"Cinematographic Representations of Split Cities: Belfast, Beirut and Berlin"
Lecturer: Profa. Dr. Stephanie Schwerter, Visiting the Université de Valenciennes
18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and 25 March 2019, from 2 to 6 pm.
Room 131 of the Letras building FFLCH - USP
Listeners are welcome.
The W.B.Yeats Chair of Irish Studies will grant certificates for students with 90% attendance.
Lecturer: Profa. Dr. Stephanie Schwerter, Visiting the Université de Valenciennes
18, 19, 20, 21, 22 and 25 March 2019, from 2 to 6 pm.
Room 131 of the Letras building FFLCH - USP
Listeners are welcome.
The W.B.Yeats Chair of Irish Studies will grant certificates for students with 90% attendance.
Goals:
In contemporary filmography, split cities continue to inspire authors from diverse cultures. This discipline focuses on Belfast, Beirut and Berlin, three cities known for their inner borders and boundaries and for their underlying potential for violence. By becoming symbols of political separation, they provided context for countless novels, plays, television shows and films. Despite the difference in the history of each city, Belfast, Beirut and Berlin have in common a broad scope of central features for divided cities. The socio-political contrast media of these cities gave rise to specific territorialities, which determine their respective urban configurations. While in Belfast, "peace lines," murals and paintings at the curb of the sidewalks separate the Catholic working class and Protestant residents since the outbreak of the Troubles in 1968, in Beirut, seventeen years of civil war creates a volatile demarcation line, transforming the city into a sectarian labyrinth. In Berlin, however, "the Wall" divided the urban landscape in east and west for twenty-eight years and served to keep two regimes with strong ideological strikes away. There are political and historical differences, but both Belfast, Beirut and Berlin have been mutilated by physical segregation, etched in the fabric of urban space. In these cities, specific territories assume singular symbolic and psychological meanings. By means of a comparative method, the discipline investigates whether filmmakers from different cultural contexts use similar cinematographic strategies to represent the division of the city space and the segregation of the urban population from an environment devastated by war. In this way, we will explore the representation of Belfast, Beirut and Berlin is different with the change of political situations in the respective countries. It will be possible to determine an evolution of realistic, almost documentary representation for a more humorous illustration of Berlin and Beirut; or do German and Lebanese writers and filmmakers choose different media for the purpose of visualizing the evolution of the two capitals of places dominated by political conflict to modern cities in which political tension gradually becomes a part of the past?
Justification: This course is aimed at post graduate students (masters and doctoral students) with an interest in urban division, borders and fictional representations of political conflicts. The course will enable participants to immerse themselves in the history of various cities through moving images and discuss different film strategies.
Content: 1. Introduction to the history of the various urban fragmentations of Belfast, Beirut and Berlin. 2. Picture of the divided cities: key concepts in cinematography and theoretical perspectives 3. Berlin between East and West: One, Two, Three by Billy Wilders and Goodbye Lenin by Wofgang Becker 4. Crossing Religious Limits in Beirut: Ring of Fire by Bahij Hodji and West Beirut by Ziad Doueiri 5. The Troubles in Thrillers 6. Belfast Carnival in Divorcing Jack by David Caffery and Everylasting Piece by Barry Levison.
Form of evaluation: Presence in class, seminars and final written work.
Bibliography: Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.
___. “Epic in the Novel”. Ed. and trans. M. Holquist. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin
University of Texas Press, 1988, p. 259-422.
Bateman, Colin. Divorcing Jack. London: Harper Collins, 1995.
Carroli, Noël. Humour. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Dentith, Simon. Parody. London: Routiedge, 2000.
English, Richard. Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA. Oxford. Oxford University
Press, 2005.
Feeney, Brian. The Troubles. Dublin: O’Brian, 2004.
Hill, John. Cinema and Northern Ireland. Film, Culture and Politics. London: British Film
Institute, 2006.
___. “Divorcing Jack”. Ed. B. McFarlane. The Cinema of Britain and Ireland. London: Wallflower
Press, 2005.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism. London, Routledge, 1988.
Kelly, Aaron. “Terror-torial Imperatives: Belfast in Eoin McNamee’s Resurrection Man”.
Ed. N. Allan: A. Kelly. The Cities of Belfast. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003, p. 168-182.
Kennedy-Andrews, Elmer. (De-)constructing the North. Fiction and the Northern Ireland
Troubles Since 1969. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003.
Mcllroy, Brian. Shooting to Kill: Filmmaking and the Troubles in Nortern Ireland.
Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1998.
Palmer, Jerry. Thrillers. Genesis and Structure of a Popular Genre. London: Edward
Arnold, 1978.
Rolston, Bill. “Escaping from Belfast: Class Ideology and Literature in Northern Ireland”.
Race and Class. Vol. 31. Nr. 1, 1989, p. 41-57.
Rose, Margaret A. Parody: Ancient, Modern and Post-Modern. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
Rubin, Martin. Thrillers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Smith, Gerry. The Novel and the Nation. London: Pluto Press, 1997.
Shafik, Viola. Arab Cinema. History and Cultural Identity. Cairo: The American University
of Cairo Press, 2007.
Storey, Michael. Representing the Troubles in Irish Short Fiction. Washington: Catholic
University of America Press.
Stucke, Frank. Bewegte Bildereiner bewegten Zeit. Aufstieg und Fall der Metropole Berlin
im Film. In: Harder, Matthias, Hille, Almut (eds.): Weltfabrik Berlin. Eine Metropole als
Sujet der Literatur. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2006, pp. 65-80.
