Matthew Asprey Gear, author of At the End of the Street in the Shadow: Orson Welles and the City, is reviving his 12-week online course on Orson Welles this summer.
The Other Side of the Shadow: A New Look at Orson Welles begins July 19 and makes use of such films as Touch of Evil, The Other Side of the Wind and Chimes at Midnight, as well as lesser known projects like the unsold television pilot Fountain of Youth, the Filming Othello documentary and the TV episode In the Land of Don Quixote: Tempo di Flamenco.
‘I’ve been gratified by the positive responses to the Welles course,” Gear told Wellesnet. “Both newcomers to Welles and long-term fans have signed up. Many participants have gone on to join my other film studies courses on ‘70s cinema, Film Noir, Neo-Noir, the Western, and the French New Wave. Part of the fun for participants seems to be the unusual structure of the Welles course.”
The online course does not move through Welles’ movie career in chronological order. It begins with The Lady from Shanghai ends with Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.
“I approach Welles’s films thematically rather than chronologically,” Gear said. “We examine the classics, but we also put those movies in the context of Welles’ unfinished films and the unproduced screenplays I’ve researched in the archives. It is designed to challenge some of the conventional thinking about him.’
Each class includes a 50-minute lecture by Gear and a group discussion.
Introduced in 2020 and repeated last year, the online course is delivered via Google Meet.
The cost is $140 and details are available at matthewaspreygear.com
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