Romero, Channette
MWF 10:20 AM
Park Hall 0145
Global Indigenous Film and Media
This class will interrogate the ways that global Indigenous writers, filmmakers, and artists use film and digital media to articulate Indigenous stories, and to respond to and attempt to correct false cinematic stereotypes. We will critically explore a variety of different media formats (films, documentaries, animation, music videos, multimedia art installations, etc.) from tribal peoples throughout the world, especially from North America, the Arctic, New Zealand, and Australia. We will examine the diverse ways that contemporary Native, First Nations, and Aboriginal artists assert existing Indigenous presence and connections to tribal homelands, in the face of mainstream media traditions that historically render them absent and always-already-dead. Topics for discussion will include (among others) the relationship between cinema and tribal traditions, especially storytelling traditions; the politics of representation; visual sovereignty; spectatorship; cinema and language preservation; and the ethics of film production.