autumn 2017 HIF-3107 East/West On Film - 10 ECTS

Application deadline

Applicants from Nordic countries: 1 June for the spring semester and 1 December for the autumn semester. Applicants from outside the Nordic countries: 1 October for the spring semester and 15 April for the autumn semester.

Type of course

The course may be taken as a single course.

Admission requirements

BA in relevant discipline (Humanities or social sciences).

Code: 9371


Course content

As a form of art with wide mass appeal, feature films have traditionally been engaged as an ideological tool in implicit or explicit forms of propaganda. Films have been instrumental in reflecting (upon) both the Great War and the birth of the first Communist state, and participated actively in the subsequent polarisation between, firstly, the Axis powers and the Allies, and later, the NATO and the Warsaw Pact (not to speak of the present-day War on Terror). "West" (at some point including Turkey and Japan) and "East" (at one stage including a significant part of Germany) became conceptually overloaded geopolitical misnomers and rallying cries in what has been portrayed as a battleground between good and evil. Mutual stereotypes (created, fed and reinforced by cinema) have proved stronger than short-term political and ideological alliances, and remain relevant to this day. The course will examine how and why certain stereotypes have been expressed, and in some cases altered, through film and other media, on either side of the ideological divide. The course will assume both that the past has shaped the present, but also that contemporary events shape and reshape current medial representations and institutions of both society and politics.

This interdisciplinary course builds upon theoretical and methodological frameworks that allow for an analysis of the various interconnections between visual culture (in particular film) and politics. It will provide students with advanced analytical and theoretical tools not limited to film theory, but also utilizing cultural analysis, memory studies, mobility studies, adaptation theory, and discourse theory. This way the studies of some of the classics of past and contemporary cinema are productively combined with an introduction and application to the latest advances in cultural research.

The course is relevant as an elective for a variety of MA-programmes at the HSL-Faculty and suitable for international exchange students.


Objectives of the course

Students can expect the following results:

Knowledge and understanding:

  • Knowledge of typical (filmic and medial) representations in and of East and West and their interrelations in the 20th century.
  • Improved understanding of key strains in contemporary film and cultural theory
  • Understanding of the various interactions between cultural expressions, politics, and society
  • Critical understanding of adaptation processes between (graphic) novels and films, films and computer games, [¿]
  • Improved knowledge of cultural analysis as an interdisciplinary method for the analysis of contemporary society and cultural expressions of political power and ideology

Skills:

  • Ability to analyse and contextualise films and other cultural expressions through a combination of contemporary theories and methods
  • Ability to assess and explain complex socio-cultural processes and their effects on individual and collective identity formations
  • Ability to explain and critically employ key concepts in contemporary cultural analysis and film studies
  • Ability to critically select and productively employ a set of analytical and conceptual tools for analysis
  • Ability to explain key processes of narrative adaptation across medial boundaries


Language of instruction and examination

English

Teaching methods

2 hours lecture/week over 12 weeks and a series of film seminars.

All courses undergo a halfway evaluation once in a 2-year period at the master's level. The Programme Board determines which programme options will be evaluated per year, and which courses will be evaluated by the students and the teacher per year.


Assessment

Work requirements: The course has 2 work requirements.

  • Outline of student-projects (1-2 pages including annotated bibliography)
  • Oral project presentation (approx. 5 minutes) + Q and A

Both work requirements must be connected to student-essay projects (final exam). Students can only pass this course after the work requirements have been accepted.

Exam: Project paper based on work requirements about a subject selected by students. Projects must employ a variety of course readings.

Approx. 15 standard pages (one page is equivalent to 2300 characters without spaces, 1.5 line spacing, font size 12)

Project papers will be evaluated A-F.

If a student fails the course he/she will be given the possibility to take a re-sit examination. The deadline for registration to the re-sit examination is 15. January in the fall semester and August 15. in the spring semester.


Recommended reading/syllabus

PENSUM HIF-3107 Høsten 2017

(the underlined films can be borrowed from the University Library; mandatory secondary reading is highlighted in bold script)

 

Introductory lecture:

 

Eril, Astrid. 2010. Literature, Film and the Mediality of Cultural Memory. In A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies. De Gruyter (pp. 390-98).

 

Uricchio, William. 2005. ¿Simulation, History, Computer Games¿ in Handbook of Computer Game Studies. Eds. Joost Raessens and Jeffrey Goldstein. Cambridge: MIT Press, 327-338.

