwise canonical instances (Hungarian crime fiction in the 1970’s and 80’s for example) and the untold political and social problems of this country. Hopefully, the students of this class will come up with similarly untold stories.
The reading list of the class will be available at the beginning of the semester and will be completed at our first class with additions from the students.

Cultural Journalism in English: Blogging Budapest

Code: BBN-KOM-591:21

Course convenor: Anna Gács

Time, place: Wednesday 10 00 – 11 30, Múzeum krt. 6 – 8., room: 251. (second floor).

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Seminar

Course description: In this course you will plan, design, edit and write a blog in English that reports on student life in Budapest. Hungarian and international (Erasmus) students will cooperate in developing the concept and producing the content (articles, interviews, photos, videos) of the blog that – hopefully – will keep running after the end of term. Students’ required activities include participation in the editorial work, fieldwork, and producing material in different media.
The blog was established a year ago at: http://lostandfoundinbudapest.wordpress.com/.
Regular attendance is a must. Assessment will be based on course work and the quantity and quality of materials you produce.
The course will be held and all materials should be produced in English. (You have to be able to take part in discussions (in an encouraging atmosphere) and interview people or write in English, but this is not a language course:  you won’t be blamed or receive a low mark for bad English.)

Journalismus Praxis

Language: German

Code: Erasm_Komm:01

Course convenor: Károly Vörös T.

Availability: BA, MA

Type: Seminar

Journalism course in German with ex chief editor of daily newspaper called Népszabadság.

 

Course selection for Autumn 2013


 

Introduction to Film Theory

Course convenor: Laszlo Strausz 

Time and place: Múzeum krt. 6-8, Lower Level, room -137, Wednesday  14:00-15:30 

Availability: BA, MA

Type: lecture

The course is designed as a topical introduction into film theory. Instead of investigating film theory through its historical progression, we will rather focus problems that stand in the forefront of the discipline. Primarily, we will examine broad patterns in how the medium conveys meaning, elicits emotion and addresses audiences. It is concerned with the nature of the medium itself and with the conventions it has developed for what is ‘cinematic.’ The secondary focus of the course it to acquire skills in applying these theoretical ideas to particular film texts, testing these ideas to see how well they fit individual cases.

 

Film Analysis: The Image

Course convenor: Laszlo Strausz 

Time and place: Múzeum krt. 6-8, Lower Level, room -137, Tuesday 14:00-15:30

Availability: BA, MA

Type: seminar

The goal of the course is to make students familiar with the general principles of film analysis. Throughout the semester, we will discuss various aspects of the filmic image (shots, composition, frame etc.) and the ways in which these elements can be used to create meaning. Each week, after a short overview of the basic terms in relation to the discussed topic, we will collectively analyze scenes from various films in order develop skills to recognize and interpret the function of these elements. From the third week onwards, students will be asked to bring clips to class and hold a presentation on one visual element of the scene in question. The emphasis of the course is the practicing of the skills of film analysis.

 

Film Analysis: Narration

Course convenor: Laszlo Strausz 

Time and place: Múzeum krt. 6-8, Lower Level, room -137, Wednesday 12:00-13:30

Availability: BA, MA

Type: seminar

The goal of the course is to make students familiar with the general principles of film analysis. Throughout the semester, we will discuss various aspects of filmic narration, and the ways in which these elements can be used to create meaning. Each week, after a short overview of the basic terms in relation to the discussed topics, we will collectively analyze scenes from various films in order develop skills to recognize and interpret the function of these elements. From the third week onwards, students will be asked to bring clips to class and hold a presentation on one narrative element of the scene in question. The emphasis of the course is the practicing of the skills of film analysis.

 

Concise History of European and American Cinema from the Silent Era till the 1950’s

Course convenor: Györgyi Vajdovich 

Time and place: Múzeum krt. 6-8, Lower Level, room -137, Thursday  14:00-15:30 

Availability: BA, MA

Type: lecture

 

The course gives an introduction to the history of silent cinema through the examination of the first moving pictures, the development of film production and distribution and the elaboration of film narration. It will give a brief overview of the formation and operation of the Hollywood film industry until the 1950s and the main genres of early Hollywood cinema. It will discuss the functions of film industry during the totalitarian regimes of the 1930-40’s and will give special attention to the art-film tendencies coming to life in Europe, like the different avant-garde movements of European cinema in the 1920s or the Italian neo-realist movement.

