Instr:                  Zoran Samardzija
Office:               CRT 536,   229-5041
e-mail:                zs2@uwm.edu
Office hours:    TBA and by appointment

Course Information:                   Monday, Wednesday, 11:30am-1:20pm. Curtin Hall 104
 

Course Description

This course serves as an introduction to trends and developments in recent Eastern European & Balkan cinema. Constructed in the form of a travelogue, our course will begin with films that thematize the reunification of Germany along with its implications for the rest of Eastern Europe, and culminate with films that ponder the lives of Balkan refugees and exiles in America. In between, we will encounter diverse and strange films from several different nations that offer surreal, satirical, magical, humorous, and melancholy interrogations into the problems of borders, homelands, ethnic and national identity, warfare, and other related issues. We will also inquire into the meaning of the terms “Eastern Europe” and “The Balkans,” and explore how film itself contributes to our understanding of those terms.

Screenings (May include the following):

Gorilla Bathes at Noon, Legend of Rita, Conspirators of Pleasure, short films by Jan Svankmajer, portions of The Decalogue, The Oak, Werckmeister Harmonies, excerpts from Satantango, Ulysses’ Gaze, Landscape in the Mist, Before The Rain, The Wounds, Pretty Village, Pretty Flames, Black Cat, White Cat, Underground, No Man’s Land, Someone Else’s America.

Readings (May include the following):

• A course packet containing critical, historical, and theoretical readings
• Dina Iordanova’s Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture, and the Media.

Assignments:

• A mid-term and final essay, and several brief response papers.