Introductory description

This module offers students the opportunity to study postcolonial film from different historical and national contexts and via a range of political and technological shifts.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

The syllabus begins by interrogating cinemas of and as Empire with an emphasis upon Anglo-American history, its ‘imperial gaze’ and neo-colonial Hollywood. It will then move on to explore various case studies of colonial, de-colonial or anti-colonial film (for example, Indian cinema, third cinema or Palestinian film) and to consider key related themes such as questions of diaspora (via Accented cinema) and of the digital (via online activist films). Indicative screenings include:

King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933); Avatar (James Cameron, 2009); Diamond Queen (Homi Wadia, 1940); Shatranj ke Khilari/The Chess Players (Satyajit Ray, 1977) and/or Pather Panchali / Song of the Little Road (Satyajit Ray, 1955); Battle of Algiers (Gillo Po Pontecorvo, 1966); Soy Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964); De Cierta Manera (Sara Gómez, 1973); Paradise Now (Hany Abu-Assad, 2005); Couscous/La Graine et le Mulet (Abdellatif Kechice, 2007); Difficult Love (Zanele Muholi, Peter Goldsmid, 2010); Tin Tin Tytin (2012)

Indicative topics include:
W1: Cinemas of/as Empire 1: Hollywood
W2: Cinemas of/as Empire 2: Hindi Cinema
W3: Satyajit Ray
W4: Third Cinema
W5: Cuban Cinema
W7: Palestinian Film
W8: Accented Film
W9: Quare Film
W10: Digital Revolutions

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate in-depth knowledge of the impact of colonialism on national cinemas and filmmaking practices.
• Critically contextualise the relationship between Empire and Cinema via historical, geopolitical, technological and aesthetic concerns.
• Articulate (in verbal and written form) a critically engaged understanding of the ways in which film has reflected, reinforced, resisted or rescripted ‘Imperial’ (orientalist/racist/colonial) processes and legacies.
• Demonstrate an ability to offer nuanced and detailed analyses of film texts that enter, confidently, into postcolonial debates.

Indicative reading list

Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Helen Tiffin, eds., The Post-colonial Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1995/2006)
Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar, eds., Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film (New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 1997)
Elleke Boehmer and Rosinka Chaudhuri, eds., The Indian Postcolonial : a Critical Reader (London: Routledge, 2011)
Michael Chanan, Cuban Cinema (University of Minnesota Press, 2004)
Hamid Dabashi, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema (Verso, 2006)
Richard Dyer, White. London: Routledge, 1997.
Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1963, London: Penguin, 1990)
Elizabeth Heffelfinger and Laura Wright, Visual difference: Postcolonial Studies and Intercultural Cinema (New York : Peter Lang, 2011)
Joseph Gugler, ed., Film in the Middle East and North Africa: Creative Dissidence (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010)
E. Ann. Kaplan, Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film and the Imperial Gaze (new York: Routledge, 1997)
Leila Khatib, Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle (London: I B Tauris, 2012)
Bart Moore-Gilbert, Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics (London: Verso, 1997)
Hamid Naficy, Accented Film (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001)
Sandra Ponzanesi and Marguerite Waller, eds., Postcolonial Cinema Studies (New York : Routledge, 2012)
Edward Said, Orientalism (1978, London: Penguin, 2003)
Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentricism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London: Routledge, 1994)
Karl Schoonover and Rosalind Galt, Queer Cinema in the World (Duke University Press, 2016)
Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray, eds., A Companion to Postcolonial Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
Mike Wayne, Political Film: The Dialectics of Third Cinema (London: Pluto Press, 2001)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

This module develops skills of audio-visual literacy, through close textual and/or contextual analysis in relation to the moving image and sound. It may also develops understandings of historical, theoretical and conceptual frameworks relevant to screen arts and cultures.

Transferable skills

• critical and analytical thinking in relation
• independent research skills
• team work
• clarity and effectiveness of communication, oral and written
• accurate, concise and persuasive writing
• audio-visual literacy