Tuesday, August 22, 2017

[043] ‘MTSU On the Record’ screens 1970s films for fall semester honors course


MURFREESBORO — The decade in which the direction of American motion pictures took a dramatically different artistic turn will be the subject of the next “MTSU On the Record” radio program.

Host Gina Logue’s interview with English professor and film aficionado Will Brantley will air from 9:30 to 10 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 22, and from 6 to 6:30 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 27, on WMOT-FM Roots Radio 89.5 and www.wmot.org.

Brantley will teach “American Film in the ’70s,” an honors interdisciplinary seminar, from 6 to 9 p.m. each Wednesday. It is open to students who have completed the general studies requirements in English and can be counted as three hours of upper-division English credit.

Film critics regard the 1970s as a halcyon period of creativity for American films as directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg came into their own.

Owing to the seeds of distrust that had been sown by the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, the films reflected a skepticism and tendency to challenge established views that prior films had not displayed.

“The studio system found itself in disarray and was willing to try new things and to turn power over to some filmmakers who wouldn’t have had that much power previously,” said Brantley. “They almost, to a fault, rejected the happy ending. They valued ambiguity. They valued raising questions as opposed to answering them.”

Scheduled screenings for the course include “Five Easy Pieces,” “Taxi Driver,” “The Deer Hunter,” “The Conversation,” “Nashville,” “The Last Picture Show,” “Cabaret,” and “Carrie.”

To hear previous “MTSU On the Record” programs, go to http://bit.ly/mtsu-otr.


For more information, contact Logue at 615-898-5081 or WMOT-FM at 615-898-2800.

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