Queer Francophone Cinema

Catalog description

Taught in English. This course will survey queer cinema in French from around the world, examining cult classics beside established masterpieces and avant-garde aesthetics alongside more mainstream productions in order to probe how film participates in both the representation and the formation of LBGT epistemologies and identities. Tracing the lineage of queer French cinema from Jean Genet's and Jean Cocteau's A Song of Love (Un Chant d'amour, 1950) to Christophe Honore's Love Songs (Les Chansons d'mour, 2007), the course will cover a variety of films from France (by Francois Ozon, for example), Belgium (Chantal Akerman), Morocco (Abdellah Taia), Quebec (Xavier Dolan and Lea Pool) and elsewhere. Theoretical and critical perspectives will be provided by Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jose Esteban Munoz, Jack Halberstam and others. No previous knowledge of cinema studies, queer studies or Francophone cultures is assumed. The course will meet for two and a half hours weekly by Zoom, complemented by asynchronous discussion of assigned film excerpts, which students will annotate online.