Postcolonial Cinemas

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Postcolonial Cinemas

• by Professor Awam Amkpa
• Department of Theatre Arts
• Mount Holyoke College
• Dwight 202 Mon/Wed 10-11.50

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Course description

• The course will critically examine functions of
  films and cinemas in contexts and countries whose
  cultural references are informed by colonial and
  anticolonial histories.
• Films will be looked at as texts within which
  modes of narrating and representing national,
  class, racial, gender and sexual discourses are
  expressed.
• The course will closely examine how film texts
  negotiate conditions of being, belonging and
  becoming for various identities and their chosen
  forms of agency.

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Course description contd

• We will use the films and their original contexts
  to trace colonial geographical frames and
  postcolonial desires for re-tracing such frames
  and maps.
• The course will pay close attention to the
  relationships between cinemas as locations of
  spectating and as venues for representing
  desires, fantasies and notions of cultural
  selfhood.
• Issues such as decolonization, nationalisms and
  pan-nationalisms, gender and race, sexuality and
  citizenship, will be broadly explored.

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Developing Visual Literacy

• Adobe Pagemill will be used to present visual
  interpretations and analysis of issues and texts
• Adobe Photoshop will be used to capture and
  arrange still images
• Adobe Premiere will be used to capture and
  arrange video images

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Class exercises

• A short visual text responding to a specific
  issue in the course
• A group seminar presentation on an assigned film
  and theme
• A detailed individual response to one or more
  films

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Evaluations

• Contributions to class discussions (20)
• Group seminar presentation (40)
• Detailed individual project (40)