Classes - Matthew Ellis

The Birth of Cinephilia: Paris in the 1960s, taught by Matthew Ellis (Portland State University)

4 weeks, Tuesday evenings Jan 27-Feb 17, 2026

The Auteur Theory. Cahiers du Cinéma. André Bazin and The French New Wave critics-turned-directors. May 1968. Many cinephiles know a version of this origin myth of midcentury movie culture. But why, exactly, did a new way of looking at cinema emerge in postwar France starting following the end of the Second World War? What were the conditions that allowed a new generation of filmgoers to conceive of cinema as a project with a purpose, an ethic, or a proper way of living in relationship to the images that were beginning to proliferate on screens in an emerging consumer society? And why do cinephiles today still use many of the same concepts the postwar French critics popularized, living as we are in a world radically different from the one that gave rise to this story about film history?

Join us this January for a journey back to postwar France as we chart a deeper history of the rise of cinéphilia and film criticism alongside changing political, historical, and technological conditions in the postwar world system. We will read primary source criticism and history from the period, screen documentaries and films, and learn how Henri Langlois’ Cinémathèque Française was just as crucial to the rise of film culture as the influential Cahiers critics. Charting this story from the fifties through to 1968, we will place the rise of postwar French criticism in a more global historical trajectory, learn the truth behind the myth, and discover why France in the 1960s changed film culture forever—just not in the ways we often think. In the process, we will ask questions about the nature of film criticism today, and ask if our ideas on what it means to engage with the Seventh Art are too beholden to this period, or if we need to follow their lead and create a new cinephilia for our own.

Course Structure:

We meet on Tuesday evenings over Zoom from 8-9:30 PM EDT for four weeks from January 27-Feb 17. Each meeting will have optional readings and screenings available through the course’s splash page on cinejourneys.com, and will open with a prepared lecture and close with a period of open and moderated discussion.

Your one-time course fee of $100 gives you:

1. Access to the course’s live Zoom meetings and recordings (hosted on the cinejourneys platform).
2. Access to streaming films and selected readings for course materials.
3. A Weimar Cinema course packet prepared by yours truly, including a reading and screening list covering the period and ideas in question for further study.
4. An individual one-on-one meeting with me to develop ideas for your own interests or work.

Course Structure:

We meet on Tuesday evenings over Zoom from 8-9:30 PM EDT for four weeks from January 7-Feb 17. Each meeting will have optional readings and screenings available through the course’s splash page on cinejourneys.com, and will open with a prepared lecture and close with a period of open and moderated discussion.

Your one-time course fee of $100 gives you:

1. Access to the course’s live Zoom meetings and recordings (hosted on the cinejourneys platform).
2. Access to streaming films and selected readings for course materials.
3. A Birth of Cinephilia course packet prepared by yours truly, including a reading and screening list covering the period and ideas in question for further study.
4. An individual one-on-one meeting with me to develop ideas for your own interests or work.

Taught by Matthew Ellis (Portland State University)

Matthew Ellis (PhD, Brown University, 2021, Modern Culture and Media) is a writer, researcher, and artist based out of Portland, Oregon. Currently, he teaches film and media studies at Portland State University, and co-hosts the weekly cinema series, The Pacific Northwest Insurance Corporation Moviefilm Podcast. You can follow his work at his newsletter, Histories of the Present.