ROM 355, Spring 2000

"Romance Languages Cinemas: Screening the Body"

Required text: Timothy Corrigan. A Short Guide to Writing About Film (Longman, 1997. 3rd edition)

Description of Course:

This course will explore the construction of different cultural identities and filmic traditions as represented in contemporary films in the Romance Languages (French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish). The focus of the course is transnational and interdisciplinary in nature, reading films from Europe, Africa, Latin America and North America across the traditional barriers between national and linguistic cultures, as well as reading culture accross disciplinary borders and multilateral approaches, linking literary, artistic and mass media cultural production with its social and historical conditions.

Particular attention will be paid to the analysis of constructions and representations of the body, as sites of struggle for cultural negotiations and definitions.Throughout the course we will question the construction of individual and collective identities on film, focusing on the intersections of cultural factors such as gender, race and ethnicity, social class, and language, among others, and the ideological underpinnings involved in the shaping and conforming of those identities by cultural institutions (such as the family, the church, the school, the police, the military, the state, etc.) and social systems (capitalism/socialism, colonialism/neo-colonialism/post-colonialism, patriarchy). We will analyze how these films offer individual and colective forms of resistance to the conforming pressures, challenging hegemonic practices and giving voice to the repressed, silenced and un-represented.

In-depth study and discussion will envolve the formal analysis of films,  through a close reading of their formal properties, techniques, and narrative conventions, as a means to read the culture that produced them and is produced by them. The course aims to foster the development of a critical language to discuss and write about films, as well as to create an increased awareness of issues informing the conditions of cultural production.

Class attendance and active participation are essential.
Assignments: A weekly typewritten report, involving a short detailed technical analysis of a film viewed in class, and its relation to the main themes of the film. Please avoid plot summary. Reports will be graded based on content and quality of expression. No late assignments will be accepted unless excused by the instructor.
Group projects: regular assignment of a question to prepare in small groups evolving from the film under discussion.
Exams. A Midterm covering the first half of the course and a final exam. Students going into the final with a grade average of B or above may choose to write a final paper, on a topic approved by the instructor, instead of taking the final exam.

Final grade:
class participation: 20
weekly reports: 30
midterm: 20
final: 30

Honors College Students willing to exercise the honors option in this course should talk to the instructor as soon as possible in the course.

Check ofthen the internet site for this class; it is constantly updated. 


Class syllabus:

Week 1
Introduction, Reading culture on location
Technical aspects, film sequence analysis
Corrigan, chapt. 1-3
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Week 2

Representing the Other, the performing body
Corrigan, Chapt. 4-5
Film: Carlos Saura's Carmen:

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Week 3

Reading the cultural subtexts: Reading/Rewriting bodies through class, gender and race
Film: The Flower of My Secret:


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Week 4

Reconstructing History: utopias of the body
Film:  Belle Epoque

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Week 5

Reconstructing the body: utopias of the mind
Film: Open Your Eyes

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Week 6

Representing difference: Conforming the body
Film:  I Don't Want to Talk About It

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Week 7

Crossing borders/Crossing cultures
Film: El Norte:

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Week 8

Monday: Review
Wednesday: Midterm Exam
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Week 9 Spring Break Week - Go Get A Tan Body

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Week 10

Bodies and cultures on the border
Film: Like Water for Chocolate

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Week 11

The politics of gender: Policing the body
Film: Strawberry and Chocolate:
 

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Week 12

Dislocated bodies: Race, diaspora, utopia
Film:  Quilombo:


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Week 13

Subverting the body: Race, gender, class and post-colonialism
Film: Quartier Mozart:

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 Week 14

Race, gender, class and post-colonialism (II)
Film:  Hate (La Haine)
 


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Week 15

The performance of culture in late capitalism
Film: Jésus de Montréal

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Week 16

Locating the body, the cinematographic apparatus
Film: The Star Maker: (L'uomo delle stelle)
 

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FINAL EXAM:   Monday May 1, 3-5:00



 

Overview of Film Terms and Concepts
 

Technical aspects:

Photography:  use of color tone/black-and-white, film speed, camara angles and movement, point of view and perspective, shot framing and composition
Narrative structure: Editing, rhythm, chronology of events, flashbacks, flashforwards, repetitions, ellipsis, crosscuttings, continuity/discontinuity, dissolves, fades.
Soundtrack: use of dialogue, voice-off monologue, silences, languages, music, noises, overlappings, etc.
Mise-en-scène: setting, costumes, acting, lighting
 

Review Questions:
-What particular cinematic techniques and strategies are striking about this film? Why?
-How do they function in the film? What is their purpose and significance? -Why does the film employ these and not others?
-How is the form and style of the film convey the main ideas?
-How does it use cinematic and generic conventions?
-How is this film different from mainstream Hollywood cinema?
-What is the intended effect of the film on the spectator?
 

Thematic aspects:

Background:
-Where and when does the story take place?
-What are the social and historical circumstances and how are they represented? Do they appear to be they realistic or seem more like fantasy? Are they clearly stated or only implicitly suggested?
-How do they affect the actions and lifes of the characters?
-What are the social and historical circunstances affecting the conditions of film production?
-How do these circumstances provide a perspective from which to read the film?

Representation:
-Who is the subject and who the object of representation in the film? Who represents and who is/isn’t represented?
-How is the object represented, and from what point of view?
-What is the subtext of this representation?
-Does the film offer a realistic representation of characters, mise-en-scène, and historical reality?
-Is there any form of mediation -ideology, “cultural baggage”- between the represented and the representation? How is this process represented itself in the film?
-Does the film make use of symbolic language to convey its message? What symbols are particularly noticeable or recurring in the film? How do they affect the response of the spectator towards the film?

Culture:
-What is the relation between the location and the action in the film?
-What is the importance of language(s) in this film?
-How is the construction of national/collective and individual identities represented?
-How are bodies constructed? How are cultures and identities embodied in the film?
-How do popular culture and high culture interface in this film?
-How does the film represent the conditions of “difference”?
-Does the film question or reinforce the marginalization or exoticization of “difference”?
-How do the factors of race, class and gender play a role in this film?
-How do cultural institutions and social systems affect the actions and lifes of the characters?
-Is there a hegemonic ideology implicitly or explicitly represented in the film? What forms of resistance or oppositionality are represented? What is the outcome?
-What is the worldview or outlook presented in the film?


Links

Here are some film databases and search engines:

Here is a useful glossary of commonly used film terms:

 
 

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