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Mediterranean Cinema

Module Code: LN323
Module Name: Mediterranean Cinema
Module Coordinator: Dr Luca Peretti
Term: Spring 2024
Module Credits: 15

Module Description

This module aims to enhance student’s understanding of Mediterranean history, culture, and identity. Cinema will be used to explore issues such as travel, tourism, migration, orientalism, colonialism and postcolonialism. Students will develop a detailed knowledge of the area, explore the impact of colonially and postcoloniality on national cultures, understand how the Sea has been narrated though moving images. The topics discussed will include the orientalist representation of early cinema and how Europeans have filmed in North Africa; French colonial cities and their struggle for independence; the Mediterranean as a site of conflicts and encounters; the role of islands as a cinematic place; the current migration crisis. The analysis of the texts will be informed by theories of the Mediterranean, culture and film studies, national identity construction. Students will develop an awareness of how terms such as transnationalism, post colonialism, orientalism can be applied to the Mediterranean case.

Course Outline

Week 1: Introduction – Zohra (Albert Samama-Chikli, 1922, short)

Week 2: Algiers – La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

Week 3: Mediterranean noir – Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier, 1937). Guests: Professor Valentina Carla Re (Link Campus University, Rome) and Professor Alberto Zambenedetti (University of Toronto, online)

Week 4: Cairo – Bāb al-Ḥadīd (Cairo Station, Youssef Chahine, 1957) and Il Canale (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1966, short)

Week 5: Marseille - Transit (Christian Petzold, 2018)

Week 6: Reading week

Week 7: Barcelona – L'auberge espagnole (Pot Luck, Cédric Klapisch, 2002)

Week 8: Naples – Nostalgia (Mario Martone, 2021)

Week 9: Islands – Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea, Gianfranco Rosi, 2016) and Caro Diario (Dear Diary, Nanni Moretti, 1993 ep. Islands)

Week 10: Transiting in the Mediterranean – Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard, 2010)

All films are available with English subtitles.

Mode of delivery

In academic year 2023-24 the mode of delivery will consist of one in-person lecture and one-hour seminar in each teaching week of the relevant term.

Assessment method:

  • 1 x 1250-1500-word commentary/ scene analysis (30%)
  • 1 x 2500 word essay (70%)