From: Jonathan M Hall (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Jan 20 2009 - 09:00:15 PST
Dear Margaret,
I think a discussion of apocalypse could easily and helpfully include
material that comments on and reflects the atomic bomb experience.
There's an endless amount of material on the subject, much of it, not
surprisingly, from the US and Japan. Experimental Japanese work
includes The Navel and A-Bomb [Heso to genbaku] (Hosoe Eiko) 1960 and
the animation piece Shadow [Kage] (Hayashi Seiichi) 1968. On the
American side, I think Leslie Thornton's recent Let Me Count the
Ways, 10...9...8...7... , which was recently part of a program at the
SF Cinematheque, would be of great interest. For historical reasons
it's not surprising, but Americans have seemed much more hesitant to
engage their own atomic bomb/apocalypse in its most recent and
concrete manifestation, so provoking your students to do so would be
valuable and intellectually rewarding for them, I bet.
You might also consider Steven Okazaki's White Light/Black Rain
(2006) or a chapter in Mark Nornes' book on Japanese documentary.
US-Japan Film Wars and Hibakusha Cinema are also helpful books. I
use all these materials with a good deal of success in the classroom.
Yours sincerely,
Jonathan M Hall
University of California Irvine
On 20 Jan 2009, at 03:35, Margaret Jamieson wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Hi List:
>
> I'm teaching a class on apocalypse films and would welcome any
> suggestions, especially: shorter films, experimental films, non-
> fiction, international films, and other platforms, like games or
> installations. The premise of the course is to follow the anxieties
> of culture through apocalypse films, and the readings go from
> Boccaccio to Wheeler Winston Dixon, and the films from Birth of a
> Nation to Bruce Connor (with, rest assured, lots of aliens in
> between), so I'm very open to ideas.
>
> Thank you for your generosity, as always--MJ
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.