LITR246

The use of Shakespeare‘s plays as celluloid “scripts” dates from the earliest stages of cinema history. Cinema has been a major vehicle through which the 20"‘ and 21“ centuries have “reinvented” Shakespeare for a global audience. In this course, we will study a select body of plays which have received multiple treatments in film, video and "new media” formats, acrosshistorical periods and national borders. We will examine films from Australia, China, Finland, India, Italy. Japan, Russia, Syria/Iraq/Lebanon/Kuwait, the UK, and the US. We will also survey
writings in the global history offilm theory, including essays by international authors such as Andre Bazin (France), Bela Balazs (Hungary), Hugo Milnsterberg (Germany), and Sergei Eisenstein (former Soviet Union). Particular attention will be given to how the formal qualities of poetic drama and cinema, in different ways, challenge, structure, and/or reinforce our collective perceptions of past and present cultures.