AFST 352 - The Lusophone African Experience Through Cinema

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Explores the experience of Lusophone African nations— Portuguese-speaking societies in Africa— through the prism of cinema. Primary focus is on how Angolans, Cape-Verdeans, Guinea-Bissauans, Mozambicans, and São Tomeans have been visualized and have visualized themselves through motion picture. While students are introduced to basic formal aspects of Lusophone African Cinema (genres and aesthetic forms), the class emphasizes the social, historical, political, and cultural portrayal of the nations that have been represented in the last forty-plus years of film. The study of Lusophone African cinema provides the basis for the exploration of such critical issues pertaining to the experience of Portuguese-speaking Africans such as colonialism, race, class, gender, revolutions/national liberation, nation/nationalism, civil wars, marginalization, modernity, localization, and globalization. Knowledge of Portuguese is not required. Every third year Spring.