Unit information: Cinema and Revolution in 2019/20

Unit name	Cinema and Revolution
Unit code	MODL20020
Credit points	20
Level of study	I/5
Teaching block(s)	Teaching Block 2 (weeks 13 - 24)
Unit director	Dr. Knight
Open unit status	Not open
Pre-requisites	None
Co-requisites	None
School/department	School of Modern Languages
Faculty	Faculty of Arts

Description including Unit Aims

Cinema emerged at a time of intense political upheaval, and was greeted excitedly not only for its artistic and technological innovation, but also for its potential to provide a new visual language capable of overcoming linguistic barriers. From its inception, film was used as a means both of documenting political change, and of encouraging it. Indeed, changes in perceptions of what ‘cinema’ consisted of and was able to achieve were just as radical as the better-known revolutions of the 20th century.

In this unit, students will explore aesthetic and political revolutions on film in a range of cultural and historical contexts. They will learn different ways of analysing film as they view works by both world-famous directors (such as Sergei Eisenstein) and less familiar figures (such as the Bolivian Jorge Sanjinés). By concentrating on films from a range of SML language areas throughout the entire history of the medium, the unit equips students to engage with works from unfamiliar cultures and historical periods. Potential topics include: montage and the European avant-garde; the Russian and Mexican Revolutions; the ‘socialist realist’ cinema of Stalin; 1940s Europe; Latin America in the 1960s; and New Wave cinema.

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of this unit, students will be able to:

1. Demonstrate a broad knowledge of key moments of political upheaval in early twentieth-century Europe and Latin America, and of the early history of cinema.
2. Comparatively analyse how the formal features of cinema respond to political contexts in a range of national settings.
3. Show critical awareness of theoretical scholarship in the field of study and the ability to articulate a critical position in both oral and written form as appropriate to level I.
4. Demonstrate sophisticated visual analytical skills.
5. Demonstrate the ability to carry out independent research appropriate to this level of study.

Teaching Information

One lecture and one seminar per week.

Assessment Information

• Group presentation & an individual 500 word write up (40%: 20% group mark for presentation, 20% for individual write-up). testing ILO's 1-3
• 1 x 2,000 word essay (60%) testing ILO's 1-5

Reading and References

Key films and critical references:

Un 'chien andalou and L’Âge' d’or (Luis Buñuel, 1929 and 1930)

Vámonos' con 'Pancho' Villa (Fernando de Fuentes, Mexico, 1936)

Yawar Malku' / Blood of the Condor (Jorge Sanjinés, Bolivia, 1969)

Oktiabr'/Ten Days that Shook the World (Sergei Eisenstein, 1927)

Chapaev (Vasil’iev “Brothers”, 1934)

Die 'Mörder sind unter uns'/'Murderers Among Us (Staudte, 1946)

André Bazin, What Is 'Cinema?, edited and translated by Hugh Gray (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005)

Timothy J. Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing about Film, 9th ed. (London: Pearson Longman, 2014) (earlier editions also acceptable)

Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, edited and translated by Jay Leyda (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977)

John King, Magical Reels: A History of Cinema in Latin America, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 2000)

Michael T. Martin (ed.), New Latin American Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997)

John Mraz, Looking for Mexico: Modern Visual Culture and National Identity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009)