 

Das Leben der Anderen (2005):

 

Creech, Jennifer. 2009. ¿A Few Good Men: Gender, Ideology, and Narrative Politics in The Lives of Others and Good Bye, Lenin!¿ Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature & Culture 25 (pp. 100-126)

Evans, Owen. 2010. ¿Redeeming the demon? The legacy of the Stasi in Das Leben der Anderen¿. Memory Studies 3 (pp. 164-77)

Skare, Roswitha. 2012. ¿Das Leben der Anderen (2006): Paratekstens betydning for filmens autentisitetskrav¿. Norsk medietidskrift. 19/1 (pp. 41-54)

Skare, Roswitha. 2012. ¿KANN JEMAND, DER DIESE MUSIK GEHÖRT HAT, [...] NOCH EIN SCHLECHTER MENSCH SEIN?¿ ¿ OM WIESLERS FORANDRING OG KUNSTENS PÅSTÅTTE ROLLE I DENNE PROSESSEN. Nordlit 30 (pp. 35-50)

Soy Cuba (1964):

Gott, Richard. 2005. ¿From Russia with Love¿ The Guardian. 12 November. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2005/nov/12/cuba

Galt, Rosalind. 2011. ¿Forms: Soy Cuba and Revolutionary Beauty¿ in her Pretty: Film and the Decorative Image. New York: Columbia University Press (pp. 213-35) Ebook in the UiT library

Thakkar, Amit. 2014. ¿Who Is Cuba?: Dispersed Protagonism and Heteroglossia in Soy Cuba / I am Cuba¿, in Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, vol. 55, no. 1, Spring 2014, pp. 83-101; access via JSTOR

Smith Mesa, V.A. 2011. KinoCuban: The significance of Soviet and East European cinemas for the Cuban moving image. Doctoral thesis, UCL (University College London), http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1336532/1/1336532.pdf

The Secret Agent´s Blunder (1968):

Shcherbenok, Andrei. 2010. ¿Asymmetrical Warfare: The Vision of the Enemy in American and Soviet Cold War Cinemas¿. Kinokultura 28. http://www.kinokultura.com/2010/28-shcherbenok.shtml [background info]

First, Joshua. 2015. ¿The Secret Agent´s Blunder¿. In Directory of World Cinema: Russia-2. Bristol/Chicago: Intellect (pp. 258-59)

Dobrynin, Sergei. 2009. ¿The Silver Curtain: Representations of the West in the Soviet Cold War Films¿. History Compass 7 (3) (pp. 862-78) [background info]

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977):

 

Yeffeth, Glenn and Wilson, Leah. 2006. James Bond in the 21st century. BenBella Books (especially pp. 3-12, 163-70 and 189-98) Ebook in the UiT library

Rambo III (1988):

 

Graham, Mark. 2010. Afghanistan in the Cinema. University of Illinois Press (pp. 36-45) Ebook in the UiT library

Jones, Steve. 2012. ¿Mindful Violence: Responses to the Rambo Series´ Shifting Aesthetic of Aggression¿. New Review of Film and Television Studies 10:4 (pp. 1-16), http://www.academia.edu/2212627/Jones_S._2012_Mindful_violence_The_Rambo_Series_Shifting_Aesthetic_of_Aggression_New_Review_of_Film_and_Television_Studies_10_4

(or http://www.tandfonline.com/ 

DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2012.717487)

 

Shaw, Tony and Youngblood, Denise J. Cinematic Cold War. 2010. University Press of Kansas (Ch. 7)

 

Shcherbenok, Andrey. ¿Solitary navigation¿. In Directory of World Cinema: Russia-2. Bristol/Chicago: Intellect (pp. 263-65)

 

Iron Eagle II (1988):

 

Prince, Stephen. Visions of Empire: Political Imagery in Contemporary American Film. 1992. Praeger. (pp. 52, 66-71, 75-77, 92, 124) Ebook in the UiT library

Kellner, Douglas. 1993. ¿Film, Politics and Ideology: Toward a Multiperspectival Film Theory¿. In Combs, James E. (ed.) Movies and Politics: The Dynamic Relationship. Routledge (pp. 58, 66-68, 79) Ebook in the UiT library

Shapiro, Jerome F. Atomic Bomb Cinema: The Apocalyptic Imagination on Film. 2002. Routledge (p. 213) Ebook in the UiT library

Ch. P.: An Extraordinary Event (1958):

 

Chapman, Andrew. ¿Ch. P.: AN Extraordinary Event¿. In Directory of World Cinema: Russia-2. Bristol/Chicago: Intellect (pp. 252-54)

Error rendering component

  • About the course
  • Campus: Tromsø |
  • ECTS: 10
  • Course code: HIF-3107