From the futurist visions of early cinema to the analog computer experiments of the 1960s and 70s to today’s immersive CG spectacles, cinema and computer technologies have been rapidly integrating, resulting in profound and widespread changes in the ways movies are made, shown, and consumed. This course examines the long history of the computer’s relation to the cinema—as a prop, as a character, and as a tool for the creation of new types of images, narratives, and modes of reception. Examining a range of formal and thematic qualities of cinema in its analog and digital ages, this course addresses a set of questions about cinema’s relationship with computation and its related media (including the internet and gaming), the impact of digital technologies on notions of cinematic realism, and new understandings of distinctions between the professional, the independent, and the amateur. The course will examine works by major artists and filmmakers working with digital technologies (such as Varda, Lynch, and Panahi) from big-budget commercial production (in Hollywood, Europe, and Asia) to a variety of other modes (independent, documentary, experimental, installation video, and amateur video). [Tracks C, M, S]