How do movies represent stuff that can't really be filmed, stuff that defies visual representation? How do movies represent dreams, drugs, and death? Why do dream sequences in movies feel weird? How and why do films and other visual media choose to depart from the conventions of “realism”? What narrative pretenses allow for digressions into the phantasmagorical, the abstract and the sensuous, moments that complicate or even reject traditional conceptions of being, logic, space and time?

Through this course, we will explore the formal cinematic strategies with which artists and filmmakers render these "weird" moments and, more specifically, delve into the theoretical/philosophical implications of overturning normative cinematic visual regimes . We will be pulling from specific narrative pretexts that enable these departures, including death, insanity, drug-induced hallucination, the sublime, remembrance and dreamspaces, among others.

Each class, we'll reckon with one (short) bit of reading and one film that visualizes or somehow grapples with the core questions of the reading. Readings will include (brief) excerpts from works of film theory and philosophic thought more broadly.
Potential conceptual frameworks and subjects of emphasis for us might include marxism, psychoanalysis, existentialism, the black radical tradition, feminist theory, queer theory, and other strains of critical thought.

The course will be structured as a peer to peer seminar; as such, it will be primarily discussion-based. Brief presentations of the ideas our readings and texts raise may precede discussion and shape the ongoing conversations. There are no papers or exams; students will just have to produce one (1) double-spaced page of informal reflections on the course material once every two weeks in addition to a collaborative, low-stress final project. Films will be made available for at-home screenings on bCourses. Showing up to class willing to chat about movies will comprise the vast majority of the academic labor for this class. 2 unexcused absences a semester will be permitted.