A survey course on the global language of film and media. Screenings and readings will cover a range of national contexts, examining questions of national identity, national cinema, alternative cinema, Third cinema, experimental ethnography, diaspora, postcoloniality, globalization, and transnationality. The course will take advantage of the international and intercultural makeup of Los Angeles, as a means of exploring media and accessing practitioners who are working across national boundaries. Topics courses may be repeated with a different topic for credit. Note: specific topics fulfill distinct Core requirements.
Foreigners and Cinematic Border Crossings
What does it mean to be-placed-into-foreignness? To be marked as foreign? To inhabit this category and feel its weight? We know that certain bodies, or regions, are labeled as foreign, but also texts and images. “Foreign” is a sticky term – it sticks to the body of a human, or to a particular image or sound – and it marks it as something else, as something other than me, alien, some form of alterity. How do transnational cinema and media approach representations of foreignness? How do they engage questions of aesthetics, politics, and ethics? We will explore these questions while focusing on films and media that privilege transcultural encounters and border crossings in various global locations. Additional Core Requirement Met: Global Connections.
Transnational Cinemas: Borders, Walls, Difference
In film studies, the term “transnational” has opened up new ways of thinking about cinema, its production contexts, spectatorship, and ideological investments. We will explore different understandings of the concept of transnationality and focus on its relation to migration, foreignness, national identity, racial politics, globalization, and various philosophical discussions (about difference, multiculturalism and diversity). We will screen a number of fascinating films and videos from multiple regions of the world. The course is discussion-based, encouraging critical thinking, writing, and presentation skills. Expect theoretical readings and that will guide our explorations. Additional Core Requirement Met: Global Connections.
African Film and Media
Africa has one of the largest film industries in the world. This course surveys significant film and media traditions within Africa along with their aesthetic, political, and cultural contexts. We will explore African film and video across a broad array of traditions, mediums, and historical periods including the griot, Yoruba theatre, colonial visual culture, independence and liberation films, counter-ethnography, the Négritude movement, Third Cinema, post-independence Francophone Art films, sub-Saharan Black African cinema, FESPACO, Anglophone Nollywood and Ghana popular video, and African new media. The goal is to focus on distinctly African film and film scholarship by critically examining the various conflicting traditions and methodologies of cross-cultural African film studies. This course will involve seminar-style discussions, presentations, extensive screenings (in and outside of class), guest lectures by African filmmakers and scholars, and critical writing. Additional Core Requirement Met: Regional Focus.
Transpacific Social Justice
This course will explore a variety of contemporary film and multimedia productions, with a focus on social justice issues across the transpacific. Topics discussed may include, but are not limited to: race, gender, and sexuality in a networked world; war and its aftermaths; labor rights; and digital media advocacy. What are the implications of multimedia technologies for social justice and democracy, especially in marginalized communities across the Pacific and their diasporas? Students will learn about emerging art and activist movements in Asia and the Pacific through a variety of screenings, readings and lectures. There will be a particular focus on materials coming from social justice movements such as documentary film, independent film, and activist art. We will review and analyze different perspectives, for example, a rising intersectional feminist movement in South Asia, sexual politics in East Asia, participatory videos created from migrants in Southeast Asia, to the student uprisings of Taiwan’s Sunflower Occupation and Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution and current protests. Additional Core Requirement Met: Global Connections.