A Place to Live: Finding Shelter in Global Cinema

Catalog description

Beginning with the 13-minute British documentary film Housing Problems (1935), which features interviews with tenants about their meager housing conditions, this seminar focuses on documentary as well as narrative films which thematize having a roof over one's head. We will discuss the visual storytelling techniques filmmakers use and the moral questions they engage in movies such as Kanehsatake (1993), The Florida Project (2017), Shoplifters (2018), and Roma (2018), among others. Our discussions will be informed by texts and films which situate the individual films historically, aesthetically, and politically, as well as theoretical works designed to offer tools and models for thinking and writing about film. Some questions guiding our conversations will include: What are the stories about family and kinship that arise from these films? Do the filmmakers capture or fail to capture the struggles of life at the margins? Is narrative or documentary film better suited to elucidate the stakes of having a place to call home? What ethical challenges arise when poverty and misery are aestheticized through film?