APRIL 8
Films:
Le Bonheur (Varda 1964) DVD 2711
Tongues Untied (Riggs 1989) DVD 4546
Reading (to be done by April
14):
Ron Simmons. “Tongues Untied: An
Interview with Marlon Riggs.” (in course reader)
Papers due April 15 by 4 p.m.
Undergraduate students email papers to
We have seen several films in the past weeks with radically
different approaches to performance: the naturalism of Wanda and Happiness, the
Brechtian theatricality of Class
Relations, the performance art-inspired work in Tongues Untied. For this week’s paper, compare two performances from
these films, being careful to root your discussion in specific scenes. Think
about issues like identification (are you led to identify emotionally with the
character? Why or why not?), degrees of “theatricality” (is the performance “invisible”
in its naturalism, or is it intended to be felt as a performance?) and how the
performance functions in the context of the film.
