World Cinemas

This course offers an overview of recent filmmaking and media practices hailing from Africa, Indigenous America, Europe, Asia, Quebec and Australia. We will explore how intimate, personal styles of filmmaking converge with theories of globalization, hybridity, transnationalism, and remediation, through the study of a selection of films greatly influenced by the political, cultural, economic, social, and historical forces at work in a number of countries around the world.

More specifically, this course will take you through a virtual journey around the world, with each module presenting a different region of the world, film genre, and way of thinking about world cinema. You will be exposed to different genres and the way they were exploited, distributed and made popular in specific areas of the globe – for example Japanese animation, African Nollywood videography, Aboriginal documentary films and media work, European road movies, and Quebec transnational productions (Quebec filmmakers in Hollywood). Another important aspect of this course relates to film reception and the manners in which populations will reappropriate the films screened by finding new ways of viewing them. For example, community showings in Indigenous communities will include food, children running around and people directly addressing the character on screen. Finally, we will critically reflect on the unique cultural values and contemporary tools and techniques that shape the film narrative and style, making them more attentive to the emerging geopolitical realities and transnational structures.