Transnational Cinema

This inter-and cross-disciplinary course addresses a wide range of fields from film theory and aesthetics to cultural studies and history, exploring questions of film style, transnational and cosmopolitan filmmaking practices, national industries and audience reception. We will begin by discussing recent debates in film studies about (trans)national and peripheral cinemas before proceeding to a reading of a few paradigmatic cases of films that are either produced in Greece or deal about Greece. You are encouraged to critically reflect on the introduced approaches in (trans)national, peripheral and cosmopolitan filmmaking, read films filmically (in terms of their narrative and style), locate them in their wider socio-political and economic contexts of production and reception, and suggest other case studies based on your own background and interests. We will approach films from a Cultural Studies perspective. This means that while a film may be entertaining in its own right, we will want to view it also with an eye to what it can tell us about the history of a particular time, place and movement.

« Les Techniques du corps » (1934), a key text of the Marcel Mauss intellectual legacy, includes a personal testimony on the epistemological effect of his American journey. The purpose of this article is to explore this text in order to precise the role of the contact with the American culture in the evolution of Marcel Mauss’s understanding of cultural practices. We will confirm, through this reading, his departing of the durkheimian tradition in the second part of his career and the long misunderstanding by most of the French sociologists of the originality of his thinking, which explains its contemporary reevaluation.

The unprecedented economic growth and immigration that Ireland experienced between 1995 and 2007 did not only challenge national but also ethnic, social, and gender identities. The contributions to this volume explore how films tackle these challenges and help to make sense of Ireland’s altered position in a globalised world. Among the films discussed are some of the most critically acclaimed Irish films of recent years, including Once (2006), Adam & Paul (2004), Garage (2007), and The Secret of Kells (2009), as well as the work of Oscar-winning director and writer Neil Jordan. The volume is completed by an extensive interview with award-winning director Lenny Abrahamson, and his collaborator, screenwriter and actor Mark O’Halloran.

The article investigates the ways in which Pirjo Honkasalo's documentary The 3 Rooms of Melancholia (2004), examining the impact of the Russian-Chechen war on children, engenders a transnational audience through cinematic qualities, and most importantly through embodiment, producing a strongly affective resonance in the spectator. I argue that through a strategically affective approach to transnationality, the documentary establishes what I call a transnational shared space, shaped by a complex dialectics of sharing and non-sharing. My argument revolves around the concept of cinema as a shared space, referring to films that deliberately 'surround' the viewer rather than maintain a distance. As the analysis shows, Honkasalo's documentary pushes the spectator to reflect critically on transnationality and reconsider mass media-created memory of the military conflict. The article addresses issues underlying the film's ethical quest, such as whether this shared space involves both western (Catholic) and non-western (Orthodox and Muslim) audiences, and what the limits are of transnationalism in documentary film.

"Der türkische Emigrationsfilm. Vor-Bilder des deutsch-türkischen Kinos?" In: Sandra Abend and Hans Körner (Eds.) (2015): Vor-Bilder: Ikonen der Kulturgeschichte. Vom Faustkeil über Botticellis Venus bis John Wayne. München: morisel. pp. 190–211.

In the contemporary political sphere, the need to address the complex interactions between colonial pasts, present day violence, and audio-visual representation has never appeared more urgent. This is particularly true of France’s troubled relationship with Algeria where, even after decolonization, episodes of violence — police repression, torture, and terrorism — were often excluded from popular, political and historical accounts on both sides of the Mediterranean. By engaging in close readings of work by both European and Algerian filmmakers — including Michael Haneke, Alain Resnais, Assia Djebar, Xavier Beauvois, and Nadir Moknèche — Maria Flood’s wide-ranging study links historical and memorial omission to film techniques that emphasize gaps, spaces, and exclusion, ultimately offering conclusions that inform wider thinking of the ethics of cinema in the face of violence.

"In the following article, some films produced with the support of Bord Scannán na hÉireann (The Irish Film Board) since its reconstitution in 1993 are examined in light of the work of global anthropologist Arjun Appadurai and his theory of global cultural flows. The article suggests that cinema, primarily of Hollywood origin, has had a notable influence on the development of Irish society and Irish film. Contemporary Irish film itself also reflects the failure of Irish history to excite the imagination of Ireland's youth as effectively as the seductive depictions of America's past as mediated through the Western and gangster films. Indeed, films made in Ireland today reflect the influence of both these genres. However, as the key to the Hollywood continuity style of film-making is its own self-effacement, this has sometimes been reflected in the effacement of people, politics and place in contemporary Irish film as film-makers endeavor to attract a global audience for their work. Films considered include The Boy From Mercury (Martin Duffy, 1996), Nora (Pat Murphy, 1999), Circle of Friends (Pat O'Connor, 1993), Dancing at Lughnasa (Pat O'Connor, 1998), Saltwater (Conor McPherson, 1999), Ailsa (Paddy Breathnach, 1993), I Went Down (Paddy Breathnach, 1997), The Disappearance of Finbar (Sue Clayton, 1994/95), When Brendan Met Trudy (Kieron Walsh, 2000), High Boot Benny (Joe Comerford, 1993), Broken Harvest (Maurice O’Callaghan, 1993), The Boxer (Jim Sheridan, 1998), Some Mother’s Son (Terry George, 1996), Nothing Personal (Thaddeus
O’Sullivan, 1994/95), and Sweety Barrett (Stephen Bradley, 1998)."

