[originaltext] To get us started this semester, I’m going to spend the first

To get us started this semester, I’m going to spend the first two classes giving you background lectures about some basic cinematic concepts. Once you are a little more familiar with basic grim terminology, we will be ready to look at the history of movies in the United States. You will be expected to attend showings of films on Tuesday evening at 7 o’clock at Jennings Auditorium, that’s our lab. Then during our Wednesday seminar, we will discuss in depth the movie we saw the night before, We’re not covering silent movies in this course. We will begin with the first talking motion picture, The Jazz Singer, released in 1927. The next week we’ll be looking at The Gold Digger of 1933, a piece that is very representative of the escapist trend in films released during the Depression. Some of the films we will be watching will probably be new to you. Others you might have already seen on TV. However, I hope you will see even familiar films with a new eye. In the last three weeks of the course, we will be watching films from the 1980s, and you will choose one of them as the subject for an extensive written critique. We will talk more about the requirements of the critique later in the semester.