AFR 351
Spirits of Rebellion: The L.A. Rebellion Filmmakers
Last Offered Spring 2019
Division II
Cross-listed
ENGL 357 / AMST 359
This course is not offered in the current catalog
Class Details
When Beyoncé unveiled the Lemonade visual album in 2016, her production captured the artistic spirit and gave new life to an earlier work: Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1991), a luminous film about three generations of the Gullah people and the first motion picture by a Black woman to obtain wide theatrical release in the United States. Many, however, are unaware of the decades-long cinematic movement to which Dash belongs. In this course, we will devote our critical inquiry to the creative output of the L.A. Rebellion, a group of Black cinematic artists trained at the UCLA Film and Television School between the 1960s and 1990s. Our visual journey will take us through a diverse set of filmmakers like Charles Burnett, Ben Caldwell, Barbara McCullough, Julie Dash, Zeinabu irene Davis, Haile Gerima, Alile Sharon Larkin, Billy Woodberry, among many, many others, and how they sought to not only redefine the Black image on-screen but also reimagine the infinite possibilities of Blackness. We will pay close attention to the heterogeneity of genres, styles, and techniques that they put into practice from narrative to neorealism to documentary to avant-garde/experimental to African and African American musical and storytelling traditions. We will explore the various social and political issues that were represented by their films including: racial and class oppression, woman of color feminisms, Black Power, Afrocentrism, anti-colonialism and decolonization, police brutality and mass incarceration, radical social movements and coalition building, and the importance of community-based art and film practices. Finally, we will touch upon some of the recent works that have been inspired by the L.A. Rebellion, including the aforementioned Lemonade and Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight (2016). Our viewership will be supplemented with readings in Black social and cultural criticism.
The Class:
Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 19
Class#: 3016
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Limit: 19
Expected: 19
Class#: 3016
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation:
attendance and participation; weekly online journal responses (1-2 pages); midterm essay (5-7 pages); final project
Prerequisites:
previous courses in American Studies, critical studies in race and ethnicity or cultural studies, or permission of the instructor
Enrollment Preferences:
American Studies majors
Distributions:
Division II
Notes:
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ENGL 357 Division I AMST 359 Division II AFR 351 Division II
ENGL 357 Division I AMST 359 Division II AFR 351 Division II
Attributes:
AMST Comp Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Diaspora
AMST Critical and Cultural Theory Electives
AMST Critical and Cultural Theory Electives
Class Grid
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AFR 351 - SEM L.A. Rebellion Films
AFR 351 SEM L.A. Rebellion FilmsDivision IINot offered
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AFR 351 - SEM L.A. Rebellion Films
AFR 351 SEM L.A. Rebellion FilmsDivision IINot offered
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