When most people have test week and spend hours in the library pouring over their books and working out problems, I have paper week. And I also spend hours in the library, clickety-clacking away.
Today was paper week. I had three papers due:
1.) a 3-pg paper on how the Maasai tribe in Africa is trying, with the help of the World Intellectual Property Organization (part of the UN), to copyright their dances and songs to keep economic control of their cultural heritage
2.) a 5-6 pg paper on the themes of the 1910s and 20s that run through the films The Birth of a Nation (the most racist film on the face of the planet-- and also one of the first feature films, which means that it is black and white, silent, and loooooong), The Kid (starring Charlie Chaplin in his first of many famous roles as the Tramp), and the obscure The Crowd (by King Vidor, which is about some poor guy who gets swallowed in the fast-paced industrial age).
3.) a 3-pg review of a book, Folklore/Cinema: Popular Film as Vernacular Culture, which I didn't read and still had to summarize (in my defense, it was a terrible book full of essays that were ONLY written because some professor somewhere wanted a tenure position)--- Although, one of the essays was fascinating, because it talked about how Leni Riefenstahl, a German actress and director of the famous Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will, first established her career by making mountain films (about the rugged honesty of the high peaks and the peasants that lived on their slopes) and how that brought her the special attention and friendship of none other than Mr. Adolf Hitler.
Anywho... done and done. I'm so glad that's over. Now I can get back to reading four chapters for class tomorrow, finishing a chapter in my French workbook, and writing four emails to send out for the Student Film Production Club.
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