Communication 397VV - ST-Cinema African Diaspora

What is an Afrocentric vision of woman and what does a woman?s vision of Africa say about being African and Black around the world? These are some of the questions explored in this course on women, identity, and Afrocentric film practices. An objective of the course is to introduce students to the evolution of African women in all aspects of the cinema as image and as image makers. This course not only explores depictions of women, but especially women of color who direct, produce, and write films within the African Diasporic world. Specifically we look at discourses about women and works by filmmakers on and off the continent of Africa that take both an historical and global approach, in terms of issues of representation and film practice. We will study the different and parallel ways these filmmakers write their own sense of identity into their works about who they are as filmmakers speaking for and about issues that may be important to women of African descent. We will look at the various political, social and cultural roles of African women in the visual media of film, video, and television and engage in critical perspectives that examine how Black and African women explore subjectivity, the body, and positionality within the Diaspora. Some of the films we will study include films from Nigeria, Algeria, France, Great Britain, and the U.S. such as Tsitsi Dangarembga?s Everyone's Child; These Hands by Flora Mbugu-Schelling; Ngozi Onwurah?s Monday's Girls; Euzhan Palcy's Rue cases negres or Sugar Cane Alley; Daughter?s of the Dust by Julie Dash; Compensation by Zeinabu irene Davis. This course includes an evening lab and some of the films will be screened during the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival as a part of the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts.

Open to Senior and Junior Communication majors only. Open to Senior and Junior Communication majors. Open to others by permission of instructor.