tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4222475879097604897.post7128993430241955922..comments2023-10-31T10:21:00.796-04:00Comments on Thanks for the Use of the Hall: Life in These United States: Film SchoolDan Sallitthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13136066978329749513noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4222475879097604897.post-11740970219337466792007-11-15T15:56:00.000-05:002007-11-15T15:56:00.000-05:00Jeanine is the head of the department there. Other...Jeanine is the head of the department there. Other current faculty include Scott Higgins (introducing the Technicolor series at AMMI this weekend in association with his new book), Lisa Dombrowski (Sam Fuller book nearing completion), Richard Slotkin (Gunfighter Nation, among others), and Leo Lensing (lots of work on Fassbinder). <br><br>I'm not sure how to quantify 'influence,' but her students have incredible respect for the depth of her understanding of film and her ability to transmit that. I don't think she's that influential in academia, but her influence is certainly felt in the corners of Hollywood/Indiewood/etc infiltrated by the <i>Wesleyan mafia</i>.<br><br>In some ways, her areas of interest become areas of expertise for her students, which are then tools they refer back to as filmmakers... <br><br>Perhaps it's not on the same scale, but I'm reminded of Alexander Kojève's lectures on Hegel in France between the World Wars, in that his interpretations of Hegel formed the basis of his students' work in a variety of fields in a way that can be traced back to his teachings. It's no offense to Wesleyan film to say that Kojève is an extreme example: Kojève's students included Lacan, Sartre, Aron, Queneau, Merleau-Ponty, Bataille, and Andre Breton.David McDougallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11020826602374694194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4222475879097604897.post-45673117076050891232007-11-15T15:26:00.000-05:002007-11-15T15:26:00.000-05:00Jeanine Basinger is the big name there, right? Do...Jeanine Basinger is the big name there, right? Does she have a lot of influence?Dan Sallitthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13136066978329749513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4222475879097604897.post-42839087543746174432007-11-15T12:06:00.000-05:002007-11-15T12:06:00.000-05:00Dave - I sort of hovered between those two worlds ...Dave - I sort of hovered between those two worlds myself in film school. It was a funny place to be: the production people had a limited interest in cinema history and almost no interest in art films; and the theory people were under pressure to renounce their film-buffery at that point in time. (One classmate told me that he had destroyed his written lists of the movies he'd seen six months into graduate school. Six months seemed to me to be the usual amount of time needed for that environment to effect a transformation.)<br><br>There are probably some backwaters of American film education where production people are forced through a serious examination of film culture, and encouraged to add to it. Where are these places? I'd like to know. Vadim pragmatically allowed that he didn't want to ban Field and McKee from film education, that he merely wanted to provide alternatives. But if you open the door to McKee and Field, they will eat the rest of your department in a few years, as sure as the turning of the earth. Really, it's much better all around to ban them, if you can get away with it; and my guess is that any interesting film production departments that may exist have done so.Dan Sallitthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13136066978329749513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4222475879097604897.post-51596749789626302752007-11-14T11:24:00.000-05:002007-11-14T11:24:00.000-05:00Dan, When I was in college, I straddled 2 majors: ...Dan, <br>When I was in college, I straddled 2 majors: Film Studies, which was something like the practical end of NYU Film School, with more emphasis on watching (older, classical Hollywood) films and breaking them down; and an interdisciplinary humanities program, in which I focused (among other things) on 20th century literature and philosophy. My joint thesis film aimed at being, essentially, a work of literary theory in film form. So this is familiar territory! One of the projects of my current work (blog included) is a more effective synthesis of these competing impulses.David McDougallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11020826602374694194noreply@blogger.com