Universitat Internacional de Catalunya
Audiovisual Trends
Teaching staff
Introduction
From an artistic and multidisciplinary perspective, this course promotes reflection on contemporary audiovisual narrative and expression.
Pre-course requirements
There are no prerequisites.
Objectives
Designed for students in the fiction and non-fiction tracks of the 3rd year of the Audiovisual Communication Bachelor's Degree, "Audiovisual Trends" builds upon the specific knowledge of each specialization to establish new artistic meeting points that enhance students' critical thinking and provide them with theoretical tools for the development and analysis of various types of audiovisual projects.
Competences/Learning outcomes of the degree programme
- 01 - The ability to adapt to varying circumstances
- 02 - The ability to understand, accept criticism and correct errors
- 03 - The ability to administer and manage human and technical resources
- 04 - The ability to work in a team and autonomously
- 05 - The ability to organise time and workspace
- 06 - The ability to develop academic rigour, responsibility, ethics and professionalism
- 07 - The ability to apply the deontology and respect for the audiovisual sector
- 08 - The ability of critical analysis, synthesis, concretion and abstraction
- 09 - The ability to objectify, quantify and interpret (data, statistics, empirical evidence )
- 10 - The ability to confront difficulties and resolve problems
- 11 - The ability to generate debate and reflection
- 12 - The ability to meet deadlines, develop the ability to be punctual and respect for human, technical and material resources
- 13 - The ability to create spoken and written communication
- 14 - Knowledge and mastery of rhetoric and oratory to communicate own ideas
- 15 - Knowledge and mastery of body language and techniques for public speaking
- 16 - The ability to manage, analysis and reflect on content
- 18 - The capacity and development of general culture and interest in social events
- 19 - The ability of informative documentation
- 20 - Knowledge and mastery of bibliographic media
- 21 - Knowledge and mastery of the digital culture
- 22 - Knowledge and mastery of the distinction between opinion and information / colloquial and cultured register
- 23 - The ability to prioritize newsworthy events and contrast information
- 24 - The ability to plan and organize both short term and long term projects
- 25 - The ability to maximize creative development
- 26 - The ability to develop a sense of taste and perfection in the aesthetics and finalization of projects
- 27 - The ability to adapt to distinct audio visual publics and markets.
- 34 - The ability to know and respect the different roles of the artistic and technical teams
- 35 - The ability to contextualize and critically analyze the products of the audiovisual industry
- 37 - The ability to contextualize and critically analyze the organizational structure of global communication
- 41 - The ability to know how the distinct elemental agencies of the audio visual sector function
- 42 - The ability to distinguish, analyze and dominate the distinct genres and formats of television, film and radio
- 43 - the ability to create scripts for film, television and radio according to the demands of the genre
- 44 - The ability to adapt to new audiovisual formats
- 45 - The ability to know and dominate the techniques of audiovisual narrative.
- 50 - The ability to adapt, understand and apply the expressive possibilities of new technologies and future changes
- 53 - Lingustic ability in Catalan, Spanish and English
- 54 - The ability to skillfully manage the literature, terminology and linguistic structures of the English language related to the field of communication.
Learning outcomes of the subject
Adopting new analytical criteria.
Increasing reflective and critical capacity.
Discovering new theoretical and artistic references.
Syllabus
BLOCK 1 (led by Andreu Arribas)
Topic 1: What Is Fiction?
Concept of “literary theory.” Philosophy and fiction. Poetics. Aristotle’s critique of Platonic metaphysics: the aporia of the infinite third and the aporia of movement. The positive valuation of the empirical world. The causal explanation of true reality. Mimesis and the definition of poetry.
The cinema of Richard Linklater. Biography. Is he an auteur? The state of cinema in the late 1980s. Return to 1970s independence. Unproductive idleness, absence of plot, wandering, dispersion.
Topic 2: What Is Cinema?
Ontology of the photographic image. Embalming in the plastic arts. Being and appearances. Resemblance and realism. Painting, photography, cinema.
Auteurism: recognizing a familiar voice or experiencing the world of the individual work? Are films worlds or stories? Experience or erudition? Cinephilia: recovering the importance of films, their experimentation, empiricism. Phenomenology: experiencing sounds and images. Benedetto Croce: “poetry represents only itself.” Experiencing or theorizing: science needs art; theory needs experience.
Topic 3: What Is Criticism?
Part I
Visual motifs as a critical tool for reading cinema. Visual memory. Forms of argument. Spectator recognition. Scenes with temporality.
Before the grave: tracing the cinema of John Ford through the motif of the grave (from She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949] to The Searchers [1956], via Straight Shooting [1917], Judge Priest [1934], and Young Mr. Lincoln [1939]), passing through Sophocles (Oedipus at Colonus), the Christian pictorial tradition of Noli me tangere, Novalis and eighteenth-century Romantic literature, Hitchcock (Vertigo, 1958), Mankiewicz (The Barefoot Contessa, 1954), Leone (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1966), Eastwood (Unforgiven, 1992), and Tarantino (Kill Bill Vol. 2, 2004).
