Research Seminar (584-0-20)

Topic

Counter Cinema & Aesthetics of Revolution

Instructors

Lakshmi Padmanabhan

Meeting Info

Block Pick-Laudati Auditorium: Tues 1:00PM - 2:50PM
Annie May Swift Hall 110: Tues 3:00PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

This class surveys the range of theoretical debates within film and visual art on the aesthetics of "counter-cinemas" or practices of filmmaking that engage with revolutionary politics as an aesthetic problem. Topics addressed can include the work of the Soviet avant-garde, surrealisms, social documentary filmmaking, indigenous and first-nations filmmaking, Black cinema in the US, films of the New Left post-'68, anticolonial and Third Cinema movements. Readings will draw on a range of thinkers and debates within film theory, art history, and literary theory, particularly focusing on Marxist aesthetic criticism and its limits.

Class Notes

Each seminar meeting will begin with an in-class film screening, followed by discussion.