I really liked Cohen. He's really passionate about what he teaches and tries drawing some really crazy cinematographic connections/conclusions that sometimes blew my mind. Other times his lectures were dry but overall really liked the material he taught and how he taught it. I took this pre-pandemic so im not sure what its like now, but we had two tests(essay response type), the first he really prepares you for if you pay mild attention and the second he literally tells you exactly which two questions he may give you as essay response, and then when we showed up he actually just gave us the option to do whichever one we wanted. Final project was a powerpoint and a video. He analyzed the movies a lot like you would hear an english professor analyze a book. I personally found it interesting, though I know other's didnt as much. Not a hard class though

I took Spanish 170- Latin American Film Studies with Professor Cohen in spring 2020 (during Covid-19, online) as an upper div elective for my Spanish minor. Professor Cohen is very passionate about the Latin American film industry and he is very knowledgeable and capable of teaching this course. We were scheduled for class on Monday and Wednesday, but he only had live lectures on Wednesday. Our homework each week was to watch a film (about 2 hours) and post on the discussion forum replying to his prompt about the film. I would highly recommend watching all of the films, as they are mandatory, and you would be completely lost in class if you did not watch them. Our grade was determined by participation in class, completion of weekly discussion posts, and a final video project. I did put in the necessary work each week, but it is not necessary to overachieve in this course. He chose to forego a typical essay due in addition to the video project. He was very kind and understanding to all students with his due dates in an unprecedented time in history. He cares about his students and wants them to do well and is always communicative. I would recommend him as a professor.

I often leave the class without learning anything meaningful.
He seems to often asks questions with the aim of receiving certain answers… there’s a lot of time lost in the way he pokes around when he could have just said what he wanted to say.
We have a lot of thoughts, and I never had the chance to share certain ones. An open question on our interpretations on anything at the beginning would help.
Although I agree these are masterfully-executed movies, there is nothing relevant for us to take past this class. In the end, we’re Spanish majors/minors taking this class. Practically all the directors we studied were white, and the same goes for the actors we saw. The topics covered aren’t relevant to our everyday lives, whether or not we want to make films.
That said, I remember taking 191B with Cohen and left that class with a tremendous amount of respect for him and his ideas. He is still an excellent and empowering professor with an outstanding amount of patience for his students; I mainly have qualms with the material he covered this quarter.

I loved taking this class with Professor Cohen. He is a great professor and encourages all of his students to participate. by fostering a friendly and collaborative classroom environment. Before taking this class I was not very interested in film and was intimidated by the subject material, but I really enjoyed this class.

A warning: his midterm was surprisingly difficult and he was really disappointed in our scores. That's because the wording of his questions are confusing and some were opinion based. He expected us to remember small details that he had mentioned in class early on in the quarter.

My advice is to:
1) Do all the readings and know them well because he gave us direct quotes and asked us to identify the authors, even though we did not really go over them in class.
2) Take really good notes during class and review them well before the test
3) Listen really carefully to what he says will be on the test because he will give you some answers the lectures before the exam

Don't worry too much though, Cohen is really helpful and as long as you watch all the films and pay attention in class you'll be fine.