Dictatorships, Resistance, Cinema

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This is a course on cinema, sovereignty and the resistance to oppression, especially in its visual forms (cinema, media, digital devices...). Dictatorships and other authoritarian regimes need images. They depend to a great degree on stories, legends, slogans and choreographies, on music and spectacles, on what I propose to call "sovereign performances" that perform sovereignty. Dictators stage their own actions and persona and their public appearances are always carefully organized in order to dominate the audiovisual field. In this context, it is not incidental that the age of cinema is also that of societal control, of the standardization and industrialization of masses, of the most criminal, dictatorial regimes on record that also lead to the industrial violence of repressive strategies. What is the relationship between cinema and power? How do cinematic techniques play a role in resisting, defying and destroying authoritarianism? This class will, in most parts, consist of seminar discussions (including Canvas discussions and oral presentations) (60%), and lectures (40%).