Postcinema

In digital media cultures platforms and producers multiply while visual narratives unfold across multiple networks of different frames. In this course, students will explore, analyze, and theorize the structures and potentials of postcinema and create their own postcinematic artifacts such as video essays and desktop documentaries. This course approaches postcinema from theoretical as well as practical perspectives. We will theorize the impact of digital technologies on cinematic cultures and storytelling, discuss a range of topics including network aesthetics, mind-game films, transmedia storytelling, the politics of low-resolution imagery, and the aesthetic potentials of amateur and prosumer digital production. We will also consider how contemporary cultures of amateur production such as video essays and desktop documentaries fit into a longer history of experimentation with the possibilities and limits of new mediums, from the avant-gardes up to the present.