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The coming-of-age experience is familiar to all social classes and cultures. Stories of youth after childhood are compellingly represented in films across the globe. In this course, we will examine the representation of adolescence within an international context, focusing primarily on the experience of youth beyond dominant Hollywood. We will closely analyse those films from across the globe that complicate our understanding of adolescent identity by acknowledging its intersection with other kinds of identification - in particular racial, class, national, and that of sexual orientation.
This course will explore the evolution of the coming-of-age subgenre, from the classic youth films of the past to the most recent and innovative indie releases, such as Richard Linklater’s twelve-year epic Boyhood and James Napier Robertson’s Dark Horse, which have both garnered awards and acclaim around the world. This course challenges students to look critically at the depiction of adolescent experience at home in New Zealand and abroad through the lens of film history and genre theory. We will begin by examining constructions of adolescence in three national cinemas, analysing the auteurist styles of nouvelle vague filmmaker François Truffaut, American director Robert Mulligan, and Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung. Through close interrogation of the strategies at work in the directors’ films, we will discover the ways in which the adolescent’s coming-of-age story responds to tensions in cultural and national identity. Our next section will expand upon the theme of social and spiritual transformation, focusing on the shifting terrain between fathers and teenage sons in recent films from New Zealand and the US. In the final two sections, we will address topics related explicitly to gender formation. We will begin with three films from Sweden, Australia and France that focus on different dimensions of female empowerment; the first celebrates girl power in teen punk bands in 1980s Sweden; the second looks at issues that arise when a teenage girl must confront her mother’s plans to transition genders; the third offers a sensitive portrayal of adolescent sexual awakening in the realisation of a passionate lesbian relationship. We will conclude with films that further develop the theme of forbidden love and loss, looking at the fantasy landscapes that allow for role-playing and escape from adult dominion, while holding a dangerous potential for isolation and tragic loss.
Knowledge:extended knowledge of critical and technical vocabulary of disciplinespecific knowledge of a range of national cinemas, movements and formsknowledge of the major theoretical debates and discourses in film studiesspecific knowledge of the relationships between selected films and their social, cultural and historical context
Either 15 points of CINE at 100 level with a B pass, or30 points of CINE at 100 level, orany 45 points at 100 level, orequivalent preparation with the approval of the course coordinator. RP: CINE101, CINE102, CINE104
CINE203, CINE303
CINE101, CINE102, CINE104
Mary Wiles
Texts: Readings to be provided on LEARN(Image: "Spirited Away" by Exilium BB, licensed under CC BY-NC 3.0.)
Film List:Week One: Coming of Age in the Small Town SouthTo Kill a Mockingbird (Mulligan, 1962, USA)Week Two: Coming of Age in Rural IndiaPather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1995, India)Week Three: Coming of Age: The Colonial Encounter of East-WestThe Scent of Green Papaya (Tran Anh Hung, 1993, France-Vietnam)Week Four: Time(less) Expanses and a Texas BoyhoodBoyhood (Linklater, 2014, USA)Week Five: Queer Coming of Age in the USAMoonlight (Jenkins, 2016, USA)Week Six: Coming of Age: Race and Disability in New ZealandThe Dark Horse (Robertson, 2014, New Zealand)Week Seven: Coming of Age and Girl PowerWe Are the Best! (Moodysson, 2013, Sweden)Week Eight: Girl Gangs: Coming of Age in Urban FranceGirlhood (Sciamma, 2014, France)Week Nine: Mothers and Daughters: Coming of Age52 Tuesdays (Hyde, 2013, Australia)Week Ten: Coming of Age: Self Perception and Subjectivity The Diary of a Teenage Girl (Heller, 2015, USA)Week Eleven: Girlhood and Japanese AniméSpirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001, Japan)Week Twelve: Fantasy Kingdoms: Coming of AgeThe Tree of Life (Malick, 2011, USA)
Domestic fee $732.00
International fee $2,975.00
* All fees are inclusive of NZ GST or any equivalent overseas tax, and do not include any programme level discount or additional course-related expenses.
This course will not be offered if fewer than 20 people apply to enrol.
For further information see Humanities .