BEFORE you respond to the essay questions, please carefully read instructions below:
ALL your responses on this page to short essay questions MUST INCLUDE the following elements to address the question asked: (1) Include at least three different quotes from 3 different readings/videos to support your views/arguments; (2) analysis of at least four different examples/illustrations/story details/historical facts from the films/videos/readings that are the focus of a given question.
PLEASE ANSWER ONLY THREE OUT OF THE FOLLOWING LIST OF QUESTIONS (18points):
1. Based on our viewing and discussion of Rgis Wargnier’s film Indochine (1992), offer a careful and well-documented analysis of the film, using at least four specific examples from the film, to illustrate the films representation of French Indochina and that part of French history: Through whose perspective are the historical facts mediated/ filtered in the films? Whose perspective is dominant or foregrounded most? The French or the indigenous populations? What does it tell us about how the French would like to remember this part of their History as a nation? Your answer needs to consider and use quotes from at least three different readings/videos we discussed in Module 4 to support your main points and arguments.
2. Using at least four specific examples/plot details directly drawn from the film, discuss the portrayal of the main character Eliane in the film Indochine by considering what values she stands for, her relationship with other characters, her image as a symbol of France, and how her perspective shapes our understanding of the history of French Indochina. Your answer needs to consider and use quotes from at least three different readings/videos we discussed in Module 4 to support your main points and arguments.
3. Using at least four specific examples/plot details directly drawn from the documentary, discuss the ways in which the personal story of Liachoua Lee in the documentary Hmong Memory at the Crossroads intersects with collective History. What is the value we gain from bringing the personal story and collective History into conversation/into contact with each other? Using very specific examples directly from the film, discuss the ways in which his story allows us to recognize the intersections of American, French and Hmong histories, and the significance of this fact. Your answer needs to consider and use quotes from at least three different readings/videos we discussed in Modules 1, 2, and 4 to support your main points and arguments.
4. Using at least four specific examples/plot details directly drawn from the documentary, how does the documentary directed by French journalist Cyril Payen Secret War in Laos (studied among videos assigned in Module 4) show the unknown history of the Hmong people, and how does it highlight facts about the PRESENT condition of the Hmong people, as well as facts about their PAST that are not present in the film
Indochina ? How does the documentary represent the consequences of their participation in French Indochina War on their lives after the war? How does this documentary re-write the history of French Indochina from the perspective of this Hmong Asian minority? Your answer needs to consider and use quotes from at least three different readings/videos we discussed in Modules 1, 2 and 4 to support your main points and arguments.
5. Using at least four specific examples/plot details directly drawn from the documentary Growing up Hmong at the Crossroads, discuss how does Cedric Lee, the voiceover and key young Hmong participant in the film, describe his own journey and identity? how does he view his relationship to Detroit and to American society? How does he view his relationship to France and Laos? how do they fit in his individual identity? How does his father Liachoua’s work of remembering his family’s past connected with their desire to fit and create a place for themselves in French society and American society? What moments in the film do you consider thematically significant and why? give very specific examples from the film to support your answer. Your answer needs to consider and use quotes from at least three different readings/videos we discussed in Modules 1, 2 and 4 to support your main points and arguments.