Titley, Alan. “Rough Rug-Headed Kerns: The Irish Gunman in the Popular Novel”. Éire-
Ireland. Vol. 15, Nr. 4. 1980, p. 15-38.
Wolfreum, Edgar. Die Mauer. Geschichte einer Teilung. Munich, 2009.
Yazbek, Elie. Regards sur le cinema libanais (1990-2010). Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012.
In contemporary filmography, split cities continue to inspire authors from diverse cultures. This discipline focuses on Belfast, Beirut and Berlin, three cities known for their inner borders and boundaries and for their underlying potential for violence. By becoming symbols of political separation, they provided context for countless novels, plays, television shows and films. Despite the difference in the history of each city, Belfast, Beirut and Berlin have in common a broad scope of central features for divided cities. The socio-political contrast media of these cities gave rise to specific territorialities, which determine their respective urban configurations. While in Belfast, "peace lines," murals and paintings at the curb of the sidewalks separate the Catholic working class and Protestant residents since the outbreak of the Troubles in 1968, in Beirut, seventeen years of civil war creates a volatile demarcation line, transforming the city into a sectarian labyrinth. In Berlin, however, "the Wall" divided the urban landscape in east and west for twenty-eight years and served to keep two regimes with strong ideological strikes away. There are political and historical differences, but both Belfast, Beirut and Berlin have been mutilated by physical segregation, etched in the fabric of urban space. In these cities, specific territories assume singular symbolic and psychological meanings. By means of a comparative method, the discipline investigates whether filmmakers from different cultural contexts use similar cinematographic strategies to represent the division of the city space and the segregation of the urban population from an environment devastated by war. In this way, we will explore the representation of Belfast, Beirut and Berlin is different with the change of political situations in the respective countries. It will be possible to determine an evolution of realistic, almost documentary representation for a more humorous illustration of Berlin and Beirut; or do German and Lebanese writers and filmmakers choose different media for the purpose of visualizing the evolution of the two capitals of places dominated by political conflict to modern cities in which political tension gradually becomes a part of the past?
Justification: This course is aimed at post graduate students (masters and doctoral students) with an interest in urban division, borders and fictional representations of political conflicts. The course will enable participants to immerse themselves in the history of various cities through moving images and discuss different film strategies.
Content: 1. Introduction to the history of the various urban fragmentations of Belfast, Beirut and Berlin. 2. Picture of the divided cities: key concepts in cinematography and theoretical perspectives 3. Berlin between East and West: One, Two, Three by Billy Wilders and Goodbye Lenin by Wofgang Becker 4. Crossing Religious Limits in Beirut: Ring of Fire by Bahij Hodji and West Beirut by Ziad Doueiri 5. The Troubles in Thrillers 6. Belfast Carnival in Divorcing Jack by David Caffery and Everylasting Piece by Barry Levison.
Form of evaluation: Presence in class, seminars and final written work.
Bibliography: Bakhtin, Mikhail. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984.
___. “Epic in the Novel”. Ed. and trans. M. Holquist. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin
University of Texas Press, 1988, p. 259-422.
Bateman, Colin. Divorcing Jack. London: Harper Collins, 1995.
Carroli, Noël. Humour. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Dentith, Simon. Parody. London: Routiedge, 2000.
English, Richard. Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA. Oxford. Oxford University
Press, 2005.
Feeney, Brian. The Troubles. Dublin: O’Brian, 2004.
Hill, John. Cinema and Northern Ireland. Film, Culture and Politics. London: British Film
Institute, 2006.
___. “Divorcing Jack”. Ed. B. McFarlane. The Cinema of Britain and Ireland. London: Wallflower
Press, 2005.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism. London, Routledge, 1988.
Kelly, Aaron. “Terror-torial Imperatives: Belfast in Eoin McNamee’s Resurrection Man”.
Ed. N. Allan: A. Kelly. The Cities of Belfast. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003, p. 168-182.
Kennedy-Andrews, Elmer. (De-)constructing the North. Fiction and the Northern Ireland
Troubles Since 1969. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2003.
Mcllroy, Brian. Shooting to Kill: Filmmaking and the Troubles in Nortern Ireland.
Trowbridge: Flicks Books, 1998.
Palmer, Jerry. Thrillers. Genesis and Structure of a Popular Genre. London: Edward
Arnold, 1978.
Rolston, Bill. “Escaping from Belfast: Class Ideology and Literature in Northern Ireland”.
Race and Class. Vol. 31. Nr. 1, 1989, p. 41-57.
Rose, Margaret A. Parody: Ancient, Modern and Post-Modern. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
Rubin, Martin. Thrillers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Smith, Gerry. The Novel and the Nation. London: Pluto Press, 1997.
Shafik, Viola. Arab Cinema. History and Cultural Identity. Cairo: The American University
of Cairo Press, 2007.
Storey, Michael. Representing the Troubles in Irish Short Fiction. Washington: Catholic
University of America Press.
Stucke, Frank. Bewegte Bildereiner bewegten Zeit. Aufstieg und Fall der Metropole Berlin
im Film. In: Harder, Matthias, Hille, Almut (eds.): Weltfabrik Berlin. Eine Metropole als
Sujet der Literatur. Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2006, pp. 65-80.
Titley, Alan. “Rough Rug-Headed Kerns: The Irish Gunman in the Popular Novel”. Éire-
Ireland. Vol. 15, Nr. 4. 1980, p. 15-38.
Wolfreum, Edgar. Die Mauer. Geschichte einer Teilung. Munich, 2009.
Yazbek, Elie. Regards sur le cinema libanais (1990-2010). Paris: L’Harmattan, 2012.
