Power and Resistance in Spanish and Brazilian Film (Level 5)

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 5
• Convenor: Professor Maria Elena Placencia
• Tutor: Oscar Salgado Suarez
• Assessment: a 1000-word commentary (30%), 1000-word critical review (30%) and 2500-word essay (40%)

This course explores a series of Spanish and Brazilian films and documentaries mainly investigating questions of gender, race, class, identity and social politics. All these critical angles and perspectives will be traversed by matters of power and its repressive or oppressive positions, together with acts of resistance and their search for emancipatory freedom from that control, be it state, institutional, social or personal based. We will explore micro and macro examples of power being exerted and their particular acts of resistant counterparts, from the very specific gestures of dominance to the grand control of organised state power and its multiple ramifications of hegemonic control. We will also analyse key cultural and philosophical texts from Spanish, Brazilian and Western philosophers, filmmakers and cultural critics adding different discourses related to the nature of power and ways of resisting or diversifying it in different directions and by multiple actions.

Indicative module syllabus

• Power and Knowledge
• Oppression and Resistance
• Censorship and Representation
• Contemporary History of Spain and Brazil
• National cultural identity construction
• Memory
• Conflict
• Genre
• Race
• Class

By the end of this module, you will have:

• a good understanding of a range of theoretical approaches in film and cultural studies
• developed a methodological approach to visual representation  
• general knowledge of Brazilian and Spanish contemporary history and culture.