I always teach entire films, usually by scheduling a couple (sometimes three) screenings a week. I encourage--sometimes require-- students to see the films twice (where I teach we have both three and four credit classes, with credits potentially "delinked" from contact hours, so if I can get four credits for students with only three contact hours, I don't feel at all shy about demanding a fair chunk of their time for screenings). I teach using a mix of film and video (all the films are available for individual analysis on video or disc). I think the collective viewing experience is important and I think viewing things on film is important. However, I also think its important for students to be aware of the different experiences and understandings their "movie-going" choices are likely to yield, so I usually assign at least one short paper in which they must describe and analyze the differences between watching a video and going to a movie (often this is a first, ungraded paper--it makes them think analytically and shows me some of the strengths and weaknesses of their writing abilities). Depending on the class and the amount of writing they are doing, I may have them do more of these "meta" or "contextual" essays. Often the students do their best work on these papers, because they are urged to take their experiences as a sort of evidence--but not their only or fully adequate evidence--for what they want to argue. They start to see how much of what they "choose" to do happens out of awareness, though not necessarily unconsciously, and how habit, or ingrained knowledge, effects what they make of the movies (whether Open City or Dumb and Dumber) they see (among other things). So finally, even if my students do see things on video (which I'm not especially happy about) or even in clips (if they miss a screening and only come to the class where we do close analysis), they can't leave my class unaware that there are differences between an entire film and a clip (or quotation) or between film and video. I hope they learn other things, too. Arthur Knight William & Mary ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]