Cityscapes in Animation
| Code | Completion | Credits | Range | Language Instruction | Semester |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 309CA | credit | 1 | 2 lecture hours (45 min) of instruction per week, 7 to 12 hours of self-study | English | winter |
Subject guarantor
Name of lecturer(s)
Department
The subject provides Department of Animation
Contents
Course Description
The course aims to explore the relationship between architecture and cinema. The relationship is reciprocal, with architecture influencing cinema through real-world architectural concepts that transit into fictional worlds, and cinema shaping public perception, experience, and design of architectural spaces. Additionally, both fields share a number of techniques like planning, sketches, models and manipulation of light and space. We will focus on this overlap specifically in animation throughout the former Eastern Bloc, where countless works engaged with the socialist-style transformation of city spaces from diverse perspectives. The goal is to examine how the prefabricated concrete housing, i.e. the model of architecture that dominated in the region between 1950 and 1990 and that radically altered the cities' social and spatial organization as well as visual appearance, operates in the narratives of Czechoslovak, Polish, Hungarian, Russian, and Estonian animated film.
The course meets biweekly, starting on October 6th.
Course Requirements
Students are expected to read the texts assigned for each class in the syllabus and actively participate in discussions. They will also prepare a presentation on a related topic of their choice. The final assignment has a flexible format; it can be a four-page essay or the equivalent in the form of an audiovisual essay, interview, podcast, etc.
Learning outcomes
Students are expected to read the texts assigned for each class in the syllabus and actively participate in discussions. They will also prepare a presentation on a related topic of their choice. The final assignment has a flexible format; it can be a four-page essay or the equivalent in the form of an audiovisual essay, interview, podcast, etc.
Prerequisites and other requirements
none
Literature
Preliminary Reading
Baratto, Romullo. 2022. How Architecture Speaks Through Cinema. https://www.archdaily.com/872754/how-architecture-speaks-through-cinema
Humphrey, Caroline. 2005: Architecture and Soviet imagination. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 11(1), 39-58.
Jachymek, Karol. 2019. Quarterly of the Polish Film Academy 3. https://akademiapolskiegofilmu.pl/pl/historia-polskiego-filmu/artykuly/zofia-oldak-wladczyni-przedmiotow/688#k24.
Krzosek-Hołody, Magdalena. 2019. City. Mass. Machine. Urban Dystopia and the Nostalgia for Nature in Polish Animated Film of the Post-War Era. In Propaganda, Ideology, Animation. Twisted Dreams of History, edited by Olga Bobrowska, Michał Bobrowski, and Bogusław Zmudziński. Kraków: Wydawnictva AGH.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991 [1974]. The Production of Space. Oxford UK and Cambridge US: Blackwell.
Lehkoživová, Irena, Lucie Skřivánková and Rostislav Švácha, eds. 2018. The Paneláks: Twenty-Five Housing Estates in the Czech Republic. Prague: Museum of Decorative Arts.
Näripea, Eva. 2012. „National Space, (Trans)National Cinema: Estonian Film in the 1960s.“ In Anikó Imré (ed.), A Companion to Eastern European Cinemas (pp. 244-265). West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Vidler, Anthony. 2000. Cambridge, MA, London: The MIT Press.
Zarecor, Kimberley E. 2020. Architecture in series. In A. Skrodzka, X. Lu, and K. Marciniak (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures (pp. 44-65). New York: Oxford University Press.
Filmography
Fedor Khitruk: Story of a Crime (1961, 20 min)
Zofia Oldak: The Plumbers (1961, 13 min)
Andrei Khrzhanovsky: There Lived Kozyavin (Zhil byl Koziavin, 1966, 9 min)
Elbert Tuganov: The Park (1966, 7 min)
Jerzy Kalina: Seashell (Muszla, 1975, 11 min)
Daniel Szczechura The Leap (Skok, 1978, 4 min)
Zdeněk Smetana: The End of the Cube (Konec krychle, 1979, 5 min)
Jiří Barta: The Design (Projekt, 1981, 6 min)
Zbigniew Rybczynski: Tango (1981, 8 min)
Hieronym Neumann: Block of Flats (Blok, 1982, 9 min)
Hieronim Neumann: The Event (Zdarzenie, 1988, 9 min)
Éva Darabos: Bye Little Block! (Bye, kis panelom!, 2019, 9 min)
Max Hattler: Serial Parallels (2019, 9 min)
Yann Chapotel: Inside (2020, 6 min)
Xenia Smirnov: Balconies (Balcony, 2024, 5 min)
Evaluation methods and criteria
Students are expected to read the texts assigned for each class in the syllabus and actively participate in discussions. They will also prepare a presentation on a related topic of their choice. The final assignment has a flexible format; it can be a four-page essay or the equivalent in the form of an audiovisual essay, interview, podcast, etc.
Note
Department of Film Studies
Faculty of Arts, Charles University
Nám. Jana Palacha 1/2, Prague 1
Room 429
Mondays 10:50-14:05 (biweekly)
Fall Semester 2025
Schedule for winter semester 2025/2026:
|
06:00–08:0008:00–10:0010:00–12:0012:00–14:0014:00–16:0016:00–18:0018:00–20:0020:00–22:0022:00–24:00
|
|
|---|---|
| Mon |
|
| Tue |
|
| Wed |
|
| Thu |
|
| Fri |
|
| Date | Day | Time | Tutor | Location | Notes | No. of paralel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | 10:50–14:05 | Jana Rogoff | Room 429 Praha - prostory mimo objekty AMU |
parallel1 |
Schedule for summer semester 2025/2026:
The schedule has not yet been prepared
The subject is a part of the following study plans
- Animation - Bachelor_2020 (Elective subjects)
- Animation - Master_2021 (Elective subjects)