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The Craft of Writing – Silence and Excess: Giving Absence Form and Voice
R1B - 001 | CCN: 14781
Katherine Guerra & Chi Li
4 Units
We’ve culled together films which have critical reputations marking them as either bombastic and fast-paced, or restrained with very little dialogue. We are interested in the ways in which films from many different national traditions can represent marginalized bodies/experiences/voices through stylistic techniques which sometimes seem to reject plot and dialogue. How to represent the unrepresentable is where many ideological, cultural, and aesthetic issues rise. We approach this question through a focus on gesture and sound. Our course will ask you to consider how bodily movement, facial expression, and indeed silence can gesture toward underrepresented groups and experiences. Rather than focusing on films with clear ideological agendas, we will use formal analysis to dissect films which create space and absence at their centers, which can come to represent the “unrepresentable” of historical/cultural absence.
A Note Regarding Course Content…
We will be watching films that can sometimes contain very disturbing content, difficult themes and imagery. All students are required to interact with every part of each of these films and no one will be excused from viewing/discussing/confronting any film covered in this course. If enrolling in this course, please prepare yourself to confront potentially disturbing subject matter as a part of our discussions and screening. I’m sure you’ll find the effort very rewarding within the context of this course.