Film Studies 370MW - Memory (of) War

The medium of cinema has shown persistent concern with war and memory, and has constituted a heated battleground for rememberance and erasure of the past. Through cinema, in other words, we most clearly see both memories of war and subsequent wars among competing memories. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the repressive military regime of Francisco Franco (1939-1975), and recent attempts to "recuperate" memory all dramatize these dynamics and raise a number of larger questions. How do destruction and devastation register through the visual? What happens when we attempt to police memory ( through censorship, propaganda, etc.)? What and why do people choose to remember or forget?

Prereq: Two 200-level Spanish courses above SPAN-212.