This essay considers the aesthetic and cultural importance of the slow, contemplative thriller in contemporary world cinema. While the thriller genre tends to be associated completely with the mainstream—and thus with action-oriented rhythms and Hitchcockian paradigms of suspense—there are alternative tendencies in global art cinema that relish more dilatory time schemes, more minimalist mise en scène, and more meditative atmospheres. Surveying multiple national and transnational contexts, this essay explores how the slow thriller functions as key manifestation of global art cinema’s evolving hybridity and impurity. Looking at films such as Bruno Dumont’s L’humanité (1999) and Lee Chang-dong’s Burning (2018), this essay shows how the slow arthouse thriller stages a dialogue with popular cinema while practicing suspense by other, more pensive means. The fate of the slow thriller in today’s shifting media landscape, in which digital streaming has become the primary locus of film viewing, is also considered. David Lynch’s television series Twin Peaks: The Return (2017) is discussed as a slow, contemplative thriller that renegotiates the place and function of the arthouse theater.

"Lo (trans)nacional como eje del circuito de festivales de cine. Una aproximación histórica al diálogo Europa-América Latina", en Imagofagia, número 17, 2018, pp. 11-40 > http://www.asaeca.org/imagofagia/index.php/imagofagia/article/view/1441


Resumo: Este trabalho analisa, a partir de uma perspectiva histórica, os usos e atualizações que as categorias do " nacional " e do " regional/transnacional " têm tido nos festivais de cinemas. Em alguns momentos houve, nesse contexto, mudanças substanciais que alteraram as relações entre as cinematografias do mundo e o circuito de festivais, assim como as dinâmicas e mecanismos de seleção desses eventos. Entretanto, os festivais seguem sujeitos a categorias geopolíticas, mantendo vigentes as etiquetas nacionais e regionais. A partir do diálogo que existe entre o cinema da América Latina e os festivais internacionais e temáticos, veremos como o uso contemporâneo das ditas categorias é manifestado nos próprios nomes da seções nas quais se organizam os filmes programados, e como essas nomenclaturas contribuem, ao mesmo tempo, para delimitar a extensão e o corpus das categorias geopolíticas referidas. Palavras-chave: festivais de cinema, cinema latino-americano, cinemas nacionais, cinema transnacional, coproduções, Cannes 1968.

Abstract: From an historical perspective, this article analyses how the categories “national” and “regional/transnational” have been used and updated in the arena of film festivals since 1930s. At some point there were significant changes which seriously affected the relationships among cinemas of the world and film festivals that at the same time modified the procedures of programming that take place in these film events. However, film festivals are still under the influence of geopolitical categories, keeping alive the 'national' and 'regional' labels above mentioned. This article analyses these phenomena focusing on the dialogue between Latin American cinema and festivals which are defined as international and themed events. With this main objective, this work studies how the use of these categories is highly relevant for naming the different sections where films are organised in each festival. At the same time, this article analyses how the section's names contribute to delimitate the geopolitical categories of national and regional cinema: by defining their geographical borders and the canonical films of each division. Key words: film festivals, Latin American cinema, national cinemas, transnational cinema, coproductions, Cannes 1968.

The last decade has seen an unprecedented wave of corporate development in the European film and television industries, with several major companies becoming vertically and horizontally integrated while also simultaneously expanding into international sales and distribution markets. Such changes fundamentally alter the landscape of the continent’s media industries, which have up to now been characterized by national and linguistic fragmentation and distinct separations between production and distribution. This chapter provides an overview of these historical changes, highlighting relevant developments at firms such as Studiocanal, Pathé and Wild Bunch, amongst others, and examines the implications of these changes for Europe’s co-production policy regime, which has long been predicated on the need to overcome the fragmentation of the European industries.

This study aims to analyze the representation of different cultural notions in Turkish-Austrian Migrant Cinema. This study is based on migrant problem, hybrid identities and national values, taking Austria as a sample. Turkish-Austrian migrant films include multiculturalism, Turkish national values and Turkish national cinema narrative by keeping optimism and hope. The sampling of this study consists of films by Umut Dağ and Hüseyin Tabak. The films directed by both of these directors focus on traditional values of Turkish culture, the reflection of these values on Austria and cover the features of transnational cinema. The films portray Turkish immigrants going back and forth between Turkish and Austrian cultures in their daily lives. Moreover, the present study discusses the Turkish-Austrian transnational films.

Peter Weir has been directing films in Hollywood since his successful US debut Witness (1985). Does this make him a Hollywood director? Or should he still be considered, as scholars do, an Australian filmmaker? For the first time, Weir’s creative journey from Australia to Hollywood is considered in light of the recent theories on transnational cinema and through a close examination of four key films; Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), Witness (1985) and The Truman Show (1998). The film’s analysis integrates original interviews with Weir and his closest collaborators such as Russell Boyd. The book concludes that Weir is both an Australian and a Hollywood filmmaker, and should be seen as a transnational filmmaker, whose success in US reflects the fact that, by the time he moved, he was already a “Hollywood” director.

