This 3-hour course over 9 weeks is shared between 2 teachers. It aims to show students how the political geography of the world, at different scales, is staged and imaged in popular culture. The first teacher proposes to the students the analysis and the realization of comic strips in order to learn to combine text and image to stage their experience of the world (see corresponding project). The second teacher proposes to approach the subject from the angle of cinema by practicing film analysis.
The theoretical presentation of the course follows a fairly classic PowerPoint presentation format. However, following the observation that written texts have increasingly given way to audiovisual content in everyday life, the teacher wished to adapt to the world of students by offering them presentations that are as visual as possible. He enriches most of his slides with images or film clips. The teacher approaches visual contents as sources and means of expression. These can, for example, be data or interview results that inform us about society.
In line with this concept, the teacher does not ask students to do any written work, but to prepare a PowerPoint presentation of the analysis of a film sequence (Why is cinema interesting in terms of the social sciences?). In groups of 3, students must choose an excerpt from a film (mostly fiction) related to the year's theme (e.g., issues in terms of popular geopolitics). After the teacher has validated the film, they isolate very short sequences to analyze. The teacher assists them by providing resources (reading grids, bibliographies, examples during the course). The important thing is not to be absorbed by the story, but to concentrate on the image. The 30-minute oral presentation must include a brief presentation of the film and its context, the projection of the entire sequence (3 to 5 minutes maximum), a synthetic description of the sequence, the chosen problematic and the analysis of a few shots. All students attend the screenings followed by discussions. The evaluation is based on different criteria provided to the students on the following elements: the document, the presentation, the problematic, the analysis and the knowledge.