Part II
The philosophy of history for the historicization of audiovisual trends. Nietzsche’s concept of “critical history”: the historical (monumental history and antiquarian history); the ahistorical and the supra-historical (critical history). The application of Nietzschean “critical history” to Christology by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI: interpretation includes the historical component and the relationship between past and present. The application of Nietzschean “critical history” to art history by Georges Didi-Huberman: Panofsky reads Kant (the document), Didi-Huberman reads Freud (the symptom); the reconfiguration of the past in the image (anachronism).
From the crisis of the action-image to the energy-image: Jean-Baptiste Thoret’s critical rereading of 1970s American cinema. Deleuze’s Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Bergson’s two theses on movement. The perception-image, affection-image, and action-image. The crisis of the action-image.
Jean-Baptiste Thoret’s energy-image in his critical rereading of 1970s American cinema: the stripping-down of classical cinema and the aesthetic, historical, and political necessity of showing violence.
Topic 4: Applying Critical History to the Western
The tragic hero, the philosophy of the limit, and the survival of the image in Fran Benavente’s critical rereading of the western. Cinematic filiation vs. modernity (Histoire(s) du cinéma). Transmission of legacy (Deadwood). The returning body (Once Upon a Time in the West, Kill Bill Vols. I and II). The tragic hero (Shane, My Darling Clementine). Explosiveness, temporality, and the shrouding of the genre (The Wild Bunch; For a Few Dollars More; The Shooting, Ride the Whirlwind). The recovery of the hero from the grave (Unforgiven, The Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider). The ashes of the genre (Dead Man).
BLOCK 2 (led by Ana María Castillo)
Topic 5: VIDEO ART
From Nam June Paik to Bill Viola. Video art cuts across art, cinema, and the museum, becoming mediation. 3 sessions.
Topic 6: FASHION
The fashion film. Directors, actors, and brands. Events: space as spectacle. Market evanescence: short videos, AI, and new formats. 3 sessions.
Topic 7: OMNIPRESENT AND FUNCTIONAL IMAGE
Using and creating, participating and being absorbed. Meaning-making or the immanence of experience on the social and digital screen. 3 sessions.
TRANSVERSAL. DRAMATIC MECHANISMS IN THE AGE OF IMAGE-EXCESS.
Fracture and fragmentation within a globalizing discourse: space and time.
Teaching and learning activities
In person
Individual Assessed Assignment for the First Block of the Course
Final Essay (40%)
The student will select three films by the same filmmaker and write an essay of 1,500 to 2,000 words. Assessment will take into account the essayistic nature of the text, its originality, the student’s ability to analyze the films starting from their images and to relate them to one another, as well as the research undertaken and the use of bibliography—both the material studied in class and additional sources independently consulted in relation to the chosen topic.
As with all assignments, final projects, and exams, the University’s spelling and language criteria apply. Likewise, ethical and academic anti-plagiarism standards will be enforced.
Final essay requirements:
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Times New Roman 12, justified text, 1.5 line spacing.
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The essay must not include a cover page and must be written in Word, Pages, or a similar program.
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The essay must have a title and a subtitle chosen by the student.
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The essay must be submitted in PDF format with the following filename: Last name 1 Last name 2, First name_FINAL.pdf.
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The images necessary to understand the analysis must be included in the body of the text.
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The bibliography used must be included at the end of the paper.
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A minimum of five references from specialized bibliography (books or academic articles) must be included. Web articles may be cited, but they will not count toward the required five references.
Assessment System for the Second Block of the Course
1. Audiovisual practice: creation of an innovative product (20%)
GROUP WORK: Students must produce an original, experimental, and creative audiovisual piece linked to the FASHION axis of Block 2.
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The format is open.
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Particular emphasis will be placed on formal innovation, conceptual coherence, critical use of the image, and the ability to engage in dialogue with the theoretical debates addressed in class.
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The works will be screened collectively, encouraging discussion and shared reflection.
2. Analysis and oral presentation of a work (20%)
GROUP WORK: Students must select a work related to the field of fashion (fashion film, audiovisual campaign, artistic piece, event-as-spectacle, etc.) and deliver an oral presentation with a critical analysis.
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The presentation must contextualize the work and analyze its visual, narrative, and symbolic strategies, as well as its relationship with the market, the spectacularization of space, and the evanescence of formats.
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Assessment will consider analytical ability, clarity of presentation, appropriate use of theoretical concepts, and critical argumentation.
3. Final project: analytical article on the excess of images (20%)
As a conclusion to the block, students will produce—individually—an analytical article focused on the issue of the excess of images in contemporary culture.
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The text must articulate theoretical reflection and critical analysis, connecting the contents of the block with concrete examples from the audiovisual, artistic, or digital fields.
