Cinema of the Black Atlantic

Discussion of the John Sayles 1984 film The Brother From Another Planet, in particular how the silence of the alien - Brother - allows us to see features of race and gender in American life.

A discussion of Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust and Haile Gerima's Sankofa, centered on the question "What is an African American?" I explore how Dash answers this question by filtering the memory of Africa through the "American" part of African American, but Gerima inverts this prerogative and understands the "American" to be a sign of alienation that is redeemed by "African."

A discussion of Jean Marie Teno's 1996 film Clando, with particular focus on how the degeneration of the postcolonial state transforms a sense of home, nation, land, and embodiment.

A discussion of Sarah Maldoror's film Sambizanga (1972) and how it entwines reflections on gender, colonialism, and the everyday. As well, I discuss Maldoror's commitment to making a film infused with mourning and beauty both, which does not compromise the politics of the film but instead, in the aesthetic dimension, teaches a moral lesson about the poor and revolutionary consciousness.

A discussion of the pairing of Zulu and Battle of Algiers, with particular focus on how each films forms a memory of colonialism. What was the meaning of colonialism? What did it reveal about the colonizer? And who were the colonized, both in the moment of domination and in the moment of revolutionary struggle? I note how defense of the feminine - the missionary's daughter in Zulu, the distressed mother in Battle of Algiers - is central to both films, which links the colonial imaginary in each film while also setting the conditions of a very different politics.

A discussion of the function of colonialism as a political-psychological and economic presence in the postcolonial nation. With emphasis on how relationships to France wreak death and destruction in the postcolony, I explore how Ousmane Sembène tells a political story through intimate portraits of a young woman seeking adventure (La noire de...) and a family and community struggling with poverty, hunger, and the highest stages of economic precarity (Mandabi).

Short discussion of Robert Townsend's 1987 film Hollywood Shuffle, with particular attention to how the film poses critical questions to putting Black bodies, Black people, and Black life on the screen. I also talk about how the resonance of Hollywood Shuffle might tell us as much about our own consumption patters as it does about the reality of cinema. What does the message of Hollywood Shuffle look like if we think about African film, other and less attended to African American film, and Caribbean film? In that way, the course's theme is brought into focus: in what ways is and is not "black Atlantic cinema" a name for a tradition, with all the meanings "tradition" might have for us?