VM 635 - Cinema and Social Change

Credits: 4
Throughout the past century and right up to the present, numerous filmmakers have sought to harness the power of the medium in the service of political and social change. This course aims to offer a wide-ranging examination of the ways that directors around the world have engaged in the pursuit of fostering social justice, with a particular emphasis on the formal and aesthetic strategies undertaken. Surveying both fiction and documentary, commercial and independent cinema, this course endeavors to investigate personal achievement against the backdrop of the historical, political, social, and economic circumstances that have influenced each director’s career and project.