*This class has been rescheduled from its original published date.*

In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-Wai: Commonly placed on the list of Top 10 greatest films of all time, Wong Kar-Wai’s masterpiece explores romance, melodrama, and betrayal in 1960s British Hong Kong. This is often cited as one of the most beautiful and aesthetically pleasing films of the modern era.

"Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second, and you can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.” This quote from Italian film director Federico Fellini articulates a poignant commonplace about cinema’s relationship to the dream worlds we visit to supplement the more mundane aspects of our lives. So much, at least, can be said of cinema in general—but what of the more recent and popular genre known as “world cinema”? How can we begin to study and understand the uses of cinematic fantasy in an increasingly interconnected, globalized world? Do audiences halfway across the world share the same dreams, desires, and disappointments we experience when watching cinema?

This class explores some of the most important films in cinematic history. What’s most remarkable about these films is their distance from Hollywood, an industry known for packaging, standardizing, and even sterilizing its films to achieve the highest profit at the cost of originality. On the other hand, the films we will watch earned world fame because of their incredible creativity and distinctness of thought. In addition to being outside the box, these films are some of the most thrilling and entertaining of the last two decades.

Additional films we will critique together:

May 16: Amores Perros (Life’s a Bitch) directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

May 23: It Follows directed by David Robert Mitchell

May 30: No class

June 6: Volver (Return) directed by Pedro Almodóvar

June 13: Parasite directed by Bong Joon Ho

June 20: Y tu Mamá También (And Your Mother, Too) directed by Alfonso Cuarón

* This lecture can be purchased individually for $40, or as part of a series for $220. For series discount, add all 6 individual lectures to your cart. The discount will be automatically applied during checkout.

This class will be held in-person at WIH