forty-point questions that require at least several paragraphs to be adequately answered:

How does Blue Gate Crossing participate in the conventions of the wenyi-pian genre, as described in the Carmen reading, Chinese Melodrama. The Wenyi Genre?

Pick two titles from our screening list and describe how the filmmakers choice of settings, as well as the manner in which the settings were filmed shape our understanding of the characters and their predicaments.

Taking into account distinguishing characteristics of subSaharan Black cinema (so-called Africanizing cinema), how does Abouna relate to this cinematic tradition? How does Moolaad?

On the surface, The Clay Bird and Moolaad appear to describe a binary oppositiontwo distinct philosophical positions, attitudes or traditions in direct conflict. Pick one of these films and explain how, instead, Tareque Masud or Ousmane Sembne articulate a spectrum of beliefs and practices that prevent their characters from becoming one-dimensional.

Not only are Abouna, Blue Gate Crossing, Ni the Albino, Moolaad and People That Are Not Me all coming-of-age films, but they also contain, in some form or fashion, what is arguably the central structural device of most film narratives: the heterosexual love interest. Choose two of these films and discuss how they complicate this commonplace and, moreover, how that complication illuminates the characters growth to adulthood.

Almost every film weve seen has an inconclusive ending. Pick two examples and explain why the lack of resolution seems essential to that films overall narrative dynamic or theme.