 

Spiritual Systems in Peter Greenaway’s Films

Course convenor: Tibor Hirsch

Time and place: Múzeum krt. 6-8, Lower Level, room -137, Tuesday 12:30-14:00

Availability: BA, MA

Type: seminar

 

Peter Greenaway used to build very different sets of symbols in his films, experimenting with the allegorical systems of astrology and alchemy or using culture-historical paradigms and different mythological realms. These are all hidden both in vision and narratives: making his films complex riddles worth solving – sometimes in very different ways. This unique possibility no only makes his films interesting, but it also will give us a good excuse to think about the future of motion picture, for which Greenaway ‘s pieces certainly do provide one fascinating alternative.
During the course these “sets of symbols” will be studied and these movie-alternatives of the future will be imagined – obviously through profound film-analysis.

 

Visual Strategies in Modernism: Eastern-European Englishes

Course convenor: Gabriella Szigethy

Time and place: Múzeum krt. 6-8, 2nd floor, room 251, Monday 12:00-13:30

Availability: BA

Type: seminar

 

This class is a tentative sequel to my earlier Visual Strategies in Modernism that I offered for five consecutive semesters before this coming 2013/14 Fall semester.
My experiences with Hungarian and international students in these recent past years have persuaded me to try to move on and offer a more localized, a more geographical insight into the differences that have become so apparent in our approaches to Modernist strategies, visual or otherwise. In this postcolonial intellectual and political climate it may be more rewarding now to have a closer look at our different, personalized experiences and locate them in the context of a language which, in this class, we all speak as a second language and which acts as our lingua franca today.
Thus, my intention in this class is to bring together  as many geographically determined literary, political and visual stories as possible and try to have them told in an appropriate and appropriated English. My stories will certainly come from uncanonical genres or the uncanonical adaptations of otherwise canocical instances (Hungarian crime fiction in the 1970’s and 80’s for example) and the untold political and social problems of this country. Hopefully, the students of this class will come up with similarly untold stories.
The reading list of the class will be available at the beginning of the semester and will be completed at our first class with additions from the students.

 

Cultural Journalism in English: Blogging Budapest

Course convenor: Anna Gács

Time and place: Múzeum krt. 6-8, Lower Level, room -135, Wednesday 10:00-11:30 Availability: MA

Type: seminar

 

In this course you will plan, design, edit and write a blog in English that reports on student life in Budapest. Hungarian and international (Erasmus) students will cooperate in developing the concept and producing the content (articles, interviews, photos, videos) of the blog that – hopefully – will keep running after the end of term. Students’ required activities include participation in the editorial work, fieldwork, and producing material in different media.
Regular attendance is a must. Assessment will be based on course work and the quantity and quality of materials you produce.
The course will be held and all materials should be produced in English. (You have to be able to take part in discussions (in an encouraging atmosphere) and interview people or write in English, but this is not a language course:  you won’t be blamed or receive a low mark for bad English.)

 

Course selection for Spring 2013


 

Course title: Film analysis: Editing / Montage

Course convenor: László Strausz, assistant professor

Time and place: Wednesday 14 00-15 30 Múzeum körút 6-8. Room -137

Availability: BA

Type: seminar

The goal of the course is to make students familiar with the general principles of film editing. Throughout the semester, we will discuss various aspects of the syntax of the moving image and the ways in which these techniques can be used to create meaning. Each week, after a short overview of the basic terms in relation to the discussed topic, we will collectively analyze scenes from various films in order develop skills to recognize and interpret the function of these elements. The emphasis of the course is the practicing of the skills of film analysis.

Download course syllabus »

 

Course title: Adaptation and intermediality: Case analyses

Course convenor: Györgyi Vajdovich, assistant professor

Time and place: Thursday 13 30-15 00 Múzeum körút 6-8. Room -137

Availability: BA

Type: seminar

The course provides an introduction to the problems of intermediality through the examination of different cases of adaptation. The case studies will reveal the specific characteristics of the different media (such as literary text, drama, painting, comics, computer games etc.), their relationship to film and the special adaptation problems they create. During the course the following theoretical problems will also be discussed: abstraction vs. concrete visual representation, homogeneous vs. complex ways of expression, different structures of narrative, construction of space and time, and the person of the narrator.

Requirements: The course will be a seminar based on active participation, therefore students are required to read and watch the works to be discussed for each lesson. Grades will be assigned based on class participation and activity and a seminar paper.

Download course syllabus »

 

Course title: Fate and History: István Szabó’s cinema

Course convenor: Tibor Hirsch, associate professor

Time and place: Monday 14 00-15 30 Múzeum körút 6-8. Room -137

Availability: BA, MA

Type: seminar

István Szabó in his whole career was focusing on the unprepared individual being forced to meet with the always hostile East-European history. In the films made from the early 60sSzabó depicts different sorts of surviving strategies of the average civilian when this 20th century’s history – unpredictable fate embodied by the series of well-known severe political events – “is arriving”. These strategies here in this geographical region are always desperate, always deniable – and sometimes they are adopted just too late.

