Praeterita

Film is much on my mind at the moment. I'm currently halfway through a semester of co-teaching a class called Story in Fiction and Film International, which concentrates on the process of creating story as it emerges in fiction (such as Murukami, Allende, Kincaid, and other non-white or non-American writers) and films from around the world. Then there's the recent interview I posted with Bruce Sheridan , chair of the Film and Video department at Columbia College Chicago. (By the way, for those who don't know this, the F & V program is the largest in the USA for interdisciplinary learning in film, and certainly one of the top two or three programs in the country by any standard you want to compare it to). The teaching, and thinking about what Bruce said about language in relation to film, made me wonder why it is that the best films that I've seen recently have been documentaries, or non-fiction narratives in one form or another. "The Rape of Europa", a...

Last night in the Story in Fiction and Film class, we screened 'Tsotsi', the recent film made from Athol Fugard's 1962 novel. The novel was the assigned work of long fiction for this semester, and as part of the festivities I gave away the above cartoon drawing to the first student who answered a simple question about South Africa. Note that I always sign these little things, in the hope that the winning student will treasure it for decades, and then one day will be able to sell it at Sotheby's for thousands of U.S. bucks.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

As a way of engaging the students in the Fiction and Film International class on Thursday nights, I'm making a collage related to the film, and then giving it away to the first student who gives a correct answer to a question about the film. Last night we screened 'Maria, Full of Grace' (2004), and this was the prize: Click on the image to embiggen it if the text isn't legible.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

I've just started co-teaching a class at Columbia College Chicago called Story in Fiction and Film International. For 14 weeks, we'll be screening a film during the class, then discussing the film and some pieces of fiction that use similar story elements (voice, scene, character, dialogue, etc). We started with the British film "Dirty Pretty Things" (which from the US point of view is a foreign film), so as not to scare the students too early by subtitles. If you haven't seen it, here is the preview (with the voice-over by that guy who was parodied for making everything sound heavy and portentous):   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader