Special Topics in Film
LIT 390S-4
Blackness, Cinema, Poetics
No Prerequisites
What happens when a film is crafted with the language of poetry in mind? How does knowledge of poetry shape formal experimentation in film? In what ways has the history of film already been conversant with poetry? Why might black filmmakers, in particular, look to poetry as a guide for filmic representation? Is there something about blackness—about processes of racialization—that elicits knowledge of poetry and poetic understanding?
This course investigates poetic effects in recent experimental and narrative film, exploring the affinities between the language of cinema and that of poetry. We will examine the filmmaking of both avowed poets and putative non-poets, considering how certain films—at the registers of both content and style—evoke poetry.
Close study of a major genre, period, or director.
