To get us started this semester I am going tospend the first two classes giving you backgroundlectures about some basic cinematic concepts. Onceyou are a little more familiar with basic filmterminology， we will be ready to look at the history ofmovies in the United States. You'll be expected to attend showing of films on Tuesday eveningsat 7 o'clock in Jennings Auditorium. That's our lab. Then during our Wednesday seminar， we'lldiscuss in depth the movie we saw the night before. We are not covering silent films in thiscourse. We will begin with the first talking motion picture， The Jazz Singer， released in 1927.The next week， we'll be looking at The Gold Diggers of 1933， a piece that is veryrepresentative of the escapist trend in films released during the depression. Some of thefilms we will be watching will probably be new to you， like Frank Capra's Why We Fight. Othersyou might have already seen on TV like Rebel without A Cause starring James Deane， or StanleyCooper's Doctor's Strange Love. However， I hope you see even familiar film with new eye. In thelast three weeks of the course， we will be watching films from the 1980s and you'll choose oneof them as a subject for an extensive written critique. We'll talk more about the requirementsof the critique later in this semester.