Text Box: This class is an experiment in looking at and talking about films. It’s a regular UB class, but the general public is welcome to attend. We meet in the Market Arcade Film and Art Center in downtown Buffalo on Tuesday nights. (There’s a well-lighted, monitored, free parking lot directly opposite the theater’s Washington street entrance. The theater is directly opposite Metrorail’s Theater District station.) The two of us introduce each film, we screen it, we take a short break, and then we talk about the film with the students and anyone in the audience who wants to join us. Recently, the non-student part of the audience has been running over 300 people for each screening, about half of whom stay for the discussions. The Buffalo Film Seminars are grounded in two underlying assumptions. The first is that watching a good film on a television set is like reading a good novel in Cliff’s Notes or Classic Comics: you may get the contour of the story but not the experience of the work. Movies were meant to be seen big, in the company of other people. The second is that a conversation among people of various ages and experiences about a good movie they’ve all just seen can be interesting and useful. We try to pick films that will let us think and talk about genre, writing, narrative, editing, directing, acting, context, camera work, relation to sources. The only fixed requirement is that they have to be great films—no films of "academic" interest only. We're made a preliminary selection of films for the fall 2003 seminars, but we won't know about print availability for a while yet. The current list is printed below. You can go to www.buffalofilmseminars.com for the latest information on the schedule, as well as a full list of all the films we’ve programmed in the first six series, and other information about the screenings and the class. At the first meeting of the class (in the lobby of the theater), registered students get a series pass that provides free admission to all 15 films. There are no exams. Students have to maintain a notebook/diary reflecting their reactions to all the screenings, discussions and print and listserv readings. The notebooks will be collected and graded three times during the term. Fall 2003 BFS preliminary schedule: Aug 26 Chaplin, The Great Dictator 1940 (or Buster Keaton, Our Hospitality, 1924) Sept 2 Monta Bell, Man Woman and Sin, 1927 Sept 9 Howard Hawks, Scarface, the Shame of the Nation, 1932 Sept 16 Ernst Lubitsch, To Be or Not to Be, 1942 Sept 23 Preston Sturges, Hail the Conquering Hero, 1944 Sept 30 Jacques Tourneur, Out of the Past, 1947 Oct 7 Kenji Mizoguchi, Ugetsu, 1953 Text Box: Contemporary Cinema Professors Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian Tuesdays 7:00 - 9:40 Reg. No. 013367 Text Box: 441