Course Outline

DAY  1: The Radical Premise of Cinema

Instructor: Holen Kahn

Feature: Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) dir. Benh Zeitlin

Lunch break from 11:20 to 12:10 (as we must start Beasts by 12:15)

Reading:

From Herbert Marcuse and the Subversive Potential of Art. Becker, Carol. The Subversive Imagination, Routledge, 1994

DAY 2: Chronicling Conflict
Instructor: Holen Kahn

Feature: The Greenwave (2010) dir. Ali Samadi Ahadi

DAY 3 : Advocacy and Agency

Instructor: Theresa Dawson

Morning: Case study Kony 2012

This session will use the 30 minute online film Kony 2012 (the most rapidly disseminated human rights video of all time) as a case study to explore debates raised by humanitarian media and this film.

Afternoon: Screening of Bamako (2006) dir. Abherrahmane Sissako

Reading:

From Commodity Activism, NYU Press (2012) (eds) R Mukherjee and S Banet-Weiser

Fair Vanity: the Visual Culture of Humanitarianism in the Age of Commodity Activism’ Melissa Brough

Sam Gregory, Witness Video For Change Blog: ‘Kony 2012: Juggling Advocacy, Audience and Agency'

Gilad Lotan, Social Flow: ‘How Invisible Children’s Networks Helped a Campaign Capture the World’s Attention'

DAY 4: Films of the Post-Media Era

Instructor: Yolanda Pividal

Feature: Five Broken Cameras (2011) dir. Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi


DAY 5: Propaganda, Persuasion and Poetics
Instructors: Holan Kahn and Theresa Dawson

Morning: Theresa
From 9 to 11:30

Afternoon: Holen
12:15 to 3:00