Shakespeare on Film and Media raises many questions for literary and media studies about adaptation and authorship; the status of “classic” texts and their variant forms; the role of Shakespeare in popular culture; the transition from manuscript, book, and stage to the modern medium of film and its recent digitally enhanced forms; and the implications of global production and distribution of Shakespeare on film in the digital age.
The viewing list varies from term to term. This term we will emphasize international films and performance videos from Russia (Kozintsev’s Hamlet and King Lear) Japan (Ryutopia Company’s Hamlet; Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood) Taiwan (Wu-Hsing-kuo’s Lear is Here), Brazil (Nos de Morro Midsummer Night’s Dream) and India (Bhardwaj’s Maqbool) along with Polanski’s Macbeth, Zeffirelli’s and Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet, Henry V (Olivier and Branagh) Julie Taymor’s Titus, and Almereyda’s Hamlet.
