Winter 2019

This seminar will engage Europe as a creative laboratory for cinema. We will explore diverse mediums in moving image arts including video, photochemical film, and installation. Through a combination of coursework and visits to film festivals, artist-run spaces, studios, galleries, and museums, students will expand their understanding of contemporary cinema.

Students will develop technical and conceptual skills, and practice both collaborative and independent approaches to cinema production. Specialized workshops will introduce students to new tools for their own creative projects.

• To broaden knowledge of contemporary cinema practices
• To develop technical and conceptual skills in media production
• To make creative work drawing on experiential learning
• To prepare students for lives as working artists and/or scholars through contact with filmmakers, programmers, academics, and critics
• To expand students’ sense of the world and their place in it

This seminar is open to all Carleton students, but preference will be given to those with a demonstrated interest in cinema production. Students are encouraged to take CAMS 111: Digital Foundations in advance of the program. Digital Foundations provides important technical and conceptual background for the creative projects students will complete in Europe. Students without CAMS 111 are encouraged to apply and discuss their interests with Program Director Laska Jimsen.

18 Credits

CAMS 290: Cultural and Technological Perspectives on Contemporary European Cinema (6 credits)

Directed readings over winter break will familiarize students with key cultural history and context, as well as technologies we will encounter on the trip. Students will apply these concepts to the places and artists we encounter through a series of short response papers.

Instructor: Laska Jimsen

CAMS 267: Exploring Cinema in Europe (6 credits)

Experiential learning is at the heart of this program; students will engage directly with contemporary filmmakers and arts organizations through film screenings, studio visits, and workshops. Blog posts will provide opportunity for synthesis and reflection.

Instructor: Laska Jimsen

CAMS 268: Cinema Production Workshop (6 credits)

This course will combine classes taught by faculty director Laska Jimsen with specialized workshops by filmmakers and media artists in the cities we visit. Workshops will draw on strengths of the CAMS production curriculum, including a focus on form/content, sound/image, and theory/practice relationships, while introducing students to production practices not currently offered at Carleton. Each student will produce individual and collaborative exercises.

Instructor: Laska Jimsen

Language of Instruction

English

Laska Jimsen, Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies

Professor Jimsen teaches Digital Foundations, Nonfiction, Animation, Experimental Film & Video, and Junior/Senior Production Workshop. She works across nonfiction forms from video documentary to experimental 16mm filmmaking. Her films and videos have screened at festivals and venues including Ann Arbor, Athens, IC Docs, MadCat, Los Angeles Filmforum, and Walker Art Center. Laska is a recent recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in Media Arts and a Jerome Foundation Film & Video Grant.

Apartments, hotels, hostels

Students will stay in double, triple or quadruple rooms in a carefully selected residential hotels or international student housing.

The seminar will spend roughly three weeks in Berlin and Lisbon each, and three weeks in another European city. Film screenings, studio visits, and workshops will supplement coursework. While we may take an occasional side trip outside our three cities, such trips will be neither frequent nor extensive. Where possible, the seminar will designate an open long weekend in each city so that students wishing to travel elsewhere may do so at their own expense. There will be a 5-day independent travel break between two of the cities.

Program dates roughly correspond to the Carleton academic term. Specific dates will be communicated to program participants.

All Carleton-sponsored 10-week off-campus study programs charge the Carleton comprehensive fee, which includes instruction, room and board, group excursions, public transportation, medical and evacuation insurance, travel assistance, and most cultural events.

Students are responsible for books and supplies, passports and visas (when required), transportation to and from the program sites, and personal expenses and travel during the seminar. Students will receive a program-specific Additional Cost Estimate at the time of acceptance.

Student financial aid is applicable as on campus. See the Off-Campus Studies website for further information on billing, financial aid, and scholarships.

No meetings or deadlines are available at this time. Please check back later.