Topics in Doc Film:

Catalog description

Topics vary. For Fall 2024: WHEN WE SEE US: ASIAN AMERICAN AND BLACK DOCUMENTARY TRADITIONS OF RESISTANCE While decades of Asian American filmmaking has engaged and critiqued the manifold ways that anti-Asian policies, rhetoric, and violence have impacted Asian American and Asian immigrant communities in the U.S., mainstream media discourse still too frequently centers conversations on the topic of "race" in black/white binaries. It has taken multiple pandemics in the past years to bring about increased discussion of racism and racial violence against Asian/Asian American and Pacific Islander communities and yet the conversations still tend to happen in silos as if racial violence directed at African Americans and Asian Americans bears no relationship. In this course we will take a comparative and relational look at recent (1990s to the present) documentaries produced by Asian American and Black Independent filmmakers (Including but not limited to Marissa Aroy, Damani Baker, Vivek Bald, Garrett Bradley, Yance Ford, LisaGaye Hamilton, Grace Lee, Tadashi Nakamura, Spencer Nakasako, Michelle Parkerson, Marlon Riggs, Celine Parrenas Shimizu, and Renee Tajima-Pena) to explore convergences and contrasts in style, themes, practices of resistance, and strategies of media activism/programming/education across the two communities.