
Five Movies I Watched for Class
One of the things I enjoy most about Dartmouth is the fact that our classes are not only small and intimate, but also engaging in a way that goes beyond simple lectures and problem sets. Our focus on a liberal arts education, as well as the encouragement through the distributive requirement, means that students have the chance to explore a broad range of subjects, some unexpected, some expected, but all meaningful. An example of the interactive nature of classrooms is the use of multimedia in discussions, projects, and essays.
- No. 1
Colette
In my sex, gender, and society class, our final project involved analyzing the movie Colette and applying a few of the concepts we had learned throughout the term to it. The movie tells a story centered around the 19th century French novelist Colette. After watching it a few times, I felt compelled to write about gender performativity and how it is maintained by traditional gender roles.
- No. 2
Rabbit Proof Fence
While learning about indigenous culture and traditions, my introduction to cultural anthropology class watched Rabbit-Proof Fence, an Australian film that tells a story about two Aboriginal girls who escape from a native settlement to return to their families. It was an incredibly moving piece that brought the impact of discriminatory laws and policies into reality.
- No. 3
Rosso come il cielo
Everyone knows that the best way to learn a language is to listen to music, watch movies, and follow TV shows in that language. Rosso come il cielo, in Italian, introduced a young blind boy and his passion for music-mixing. Although it was pretty difficult to understand what they were saying without subtitles, given that we had only started learning Italian for a few weeks, it definitely helped us get used to the face-paced nature of the language.
- No. 4
Olympia
Olympia is a documentary sports film that documented the 1936 Summer Olympics. I remember watching it during my first year seminar, a class I took freshman year on the body and the nude in Western visual art. We studied how the body was portrayed in the shots of Olympic athletes, and found similarities to the ideals of the Ancient Greek and Roman times.
- No. 5
Planet of the Apes
This is the only film in this list that I had actually heard of, but one that I never particularly went out of my way to watch. As you could guess, I had to watch it for a class on human evolution. For a group project, our goal was to discuss the discrepancies and inaccuracies that the movie presented about human evolution, many of which are common falsities perpetuated by popular culture.