This co-taught course examines films with thematic and epochal focus on some of the major political and historical events of the 20th century that have resulted in revolutions. In this course, Brink and Revolution will be given equal emphasis, as many film makers document, or render plausible through fiction, failures as well as successes, new vistas as well as blind spots, in attempts at revolution. We seek to explore the arc of revolutions, their beginnings, conflicts, and propulsion as people in movement attempt to create new social, cultural and economic orders, and the efforts of film makers to chronicle their actions, manifestos, popular mobilization, conflicts and constraints. Marx’s dictum “Men make history, but not as they choose” is evident in many films that capture cinematically the dialectical tensions between institutions and people seeking to maintain an existing order, often with high doses of repression, and those social movements and actors with oppositional imaginaries of the political present and future. Yet we are expanding Marx’s dictum to encompasses people of all genders who make, act in, produce and serve as models for cinemas on the brink of revolution.

CIMS History & Geography and Format & Theory