This course offers insights into the ways Francophone cinema from Europe, the Maghreb, and sub-Saharan Africa represents/constructs the racial, cultural, sexual, or social other in the postwar era of decolonization. We will study films formally and contextually to understand what Francophone representations of marginality add to the debates surrounding marginality, ethnicity, identity, and difference in contemporary Europe and postcolonial Africa. Theoretical and critical readings on both cinema and Francophone societies and cultures will help students analyze cinematic texts in depth, as well as compare cinematic aesthetics between Western cinema and so-called Third World cinema. |