Requirements: To complete the course successfully students should prove the basic knowledge of István Szabó’s films, and they should also obtain a social-historical view of the time and the region these films are reflecting on.

Download course syllabus »

 

Course title: American Film History after 1948

Course convenor: László Strausz, assistant professor

Time and place: Tuesday 14 00-15 00 Múzeum körút 6-8. Room -137

Availability: BA, MA

Type: lecture

This course will introduce students to the major institutional changes within American cinema after 1948. In order to develop an understanding of how the various aspects of the era in question correlate, we will approach the post-classical period simultaneously from aesthetic, social, financial and technological sides. Additionally, increased attention will be paid to the changing system of genres throughout the decades under consideration.

Download course syllabus »

 

Course title: British Genre Films

Course convenor: Attila Varró, assistant lecturer

Time and place: Monday 15 30-17 00 Múzeum körút 6-8. Room 34

Availability: BA, MA

Type: lecture

This course will provide an introduction to classical British film genres through analyzing a range of canonized key films from the late 30’s to the early 70’s: it will focus on the most significant idiosyncrasies and alterations from the corresponding Hollywood genres in order that basic common features of British genre film-making can be identified. The course will concentrate on three different popular genres (i.e. science fiction, horror and crime film) and defines their special subgenres or genre cycles peculiar to British movies. We will take a biological approach to genre films using the British film industry as a „cultural habitat” where the socio-cultural environment products distinctive genre populations. One of the main purposes of the course will be to discover how the British film genres could compete and survive against the much stronger Hollywood mass production by adapting the general genre motifs and strategies to their own environmental demands.

Download course syllabus »

 

Course title: Visual Strategies in Modernism. Appropriation

Course convenor: Gabriella Szigethy, assistant lecturer  gabiszigethy_at_gmail com

Time and place: Monday 10.30-12.00; Múzeum körút 6-8. room 251

Availability: BA, MA

Type: seminar

The main objective of this course is to raise students’ awareness of the importance to develop and maintain their knowledge of current academic English and help them in doing so. During the semester we shall read and explicate major contributions to the notion of visuality in Modernism. Students will give short presentations in class, discuss the issues involved in the actual reading and hand in short written assignments. The language of instruction is English. This semester we explore various notions of appropriation and see how from a predominantly art-theoretical terminology of early-postmodernism appropriation has grown by now into an eminently political issue.

One presentation in class (25-30 min) and a short home assignment. (1500 words, cca. 3 pages). Excused absences: 2.

Mandatory Reading:

Young, James O., Cultural Appropriation and the Arts, Blackwell Publishing, 2008.

The Ethics of Cultural Appropriation, Edited by James O. Young and Conrad G. Brunk, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Additional shorter texts to be specified in class. All provided in digital format by the instructor.

 

Course title: Cultural Journalism in English: Blogging Budapest

Course convenor: Anna Gács

Time and place: Friday 10.00-11.30 a.m., Múzeum krt. 6-8,Ground Floor room 40.

Availability: BA, MA

Type: seminar

In this course you will plan, design, edit and write a blog in English that reports on student life in Budapest. Hungarian and international (Erasmus) students will cooperate in developing the concept and producing the content (articles, interviews, photos, videos) of the blog that – hopefuly – will keep running after the end of term. Students’ required activities include participation in the editorial work, fieldwork J, and producing material in different media.

Regular attendence is a must. Assesment will be based on course work and the quantity and quality of materials you produce.

The course will be held and all materials should be produced in English. (You have to be able to take part in discussions (in an encouraging atmosphere) and interview people or write in English, but this is not a language course:  you won’t be blamed or receive a low mark for bad English.)

Course selection for Autumn 2012


 

 

Course selection for Spring 2012


 

1. Family and Ideology: Domestic Melodrama in American Cinema – László Strausz

 

This seminar works with the assumption that in a large majority of American melodramas the middle-class family represents a miniature model of society. Through an investigation of the development of the genre, we will interrogate issues of sexuality, gender and ethnic- and class identities in American society across the 20th-century.

The first part of the class focuses mainly on theoretical questions, which will be followed by a historically motivated study of the various transformations of domestic melodrama, from its beginnings towards the contemporary remakes.

In the second section of the course, we will examine conceptual issues related to genre theory, and attempt to locate the position of melodramas amongst other traditional genres within American cinema.

