Love in the Lens? Romance and Resistance in Latin American and Iberian Cinema

Undergraduate

Is love truly captured through the lens? Whose desire are we witnessing - the characters’, the audience’s, or the male gaze? How do films shape representations of gender through the camera’s gaze, and how can cinema subvert these ways of looking? This course, taught in Portuguese and Spanish, explores these questions through Luso-Brazilian, Latin American, and Iberian cinema while allowing students to use the languages to interpret scenes, describe characters’ perceptions and emotions, compare films, and analyze dialogue, visual composition, and cinematic techniques. Students read critical texts and film analyses, discuss ideas in class, and produce essays, scripts, and video essay projects in Portuguese or Spanish, demonstrating the ability to construct arguments, present evidence, and reflect on cultural and historical context. Themes such as unrequited love, emotional emptiness, and longing are examined not simply as romantic failure but as experiences intertwined with memory, trauma, and societal pressures, often against the backdrop of authoritarian regimes. The course considers how these films challenge a cinematic tradition shaped by Victorian ideals, where early cinema framed love as individual fulfillment and moral triumph. Postwar cinema further dramatized love through predominantly white, heterosexual relationships, reinforcing patriarchal visual norms. Through close analysis of discourses and cinematic techniques - framing, sound, spatial composition, sequence, and camera angles - students examine how film language constructs or challenges norms of gender, sexuality, and class. Students may speak and submit assignments and projects in either language (Portuguese or Spanish), creating a multilingual space for critical engagement with Ibero-Latin American visual culture and the politics of the gaze. Prerequisite: PORT 1400 (or equivalent) or SPAN 1400 (or equivalent). Conducted in Portuguese and Spanish. L5 , HU TTh 4pm-5:15pm