Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Hello! My name is Paul Montone, and I'll be teaching ENG 195, Film as Art, an animated film studies course, Winter 2026. If you have questions, please email me at paul.montone@pcc.edu

This is an "online with scheduled meetings" course, meaning that your studies (viewing the films, reviewing lecture notes, participating in weekly responses and discussions) will take place online through the course D2L page and additional lectures and group learning activities will take place in Zoom. Once a week, on Wednesdays, from 6PM to 7:50PM, we'll meet through Zoom to discuss the films assigned and discuss and work together as a class.

If you sign up for the class, be sure to attend the first Zoom session and complete the first week activities, or you may be marked as a "no show" and thus removed from the roster.

The focus of the course is animated arts (animation studies), which means that in this film course, we will examine the cinematic language of animated feature films and explore a range of stylistic techniques which define the medium.

Our reading and viewing will introduce us to cultural theory, contextual research, and critical analysis that forms the basis of animation studies. As such, our focus will include hand-drawn, stop motion, CGI (computer-generated imagery), and mixed-mode feature films that share a broader set of theoretical principles that shape animation narrative. As we learn terms relevant to discussing the artistic, stylistic, and directorial choices made by those artists whose works we study, we’ll also investigate how the cinematic language of animation works to convey themes and issues in a singularly unique way. In doing so, we will develop our own contexts and strategies for reading and understanding a wide range of animated works.

Students may be required to access at least one film for viewing on their own, but I will do my best to have all films available online through the course's D2L shell, which will be provided with the cost of the course.

Films viewed previous terms include Loving Vincent, WALL-E, Grave of the Fireflies, Spirited Away, Coco, May and Max, Persepolis, Tokyo Godfathers, Waltz with Bashir, The Wolf House, among others. I try to add or change a film or two each term.

Please note that many of the works we'll view this term will be foreign language films, which will stream with English subtitles. Also note that some of the films we will view contain subject matter that may be a bit challenging, such as those with depictions of war violence. I will provide content warnings for any films that may need them.

Please feel free to reach out with any questions. 

Zoom; Google Drive and Google docs