Comm 150 instructors face a problem of how to present a broad perspective of the world's films in only 15 weeks.

But for one instructor, the answer was simple: She removed foreign films from her curriculum.

Each semester, about 700 students enroll in Comm 150 -- The Art of the Cinema. Jeanne Hall, an assistant professor of mass communications, said it was her choice to exclude foreign films from the class.

"The problem for me was that, previously, it pretended to be international cinema when it had a definite Eurocentric bias," said Hall, who teaches the only section of Comm 150 offered this semester. "The focus was on Hollywood movies, with only a nod to European cinema. They only showed one German film, one French and one Italian. It's problematic to pretend that that's an international cinema class."

Hall said she narrowed the focus to solely American films, then broadened it to show experimental films, documentaries and films by women and minorities, as well as classic Hollywood films.

The course is flexible enough to be taught according to the instructor's individual strengths, said Joan McGettigan, instructor of media studies.

"There's no point in showing films you don't think meet the students' needs," said McGettigan, who has taught Comm 150 and is scheduled to do so again this summer. "As long as you get the students to step back and think about it, if you give them the tools to look at films critically, it doesn't matter which ones you show."

But Ryan Bozis (junior-film) said foreign films should be included in the course.

"Is art just films from our country?" Bozis asked. "They should consider everything else."

But Evin Lowe (sophomore-film) said the absence of foreign films is not a problem because the class opens students' eyes to genres they may not have appreciated before.

"I thought the documentaries would bore me out of my mind, but the class made me feel better about them," Lowe said. "If you are more interested, you can go on to the next level."

That next level includes Comm 452 -- International Cinema, a class that deals specifically with foreign films. The class, available to all majors, looks at films from Africa, Southeast Asia, South America and Europe, said Gladwin Marumo, a professor of film and video who teaches the class.

Although he said he tries to show films that present a global perspective, Marumo said it would be impossible to cover films from the entire world in one semester. He added that students in his class submit a proposal of what part of the world they want to study.

"There is no way to see it all," he said. "We try to cover what the students are interested in seeing."

The inability to present a worldwide focus was one reason Hall said she removed foreign films altogether.

"What would be a way to do it?" Hall asked. "Show one international film a week? There would be no historical sense, no coherence."

Comm 150 students now get a historical sense as they watch films that demonstrate the evolution of American movie-making, Hall said. She said she shows the Mae West film She Done Him Wrong to illustrate how censorship affected the control movie stars had over their work in the '30s.

Students also watch recent films, such as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, which is particularly useful in demonstrating how African-American filmmakers are only now getting Hollywood distribution, Hall said.

Hall said she presents documentaries, experimental and independent films to give students a broader, albeit American, perspective. Classic Hollywood films are not indicative of all American films, she added.

"There has been this masterpiece tradition, which has not been reflective of all the voices in American history," she said.

Hall added that she shows The House of Science by Lynne Sachs, an experimental documentary about the relationship of women to the medical profession, to demonstrate how films can portray a female perspective.

All in all, Hall said she tries to work within the limitations presented by an introductory film class. But she doesn't think narrowing the class offerings to just American films has a negative effect.

"My class is American-centric . . . it's not just unthinkingly American-centric," she said.