"Academy" of Motion Pictures: Exercises in Film Analysis

Abstract

This assignment sequence for American Voices: Tomboys in Time, includes preparatory work and three essays. It is designed to develop proficiency in the practice of formal film analysis through a set of tomboy films while posing a series of stylistic challenges. Beginning with a still image and progressing to full sequences and theoretical texts, it asks students to write about film in multiple ways and to construct arguments about the relationship between form and content, foundational texts in gender studies, critical work on tomboys, and various extradiegetic aspects of film