Spanish: Cuban Cinema

See Schedule of Courses for specific titles. Prerequisite: SPAN 3610.

PACE students with permission and override Pre-Req: SPAN 3160 Special Topics courses cannot carry CC designations

This course will fulfill both the literature and culture requirement for the major and minor. In this course we study Cuban cinema as it developed during the years after the Cuban revolution. We will see a couple films prior to the revolution to give us a sense of what the revolution was against but after the first week or so, the class is devoted to what the director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea called "the dialectics" of Cuban cinema. After the 1959 revolution, Cuba produced what most if not all Latin American critics and audiences consider among the most important and best cinema in the world. While cinema became one of the most important, nationally funded art forms, it also questioned the revolution. The result is that the films represent a very dynamic vision of Cuba that presents the viewers with more questions than answers. We will learn about the various phases of the revolution and Cuban history since 1959 and how cinema presents images that ask the viewer to imagine a better world.

Do the readings, watch the films, and come to class ready to have animated discussions.

one short paper (5 pages more or less) one research project (7 to 10 pages), two exams, daily reading or viewing quizzes