Richard Pena

Pena is super knowledgeable and would probably be a great guy to grab a beer with. That said, this class can drag. Some of the movies are painful to sit through, and lectures are only attention-grabbing every once in a while. This is definitely still a better experience than Cinema History I, though, so if you're majoring in film I would definitely recommend this one as your early cinema history requirement. One MASSIVE note: there is soooooo much writing for this class. You write a 2-3 page essay on each movie you watch and submit them in sets (write these weekly, do NOT let them pile up right before the set's due date!!!! you will want to die!!!!!!). Then the final is 3 essays, each 3 pages. It's a lot...I did some calculations and found that I wrote quite literally 50 pages of content for this course. Luckily the grading isn't too harsh, but still, it's absurd.

Pena's classes, I've taken two now, are head-bashingly boring. He simply reads off slides, with a bunch of useless facts and figures that you will never use again. He always takes role call, which is fine but does so on average 3-4 minutes before class, which is incredibly frustrating as lectures have been in Lenfest (if classes ever go back to in-person). He often pauses for questions or comments but gets annoyed when the student actually asks a question that does not afford him to show off his vast amounts of film knowledge and anecdotes, and god forbid if the comment does not fully corresponds to his interpretations. Personally, I believe he wants to be less of a professor with actual discourse, and more he just wants an audience to be amazed by him. (Also, the man signed that Polanski petition back in 2009, so let's ruminate on that.)

Richard Pena is a really knowledgeable professor to be sure. However, the course is poorly constructed. Each lecture feels like a random set of facts about a certain film or director with a few historical facts thrown in there. I also hate to say this but the auditors in this class, who make up surprisingly half of the class, are super distracting. Most of them are older, which isn’t fundamentally an issue, but they treat the course like a FILM CLUB. To their credit, they aren’t that far off. This class feels less like a film history class due to the content of the course and how it’s presented. However, they frequently make irrelevant comments in class and ask pointless questions. All this being said, the class is fairly straightforward (easy if you will). There’s only four sets of papers/film responses. Show up for every class and screening and you’re okay. TLDR: This class doesn’t feel like a real history class but it’s pretty easy to get a good grade if you show up to everything and turn in your work on time.

I loved Professor Pena. He is a really knowledgeable guy and truly loves film. He made time to meet with me in office hours and wanted me to do really well. His classes are primarily made up of grad students, so the conversation was always really good. Sometimes his views are a bit outdated and his movie choices as well, but he always tied them back to the evolution of cinema as a whole. If you are a film major, I definitely suggest this course. I'm not a film major and took the course, but really found myself wanting to become a film major over the duration of the course because Pena goes into the history of film more than the technical aspects and it really made it an amazing time. There's a lot of work for this class, but it really added to the depth of the course, so it didn't feel painful.

Like the other reviews said, this is primarily a history class. Not just a history of films or style, but literally a history of the country or culture that produced each film and the effects that they may have had on the filmmaker. Some people may find that interesting, but others will find it very tedious. Strangely, all of the papers and the final focus on more traditional aspects of film. So unless you go out of your way to incorporate history and culture into your work, the lecture will have very little relevance on the rest of the course. Still, the films were well chosen and Pena is truly encyclopedic in his knowledge of film. Not a class I would take if I wasn't a film major, but it's manageable.

very specific class but really enjoyed the pacing of assignments with the thesis being due months after the semester ended, so you have time to really work on your research and feel good about it instead of frantically writing a 25 page paper in the middle of finals. Really interesting readings as well and Peña is so helpful

I learn both film knowledge and how to write film essays. For the latter, I highly recommend.

Professor Pena is one of the most interesting and knowledgable professors I have ever had. He is extremely passionate about what he teaches, and it shines through in his lectures.

So much about the history of film in this time period.

10 2-3 page essays. One for each of the first 10 films, but collected in packs of 4 or 3. 200 pages of reading a week, but you go over them all in class so you don't need to read them A final assignment where you answer 3 questions, which was really doable