If you're going to teach a course on French cinema in France, why not involve actually film making, too?
That was the idea for Tom Armbrecht, a professor of French, who is leading the UW-Madison Aix en Provence study abroad program this year.
Armbrecht is teaching a new course in France that focuses on French cinema with a special twist: the students produce actual short films.
For the class, Armbrecht purchased five HD video cameras thanks to a UW-Madison DoIT Engage grant which covered the costs of the equipment.
The course gives students a chance to analyze French films and critically respond in a new way -- the students produce short films in response to the films they are analyzing in class.
The course traces the importance of the director as "auteur" in films from several decades of French cinema.
Students choose a film that not only inspires them, but also several authorial "gestes" to incorporate in their own films as a way of demonstrating their understanding of visual narrative.
The project also encourages them to be artistically engaged the city in which they are spending their time abroad.
The Aix en Provence program is a joint venture with students from the University of Michigan and University of Indiana.