World Film Shakespeares 14 weeks; undergraduate seminar Amrita Dhar [email protected]

Detail from a poster for Omkara

Course Description Using twelve critically-acclaimed films from around the world, this course will follow Shakespeare in his twentieth and twenty-first century travels far and wide from his native British Isles. What are the courtesies and possibilities that film, as a medium, makes available to Shakespeare and his characters? How have directors from India and Russia, New Zealand and France, Japan and Finland, Mexico and Singapore used these potentials to create their own sometimes intensely local Shakespeares? What does all this do to our understanding of the playwright from Stratford who made it big on the London stage in Elizabethan England? And what does it do to our understanding of the world we live in, in which Shakespeare continues to give us the language(s) to talk about some of the most urgent and enduring human questions of love, pain, death, and happiness?

Dhar | World Film Shakespeares Syllabus

Course Goals 1. Developing an understanding of Shakespeare as a presence in cinema from around the world, and understanding what it is about his work that lends itself to local and global appropriations; 2. Attaining a level of comfort and enjoyment with filmic registers that differ vastly from mainstream English language cinema in both intellectual aspiration and aesthetic achievement; 3. Inculcating visual interpretation skills and cinematic ‘close-reading’ methods and strategies; 4. Enabling an imaginative exploration of the medium of early modern theatre, and the medium of contemporary film.

Course Materials The Norton Shakespeare , 8 th edition

Course Requirements and Grading Breakdown Attendance, participation, and in-class reports 30% of course grade Close reading paper (5-6 pages) 30% of course grade Final project (essay and screenplay) 40% of course grade

Course Information and Policies 1. The class is a learning community; please remember that each member is a valuable and equal part of it. 2. This is a viewing-and-reading-intensive course. There will be a film screening almost every week that you must be able to attend. The corresponding play, in Shakespeare’s English, will also be mandatory reading for each of those weeks. Be prepared to invest adequate time as you encounter Shakespeare’s remarkable yet often challenging centuries-old language. Also allow sufficient time for thinking and writing. Come prepared to class. Expect to spend class-time in intense discussion. Expect to spend time outside class on reading and writing. 3. Familiarity with any of the languages of the films we shall view is excellent to have, but by no means required. Each film will be viewed with English subtitles. 4. If you require extra time or any specific adjustments in order to fulfill course expectations, please let me know in the first few meetings of term so that I can plan any necessary adjustments to assignments and due dates. 5. If you must miss a class meeting, please let me know in advance. It would be smart as well to arrange to trade notes with a classmate in case you do have to be absent. 6. This course adheres to the Department of English plagiarism policy, with details available at http://www.lsa.umich.edu/english/undergraduate/advising/plagNote.asp. I shall expect the work you turn in to be entirely your own, written specifically for this course. Plagiarism will result in a failing grade for the assignment, and possibly for the course. I shall also refer any plagiarism case to the Dean of Academic Affairs, who may impose other penalties. 7. Please bring each day’s reading—and pen/pencil and notebook—to class for discussion.

Schedule

Week 1 : Introduction to the course; excerpts from Mark Thornton Burnett, Shakespeare and World Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Chicken Rice War (dir. Chee Kong Cheah, 2000; Cantonese and English); Romeo and Juliet

Week 2 : Bhrantibilas (dir. Manu Sen, 1963; Bengali); The Comedy of Errors

Dhar | World Film Shakespeares Syllabus

Week 3 : The Maori Merchant of Venice (dir. Don Selwyn, 2002; Maori); The Merchant of Venice

Week 4 : L’Appartement (dir. Gilles Mimouni, 1995; French); A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Week 5 : draft of close reading paper due in class; peer-review workshops; close-reading paper due in class

Week 6 : Throne of Blood (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1957; Japanese); Macbeth

Week 7 : Maqbool (dir. Vishal Bhardwaj, 2003; Hindi, Urdu); Macbeth

Week 8 : Omkara (dir. Vishal Bhardwaj, 2006; Hindi, Khariboli); Othello

Week 9 : Huapango (dir. Iván Lipkies, 2004; Spanish); Othello

Week 10 : Haider (dir. Vishal Bhardwaj, 2014; Hindi, Urdu, Pashto); Hamlet

Week 11 : Hamlet Goes Business (dir. Aki Kaurismäki, 1987; Finnish); Hamlet

Week 12 : Ran (dir. Akira Kurosawa, 1985; Japanese); King Lear

Week 13 : Korol Lir (dir. Grigori Kozintsev, 1971; Russian); King Lear

Week 14 : Presentation of final projects

Examinations Week: Final project due

Close Reading Paper Assignment 5-6 pp; 12-point font; 1-inch margin on all sides; double-spaced; printed on both sides of the paper; stapled

Pick a single 5-10-minute stretch from any of the films we have watched so far, and subject it to intense critical and appreciative scrutiny. The questions that you might want to answer in your reading could include the following, although this list is by no means exhaustive. o Explain your choice: what does this moment in the film accomplish for you, and for the bigger story that the film wants to tell? o How do the words, silences, or, indeed, anything of the score impact or manipulate the affective reactions of a viewer? o How does the use of the camera constitute/influence/complement/add to/alter your point of view? o What about the characters/actors in that moment works for you (or fails to work)? o Is this moment pivotal for the film in any way? Why? How do you see it answering the corresponding moment of the play in Shakespeare’s version?

Dhar | World Film Shakespeares Syllabus

Remember that your reading of the moment should illuminate something that is not readily perceptible to a viewer of the film. It should enrich and deepen your reader’s understanding of that moment, and by extension, allow them perhaps even to see the film itself in a new light.

Please bring three copies of your paper to class for peer-review. After the peer-review process, submit the finalized version to me in the next class.

Final Project Assignment: Essay and Screenplay (equal weightage of points for each) 6 pp and 20-25 pp; 12-point font; 1-inch margin on all sides; double spaced; printed on both sides of the paper; stapled

Look through the full list of Shakespeare’s plays. Pick one that particularly moves, or compels, or bothers you.

Conceptualize a full-length adaptation of this play. Where in time and place would you set it? What would the look of your film be? Would you retain Shakespeare’s ‘plot’ faithfully, or work mostly around it? Would you change the ending? Would you keep all the characters, or cut some, or add others? How would you cast your characters? Would you retain the traditionally assigned race, or gender, or sexuality, or ability/disability for them? Or would you switch some things around? What would you call them? How would they talk? What would their back-stories be? What would define the lines of friendship, or attraction, or enmity, between them? What role would location/landscape/backdrop (historical, cultural, or otherwise) play in your adaptation? Most importantly, for each of these questions: why would you do what you would do? Write a sharp and concise, double-spaced, 6-page essay explaining your choices and your decisions.

Now write a screenplay for a single act—of your choice—in the play that you are working with. (Provide a brief synopsis of the ‘plot’ of what comes before and/or after, so that, as your reader, I have a sense of continuity.) Your screenplay should be some 20-25 pages in length, and it must give me a sense of your unique and original intellectual contribution to the story of the play. Write with an alert ear for dialogue and with an eye to visualization of what would be effective on the screen. Include complete ‘stage’ or ‘acting’ directions. Feel free to include sketches, if that makes it easier for you to communicate how a particular setting or camera-angle should look.

Think boldly. Write, read aloud, re-write, ask your friends for reactions and constructive criticism, edit, and finalise. Most importantly, enjoy!

To submit, please bring the essay and the screenplay together to my mailbox by noon on the due date.

Dhar | World Film Shakespeares Syllabus