Images, films and society

Teacher(s)

Tousignant Nathalie;

Language

French

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :

1. At the end of this course, the student will make critical use of the images present and produced in a given space-time and the subsequent use of these images; 2. He/she will be able to establish the critical provenance of these images by taking into account the critical, historical, aesthetic and technical dimensions of the iconic trace; 3. He/she will be able to exploit the content using the concepts of iconic language; 4. He/she will be able to decode the representations referring to the imaginary of the period studied and of the contemporary period; 5. He/she will be able to identify the representativeness of these images in a synchronic and comparative approach, particularly in terms of micro-history; 6. He/she will be able to highlight the contribution of this type of trace to the knowledge of the society studied in its spatio-temporal referents.

Content

1. First, a brief overview of the evolution of still and moving images highlights the technological contribution of the medium: how, over the last hundred years or so, have moving images helped to capture contemporary life? How do they complement other images or written or constructed documents? This section ends with an analysis of the relevance of McLuhan's aphorism ‘The medium is the message’ and vice versa.
2. Secondly, the conceptual contribution of the language sciences to the analysis of the moving image will be put into historical perspective so as to establish a basic vocabulary that can be understood and assimilated through practical exercises. All these notions will be acquired inductively. They will be supplemented by vocabulary specific to the cinema, so that each camera movement can be identified, the editing spotted and analysed, and the image-sound relationship decoded.
3. In the third stage, the historian's work integrates the images, participating in the documentary or fiction film. What contribution does this source make to understanding contemporary society? What is the role of the historian in relation to the historical documentary or genre film? What is the place of verisimilitude and the material accuracy of the facts depicted?

Teaching methods

Ex-cathedra exposes

Evaluation methods

Oral examination, based on preparatory work analysing an image chosen by the student and approved by the professor

Online resources

Course supports, notes, outlines and illustrations are available on Moodle and Teams

Bibliography

Tous les supports de cours (bibliographie, références des corpus traités, chapitres et articles à lire) sont mis à la disposition de l’étudiant par l’intermédiaire de la plate-forme de cours Moodle.

Faculty or entity

> PHLB