Overview
Cinema is often experienced through immediacy. We experience a wave of emotions and leave the theatre (or close our laptops) with the feeling that we simply “know” what a film means. Yet films are not transparent windows onto reality. Every image is composed, every cut is chosen, every narrative privileges certain perspectives while excluding others. More importantly, every act of viewing is shaped by cultural habits, socio-political carry-ons, and institutions that teach us what to notice and what to ignore. This course treats film viewing as a critical practice. Rather than asking whether films are “good” or “bad”, participants develop methods for describing, analysing, contextualising, and questioning cinematic images.
Syllabus
Week 1
Beyond Like and Dislike: Learning to sit with before interpreting
Inquiry
What happens when we resist the urge to immediately decide what a film means? Most viewers experience films as stories. Characters, emotions, and plots quickly become the focus while cinematic form disappears into the background. This week’s course slows perception. Participants learn to distinguish between observation and interpretation by describing shots, framing, camera movement, sound, editing, and duration before assigning narrative meaning into it
References
Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing. Penguin Books.
Week 2
Is Cinema a Mirror of Society
Inquiry
Cinema is often described as a reflection of society: a mirror of its values, anxieties, and aspirations. Yet films do more than document reality. They select, organise, and privilege particular ways of seeing while excluding others. Whether produced for entertainment, education, commerce, or the state, every film participates in shaping public imagination.
This week asks whether films inevitably carry ideas about the world, even when they appear politically neutral. Students examine cinema as a cultural form that can entertain, persuade, legitimise, and sometimes function as propaganda. Rather than treating propaganda as something limited to authoritarian regimes, the course explores it as a spectrum of persuasion found across cinema.
Particular attention will be given to the Indonesian context, where cinema has historically been intertwined with nation-building, censorship, political transitions, religious discourse, and commercial expectations. The objective is not to decide whether films are “political” or “neutral”, but to recognise that ideology is not simply about oppression/political propaganda. It’s about the social scripts that tell us who we ought to become.
References
-
Nichols, B. (2017). Introduction to documentary (3rd ed.). Indiana University Press.
-
Andini, K. (Director). (2021). Yuni [Film]. Fourcolours Films; Akanga Film Asia; Manny Films.
-
Kurosawa, K. (Director). (2008). Tokyo sonata [Film]. Entertainment Farm; Django Film.
Week 3
Cinema as Authorship… or Dictatorship: Who Is Speaking When We Watch a Film?
Inquiry
Following Week 2, where we examined cinema as a site of ideological construction (capable of reflecting, shaping, challenging, and normalising social values), this week shifts the question of meaning to a deeper level: who is producing these meanings in the first place?
This week explores authorship not as a simple matter of artistic expression, but as a contested space where meaning is produced, distributed, and sometimes constrained. In some contexts, authorship appears concentrated – associated with a director’s vision or national cinema identity – while in others it is dispersed across systems of production that include funding bodies, censorship regimes, platforms, and audience expectations.
Students are encouraged to move beyond the assumption that meaning originates from intention, and instead examine how cinematic voice is constructed through a negotiation between individual agency and structured realities.
Readings
-
Oppenheimer, J. (Director). (2012). The act of killing [Film]. Final Cut for Real.
-
Kiarostami, A. (Director). (1990). Close-up [Film]. Kanoon (Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults).
Week 4
Cinema and Institutions: Who Controls What Can Be Seen?
Inquiry
Following Week 3, where authorship was revealed as non-absolute, distributed, and sometimes performed, this week shifts attention from who speaks in cinema to the systems that determine who is allowed to speak in the first place – national institutions or postcolonial realities.
Cinema does not exist in a vacuum of creative intention. It is written, produced, funded, regulated, distributed, and archived within institutional frameworks that shape visibility. These include state policies, censorship systems, production companies, streaming platforms, festivals, critics, and educational institutions.
With this argument, cinema is not only a space of expression, but also a space of selection. Some voices are amplified, others are constrained, and many never reach circulation at all. Even when censorship is not explicit, institutional pressures shape what can be said, how it can be represented, and how far it can travel.
This week encourages participants to see institutions not as external background structures, but as active participants in the production of meaning and cultural memory.
Readings
-
Rizaldi, R. (Director). (2020a). Ghosts like us [Film]. Independent production.
-
Rizaldi, R. (Director). (2020b). Tellurian drama [Film]. Independent production.
-
Verhoeven, P. (Director). (1997). Starship troopers [Film]. TriStar Pictures.
Week 5
Interpretation and Its Limits: How Do We Read Films Without Owning Meaning?
Inquiry
By Week 3, authorship has been destabilised, and by Week 4, institutional control has been revealed. This creates a new problem: if meaning is produced across systems, contexts, and viewers, how do we interpret films responsibly?
This week addresses the tension between interpretation and over-interpretation. Students are introduced to the idea that while meaning is not fixed or owned by the author, it is also not infinitely flexible. Interpretation must still be grounded in the formal, historical, and contextual structures of the film.
Students learn to distinguish between interpretation that is supported by the film’s structure, and interpretation that is purely projected onto it.
Readings
-
Ishii, K. (Director). (2004). The taste of tea [Film]. Grasshoppa!
-
Akerman, C. (Director). (1976). News from home [Film]. Paradise Films; Unité Trois.
Week 6
Cinema, Value, and Power: Who Decides What Matters?
Inquiry
If cinema is shaped by perception (Week 1), ideology (Week 2), authorship (Week 3), and institutions (Week 4), and if interpretation itself is unstable yet constrained (Week 5), then a final question emerges: how is value assigned to films?
This week examines how value is constructed and legitimised. Students are encouraged to question why certain films are canonised, how taste is formed, and how cultural authority determines what counts as “important cinema”.
Readings
-
Soedjarwo, R. (Director). (2002). Ada apa dengan cinta? [Film]. Miles Films.
-
Wong, K.-W. (Director). (2000). In the mood for love [Film]. Block 2 Pictures; Jet Tone Production.
-
Miyazaki, H. (Director). (2001). Spirited away [Film]. Studio Ghibli.