Be Good! Storytelling and Ethics in Hollywood Cinema - Day School 10.00-17.00 (with a lunch break 13.00-14.00) £45 or £40 for Members and Concessions Tutor: Peter Krämer ([email protected]) From Rick’s (Humphrey Bogart’s) ‘hill of beans’ speech at the end of Casablanca to ET’s farewell to Gertie – ‘Be good!’ –, many Hollywood films have memorably raised the question of what the morally right behaviour in a given situation might be and why this is so. Films have vividly brought to life how fictional characters (sometimes based on real people) understand the situations they find themselves in, with different characters perhaps coming to different understandings; what their often conflicting impulses are; how they eventually decide to act; and how they feel about, and judge, their actions and the consequences of these actions when they later look back on them. In this course, we will consider the stories of, and key scenes in, films ranging from Casablanca and Disney’s Bambi (both from 1942) to Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Schindler’s List (1993) and A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001). Through our discussions of these films we will explore what our ethical obligations not only to other people but also to animals and even thinking and feeling machines might be. To inform our discussions we may read the short story that A.I. is based upon and also excerpts from publications by the moral philosopher Peter Singer. About the tutor: Peter Krämer is a Senior Research Fellow in Cinema & TV in the Leicester Media School at De Montfort University (Leicester, UK). He is a regular guest lecturer at several other universities in the UK, Germany and the Czech Republic, has written or edited twelve academic books and has also co-authored an illustrated volume about American film for children. He has been involved in adult education for thirty-five years. Programmed in partnership with The Sir John Hurt Film Trust.