Global Film Histories I This course will survey the development of the cinema from 1895 to 1960. Our study will emphasize film as an evolving art, while bearing in mind the influence of technology, economic institutions, and the political and social contexts in which the films were produced and received. Screenings will include representative and celebrated works from world cinema.

Cinema and Memory Depicting the experience of memory is a challenge filmmakers have returned to repeatedly throughout cinema’s history.  In this seminar we will screen films from around the world to explore the ways in which individual and cultural memory have found expression in cinema.  We will screen narrative features, documentaries, and experimental films as we compare the various aesthetic strategies filmmakers from different periods and cultures have used to portray the complex relationships between past and present, real and imagined.  Films screened will include After Life; The Bad and the Beautiful; The Long Day Closes; Hiroshima, mon amour; La Jetée; Shoah.

Authorship & Cinema: Hitchcock and Renoir Alfred Hitchcock and Jean Renoir are commonly regarded as two of the greatest filmmakers in history, yet their cinematic styles stand in sharp contrast to one another.  In this course, we will survey the careers of these two directors, viewing a representative selection of their films and considering the national production contexts in which they worked.  Most importantly, we will engage in careful analysis of their works in order to understand the ways in which their approaches to film style resulted in sharply contrasting ideas of cinema and the world.  Films screened will include: The 39 Steps, Notorious, Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho (Hitchcock); Toni, The Crime of Monsieur Lange, Grande Illusion, Rules of the Game (Renoir).

Videographic Film and Media Studies Digital video technologies now enable film and media critics to “write” with the same materials that constitute their object of study: moving images and sounds. The rise of video essays means rethinking the rhetorical modes traditionally used in critical writing, and incorporating more aesthetic, poetic, and experimental elements alongside explanation and analysis. In this hands-on course (with no previous video editing experience required), we will both study and produce video essays, exploring how such work can produce new knowledge, create an aesthetic impact, and disseminate film & media criticism to a broader audience.

Aesthetics of the Moving Image How do films convey meaning, generate emotions, and work as an art form? What aspects of film are shared by television and videogames? This course is designed to improve your ability to watch, reflect on, and write about moving images. The course will be grounded in the analysis of cinema (feature films, documentaries, avant-garde, and animation) with special focus on film style and storytelling techniques. Study will extend to new audio-visual media as well, and will be considered from formal, cultural, and theoretical perspectives. Note to students: this course involves substantial streaming of films and television for assigned viewing.

Film Theory This course surveys the issues that have sparked the greatest curiosity among film scholars throughout cinema's first century, such as: What is the specificity of the film image? What constitutes cinema as an art? How is authorship in the cinema to be accounted for? Is the cinema a language, or does it depart significantly from linguistic coordinates? How does one begin to construct a history of the cinema? What constitutes valid or useful film research? Readings will include Epstein, Eisenstein, Bazin, Truffaut, Wollen, Mulvey, Benjamin, Kracauer, and others. (Formerly FMMC 0344)

Classic Hollywood/New Hollywood During the period know as “New Hollywood” (1967-76), American filmmakers routinely turned to classical genres as a way both to celebrate the films that had inspired them and to re-think their values and themes in light of the changes in American culture during that period.  In this class, we will focus on three film genres (detective, western, and gangster films) and will view classical versions and New Hollywood reworkings.  Films screened will include The Maltese Falcon (1940), Chinatown (1974), My Darling Clementine (1946), McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971), Little Caesar (1931), and The Godfather (1972), among others.

Cinema and Memory Depicting the experience of memory is a challenge that filmmakers have returned to repeatedly throughout cinema’s history.  In this course, we will screen films from around the world to explore the ways in which individual and cultural memory have found expression in cinema.  We will screen narrative features, documentaries, and experimental films as we consider the various aesthetic strategies filmmakers from different periods and cultures have used to portray the complex relationships between past and present, real and imagined.

International Cinema: Art of Ellipsis In 1936, film critic Roger Leenhardt declared, “cinema is the art of ellipsis.” But this claim seems to contradict our most basic understanding of film. After all, movies are about what we see, not about what we don’t. Or are they? In fact, Leenhardt was suggesting that the richest tradition in cinema explores the dynamic between the seen and the unseen, the shown and the unshown. In this course we will carefully study international films that effectively work this dynamic in terms of narrative, character, and most importantly, cinematic style. Films studied will include: Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game (France, 1939); Christian Petzold’s Barbara (Germany, 2012). Abbas Kiarostami’s Like Someone in Love (France/Iran/Japan, 2012); Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (US, 1959).

French New Wave Beginning in 1959 and continuing through the 1960s, dozens of young French cinephiles, thrilled by Hollywood genre movies and European art films, but disgusted with their own national cinema’s stodgy productions, took up cameras and began making films.  This movement, known as La Nouvelle Vague, remains one of the most exciting, inventive periods in cinema history.  This course focuses on the major films and directors (Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Alain Resnais) of the period and also gives consideration to the cultural, technological, and economic factors that shaped this movement.

Christian Keathley

Reviews and ratings for Christian Keathley at Middlebury College.Christian Keathley teaches Global Film Histories I, Cinema and Memory, Hitchcock & Renoir and more.  Explore top rated instructors and find the best for you.Is Christian Keathley good ? Find out on MiddCourses.

Keathley is fantastic-- certainly one of my favorites at Midd. This is a great class for those who are interested in watching some amazing films, as well as those who enjoy studying film from the authorship-side of things. You will be asked to compare director styles and themes with every film you watch, and learn to recognize similarities throughout. The classes are mostly discussion based and the reading is hardly ever referenced. There are three short essays that are very easy, and he is a fair grader too. Keathley himself is such a gem. he cares so much about film, but his students as well!

I loved this class and Professor Keathley's teaching style. He made the class super engaging and picked great movies for screening. I would definitely recommend taking aesthetics with him. We had to make a super short film for the midterm and a 5-minute video essay for the final, or a paper for the final. 

I've really enjoyed this course. Not only have I learned a lot about film theory and auteurship, but have really enjoyed learning from Professor Keathley. He is one of, if not the most, engaging professors I've had at Middlebury. 