FLM 229 - Travel & Cultural Encounters in Film

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR (students beginning prior to Fall 2024): Meets general academic requirement DE.
This course looks at narrative and experimental films that thematize the act of travel as a trigger for cultural encounters, which often result in conflicts, power differentials, and individual senses of displacement or disorientation. The cultural encounters depicted include those in colonial Africa, India, and the Americas, as well as post-colonial encounters in new relationship configurations such as migration and tourism. The course also considers as a sub-theme the “road movie” in American culture and what it says about the relationship of dominant American culture to the land and the indigenous inhabitants. As a theoretical lens, students will consider the cinematic medium as a vehicle for virtual travel and read accounts of film spectatorship that consider particular travel experiences.
Attendance at weekly screenings is required.