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Assessment will value conceptual depth, argumentative coherence, capacity for synthesis, and the quality of academic writing.
| TRAINING ACTIVITY | ECTS CREDITS |
|---|---|
| Lectures. In lectures, lecturers/professors not only transmit content or knowledge, but also, and above all else, attitudes, motivation, skills and values, etc. They also ensure that participants can express their opinions and arguments to the other students. | 1.5 |
| Focused Praxis. Handing in occasional exercises to learn theory through practice. | 0.5 |
| Coaching. Monitoring how students learn the content of the subject, either individually or in groups. In the coaching sessions, mistakes will be corrected, queries answered, and exercises and activities to achieve the established objectives will be suggested. | 0.5 |
| Seminar. This activity will consist of taking an in-depth look at specific up-to-date topics in a monographic manner-in some cases these topics will have been debated socially-, via active work in small groups. | 1.5 |
Evaluation systems and criteria
In person
In all assignments, the university’s orthographic and anti-plagiarism regulations apply.
Practical Work Block 1
40%
Practical Work Block 2
60%
Final Exam
60%, only for those who have failed the practical work during the semester in either of the two blocks. It will be a theoretical exam covering all the contents of the semester.
In the second examination sitting and in subsequent ones, assessment will consist of an exam.
Bibliography and resources
Balló, Jordi. Imágenes del silencio. Los motivos visuales en el cine. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1995.
Balló, Jordi y BERGALA, Alain (eds). Motivos visuales del cine. Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2016.
Benavente, Fran. El héroe trágico en el western: el género y sus límites. Sevilla: Athenaica Ediciones, 2017.
Deleuze, Gilles. La imagen-movimiento. Estudios sobre cine 1. Barcelona: Paidós, 1986.
DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges. «Pregunta formulada». En: Ante la imagen. Pregunta formulada a los fines de la historia del arte. Murcia: Cendeac, 2010, pp. 11-19.
DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges. «Apertura: La historia del arte como disciplina anacrónica». En: Ante el tiempo. Historia del arte y anacronismo de las imágenes. Buenos Aires: Adriana Hidalgo, 2011, pp. 29-97. Elena, A. (1999). Los cines Periféricos. Paidós: Barcelona.
Elsaesser, T. (2006) “Early Film History and Multi-Media. An Archaeology of Possible Futures?” en Hui Kyong, W & Keenan T. (Eds.) New Media Old Media., Routledge: Nueva York.
Foucault, Michel. «Nietzsche, Freud, Marx». En: Nietzsche, Freud, Marx. Barcelona: Anagrama, 1981, pp. 27-50.
Guerra, C., Steyerl, H., Fernandes, J. (2015). Hito Steyerl. Duty-free art. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.
Jameson, F. (1995). La estética geopolítica: cine y espacio en el sistema mundial. Paidós: Barcelona.
Jullier, L. (2004). La imagen digital. De la tecnología a la estética. La Marca: Buenos Aires.
Kuspit, D. (2006). Arte digital y videoarte. Transgrediendo los límites de la representación. Círculo de Bellas Artes: Madrid.
Lipovetsky, G., Serroy, J. (2009). La pantalla global. Cultura mediática y cine en la era hipermoderna. Anagrama: Barcelona. Col. Argumentos
Meigh-Andrews, C. (2006). A History of Video Art. The Development of Form and Function. Berg: Oxford and New York.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Sobre la utilidad y el perjuicio de la historia para la vida (Intempestiva II). Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1999.
Oudart, Jean-Pierre. «La sutura». En: Banda aparte, nº 6, 1997, pp. 51-63.
Pinto Veas, I. (2010). La imagen simulacro, laFuga, 11.
Quintana, A. (2011). Después del cine. Imagen y realidad en la era digital. Acantilado: Barcelona.
Ratzinger, Joseph/Benedicto XVI. La infancia de Jesús. Barcelona: Planeta, 2012.
Rosenbaum, J. y Martin, A. (2011). Mutaciones del cine contemporáneo. Errata Naturae: Madrid.
Russo, E. (2009). “Lo viejo y lo nuevo, ¿qué es del cine en la era del post-cine?” en Jorge La Ferla (comp.), Artes y medios audiovisuales: Un estado de situación II. Las prácticas mediáticas pre digitales y post analógicas, Buenos Aires, Aurelia Rivera, Nueva Librería, 2008.
Sánchez, S. (2013). Hacia una imagen no-tiempo. Deleuze y el cine contemporáneo. Ediciones de la Universidad de Oviedo: Oviedo.
Sedeño Valdellós, A. (2011). Historia y estética del videoarte en España. Comunicación Social: Zamora.
Steyerl, H. (2014). Los condenados de la pantalla. Caja Negra: Buenos Aires. Col. Futuros próximos.
Stoichita, V. (2006). Simulacros. El efecto Pigmalion: de Ovidio a Hitchcock. Ed. Siruela: Madrid.
Thoret, Jean-Baptiste. Le cinéma américain des annés 70. París: Cahiers du cinéma, 2009.
Weinrichter, A. (ed.) (2007). La forma que piensa. Tentativas en torno al cine-ensayo. Festival Punto de Vista: Navarra.