ARTS 287(F) Adaptations

This course will consider the relationship between film and video and dramatic and novelistic literature. We will look at the historical space between the original material and its adaptation, and will also consider formal questions about the discursive and textural shifts between film, video, and writing. How have contemporary filmmakers remade the long tradition of converting novels and plays into narrative film? How has the force of cinema in the contemporary imagination inspired adaptations in the reverse order: fictional writing based on film? Some attention may also be given to the question of how electronic new media creates a hybrid space between filmic and literary forms. In class we will examine recent independent media based on literature, for example, Gregg Bordowitz adapting Nickolai Erdman, Tom Kalin adapting Jane Bowles and Virginia Woolf, and Nancy Meckler's and Todd Haynes' adaptations of Jean Genet. We will also consider works in other media that are adaptations of cinema, like Salman Rushdie's prose riffs on The Wizard of Oz, or Anne Bogart's recent theater production about silent cinema. Assignments may be fulfilled in video, creative writing, or electronic new media. No prerequisites. Enrollment will be limited to 15, with a limit of 10 students working in video. Preference will be given to juniors and seniors. Fulfills the studio art major requirement only if a student works in video. Lab fee.

Hour:  L. JOHNSON