Details
INSTRUCTOR: Elizabeth Hanly, Maikel Alendy
SECTION: Summer 2019- RVCA
Fall 2019- RVH
SCHEDULE: Online
Course Description
This is a course that leaves Hollywood film-making behind in the dust. Instead, it explores film from the so-called Third World, focusing in particular on work from Africa and the Middle East. Ever wonder what a South African gangsta film is like? Ever want to see the dead rise from their graves as imagined by a Sufi mystic from Tunisia ? What about belly-dancing that has as much to do with the sacred as the erotic? This class explores African and Middle-Eastern film as art. The class also considers film as window into understanding the region’s cultures, history and politics. What is the history and social context of this work? Just how sophisticated are the visions, let alone the craft, from so-called underdeveloped areas? To quote a former student: “These films, in contrast to more familiar Hollywood productions, convey the human condition in profound detail. Sometimes what results is terrifying, sometimes it is glorious. Often it is both. From Algerian family dinners to Kenyan ghosts, to brides in the Golan Heights and mad dogs in refugee camps, we got to see more than we could have imagined.”