Mondays at 3 p.m.
Lectures by Carol Clover
PFA and the UC Berkeley Film Studies Program are pleased to copresent a film-lecture course open to the public as space permits. Lectures by Carol Clover, Professor in the Rhetoric and Scandinavian Departments, precede the films.
The courtroom drama is one of the most popular plot types in English-language film: there are trial melodramas, trial thrillers, trial documentaries, trial westerns, trial cartoons, trial science fiction, and even trial musicals. What is it about Anglo-American legal procedure that lends itself so readily to entertainment, especially moving-image forms? In this lecture course we concern ourselves with how cinema represents trials; what it shows and doesn't show; what social topics it takes up and doesn't take up; what legal issues are of interest; and the theatrical dimensions of trials: demeanor and lie detection, the jury, paranoia, confession, circumstantial evidence, and cameras in the courtroom.
-Carol Clover
Screenings and lectures are held in the PFA Theater, Bancroft @ Bowditch. We recommend advance tickets, which are, as always, available at the PFA box office, or charge-by-phone (510) 642-5249. Details on page 14.
Schedule for November and December
November 4
Sergeant Rutledge
(John Ford, U.S., 1960)
November 18
Cape Fear
(Martin Scorsese, U.S., 1991)
November 25
The Thin Blue Line
(Errol Morris, U.S., 1988)
December 2
A Matter of Life and Death
(Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, U.K., 1946)