Films:

Broken Blossoms (DW Griffith, 1919)

The Crowd (King Vidor, 1928)

Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937)

Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945)

On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)

Rebel without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)

All that Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955)

Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956)

Far from Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002)

Punch-Drunk Love (PT Anderson, 2002)

Jungle Fever (Spike Lee, 1991)

Brokback Mountain. (Ang Lee, 2005)

Required reading – select chapters from:

  1. Marcia Landy (ed): Imitations of Life: A reader on film & television melodrama. Wayne State University Press, Detroit: 1991
  2. Christine Gledhill (ed): Home is where the heart is. Studies in melodrama and the woman’s film. BFI Publishing, London: 1987

 

2. History of Hungarian Cinema in a Cultural Context – Györgyi Vajdovich

 

The course presents the history of Hungarian cinema from the beginning till 1989 in the context of Hungarian and East-European culture. It aims to give a historical and cultural overview of the certain periods, showing how the historical, political events and the cultural context influenced the films produced in that era. The lectures will put special accent on the relations between Hungarian and European cinema, situating Hungarian cinema in the framework of main European trends. The course will also present certain films or artists who became influential in European or world cinema, either through festival circuits, or by co-productions, or by immigrating to other countries and becoming famous producers, directors or cinematographers in Western Europe or in the USA. The course will include some case studies, when certain films will be analysed in details in order to give a closer view of a certain period.

Description of the course:

1, Introduction: General characteristics of Hungarian cinema and its main periods

2, The silent film era: Hungary in the 1st World War. The Hungarian Soviet Republic, the role of immigrant Hungarian film makers in Europe and in the US

3, Popular cinema in the 1930s and 40s: the cultural origins of Hungarian comedies and melodramas, and their special local characteristics

4, The first art films in Hungary: the possibilities of realist representation and social criticism under right-wing and left-wing governments

5, Cultural life in the Stalinist era, the role of film makers

6, The rise of authors’ cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, Hungarian films at Western festivals and their reception in Western Europe

7, A new generation of film makers, the Hungarian New Wave

8, Internationally acknowledged figures of Hungarian cinema: the work of Miklós Jancsó, István Szabó and Márta Mészáros

9, Main cinematic trends of the 1970s: subjective art cinema, documentarism, and experimental cinema

10, The trend of the “new sensibility”, the relationships of cinema and other media in the Hungarian neo-avantgarde

11, Trends and themes of popular cinema, the representation of Hungarian history in art films and popular films

12, Trends and important figures of Hungarian animation film

List of films:

István Székely: Hyppolit, the Butler (Hyppolit, a lakáj), 1931

Géza Radványi: Somewhere in Europe (Valahol Európában), 1947

Zoltán Fábri: Merry-Go-Round (Körhinta), 1956

Szabó István: Father (Apa), 1966

Miklós Jancsó: Red and White (Csillagosok, katonák), 1965

Péter Bacsó: The witness (A tanú), 1969

Károly Makk: Love (Szerelem), 1970

István Szabó: Mephisto, 1981

Béla Tarr: Damnation (Kárhozat), 1987

A collection of short Hungarian animation films

Requirements:

Students must watch a given film for each lesson, and they have to write a short test of a few questions about that given film during the class. At the end of the semester they have to make a case study of a film chosen from a set of films proposed by the lecturer.

Bibliography:

Bryan Burns: World Cinema: Hungary. Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1996.

John Cunningham: Hungarian Cinema: From Coffee House to MultiplexWallflower Press, 2004.

Jean-Pierre Jeancolas: L’oeil hongrois. Quatre décennies de cinéma a Budapest 1963-2000. Budapest, Magyar Filmunió, 2001.

 

3. Trends and Authors in Contemporary Hungarian Cinema – Tibor Hirsch

 

The course aims to give an overview of contemporary Hungarian cinema. It consists of twelve lectures and will be accompanied with compulsory screening series. To complete the course successfully students should prove the basic knowledge of the topic and also the fact that they had watched the films suggested. In the first introductory classes of the course students are getting familiar with the unique motives, the special sets of values, and the political conditions of the past which can reveal the roots and frames of the present artistic trends in Hungarian cinema, and they also receive a general survey of the contemporary situation. After the introductory lessons we try to concentrate:

1. on the new achievements of old masters,

2. on the noteworthy representatives of the young generation,

3. on the ones who have got or probably will have soon an international fame in the European cinema-universe.

During the introductory classes the lecturer offers his own view and interpretation of the topic, and these occasions will be followed by the interactive film-analysis, when students are also requested to discuss the particular filmmakers’ virtues and shortcomings. This is why students have to see them just before the classes.