Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

SELECT ONLY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING

1. Select a film from the course and discuss the key cinematic techniques employed in three scenes of your choice. How do these visual and auditory means of representation help tell the story? Are these techniques conventional, witnessed all over the silver screen, or does the director use them in his own unique way(s)? (In other words, analyze three scenes from a film and put the cinematography in context.)

2.Discuss the style of a director examined in the course. What are the characteristics of his style, and how does his style influence the presentation of the story as well as the images and sound of the movie? Is his style particularly suited to the subject matter of the film we screened in the course and to his overall artistic concerns, and if so, how? You may draw from other works by the same director.

3.In representing China to the West, sometimes Chinese directors employ the spectacle, with vivid colors and exotic scenes. Sometimes directors focus on aspects of society or stories that would be unusual even for the period. 4.Sometimes these movies portray emasculated gender roles. Where do we draw the line on self-exoticization or self-orientalization? Would the Chen Kaige and Zhang Ymou films screened in the course fall under the category of self-orientalizing movies? Why or why not?

5.Even though knight-errant films seem to be a men’s world, femininity seems to play a crucial role. How does femininity help construct the plot and ethos of knight-errant films?

6.What are the problems and rewards of representing historical events through personal memory?

7.Explore the relationship between time and space in two or three films seen in the course.

8.Create your own topic. You must write a one-paragraph proposal and submit it by Tuesday, December 1, for instructor approval.

9.You may also write on Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Assassin even though we haven’t screened it in the course.