In 1996, The Quiet Man topped an Irish Times poll for the best Irish film of all time. Almost ten years later, with many more Irish (and Irish-themed) films made, The Quiet Man still occupied number four in a poll of 10,000 people across Ireland. John Ford's greatest commercial success, the film also set a template for Ireland's representation, and promotion, for over half a century.

This book, The Quiet Man ... and Beyond, involves both critical analysis of aspects of The Quiet Man as myth, commodity and fetish and the celebration of a film that has sustained considerable academic attention and popular appreciation since its release in 1952. Among the topics considered are the complexity of the film's relation to Ireland, to Irish literature and to John Ford's other films; its perceived place with regard to indigenous Irish cinema; and the phenomenon of its circulation and reception as a cult film over the years.

Contributors include Ruth Barton, James P. Byrne, Sean Crosson, Fidelma Farley, Roddy Flynn, Adrian Frazier, Luke Gibbons, Michael Patrick Gillespie, Conor Groome, John Hill, Des MacHale, Barry Monahan, Brian O'Conchubhair, Diog O'Connell, Caitriona O'Torna, Tom Paulus, Sean Ryder, Eamonn Slater and Rod Stoneman.

¿Qué es un film? Sino un documento animado… un guion, un formato de una obra o una película; una forma escrita que luego ejecuta una acción en el presente, para perpetuar imagines en el futuro digitalizado o simplemente el pasado repetido en el futuro cuantas veces queramos. O no somos capaces los profesores y/o maestros de la historiografía o historia descifrar este acertijo antropológico; sin entrar en restricciones y reglas anal-retentivas de lo que debe ser una reseña historiográfica, perdiendo por completo de perspectiva la utilidad educativa de un documental o film que no necesita complementación bibliográfica. Es esta mecanización de la historia la que queremos ofrecer a nuestros estudiantes o alumnos. Que formas recalcitrantes y de educación bancaria promovemos como educadores al reseñar o criticar documentales o películas con formatos pre hechos y/o predeterminados.

Análisis textual del universo Tim Burton. Escenas Fantasmáticas.

Análisis de varias escenas de la filmografía de Tim Burton acompañadas de
datos clave sobre el autor y sus influencias para el análisis de éstas.

Trabajo de Finde Grado para la consecución del Grado en Comunicación Audiovisual calificado con Matrícula de Honor.

In contemporary Sino-French cinema, father characters who are dead, long lost or geographically distant leave gaping holes in the lives of the offspring left behind. The absent fathers in Sino-French films by Taiwanese auteurs Cheng Yu-chieh, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang serve as metaphors for French auteurs. French New Wave films constitute the majority of the intertexts; however, early 1950s French cinema and even late nineteenth-century painting reflect the expansiveness of French influence. Despite the possibility of an orientalist dynamic, Taiwanese auteurs not only pay homage to their French ‘fathers’, and especially New Waver Franc ̧ois Truffaut, but also strike out on their own, contributing innovative work to contemporary transnational cinemas.

In this article I present Narciso Ibáñez Serrador as a pioneer of what may be labelled today as ‘global television’. An actor, writer and director, he first worked intensively in Argentine television and in Spain, remaking his own series for both countries, winning more than a dozen prizes at television festivals with innovative plays and selling the rights of the enormously successful Un, dos, tres[…] for national adaptations in four European countries.

The digitised spectacles conjured by a word like ‘blockbuster’ may create a certain cognitive dissonance with received ideas about French cinema – long celebrated as a model for philosophical, economic and aesthetic resistance to globalised popular culture. While the Gallic ‘cultural exception’ remains a forceful current to this day, this book shows how the onslaught of Hollywood mega-franchises and new media platforms since the 1980s has also provoked an overtly commercialised response from French producers eager to redefine the stakes and scope of their own traditions.

Cutting a swath through recent French-produced cinema, French Blockbusters offers the first book-length consideration of the theoretical implications, historical impact and cultural consequences of recent popular films that are rapidly changing what it means to make – or to see – a ‘French’ film today. From English-language action vehicles like Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Besson, 2017) to revisionist historical films like Of Gods and Men (Beauvois, 2011) and crowd-pleasing comedies like Intouchables (Toledano & Nakache, 2011), the variously filiated ‘local blockbusters’ from contemporary France brim with the seeds of cultural contradiction, but also with the energy of a counter-history.

This essay examines the interpretations of 16th-century and present-day human rights found within Icíar Bollaín’s 2010 film También la lluvia. I argue, firstly, that central to the film is the question as to whether human rights can foster justice and contest the cruelty of (neo)colonialism or if, conversely, they are designed and/or doomed to reinforce colonizing relationships and, secondly, that an interpretation of the film’s ambiguous response might contribute to recent criticism regarding the imperializing tendencies and emancipatory potential of human rights culture. By exploring the film’s self-reflexive and critical considerations of the violence human rights have caused as well as its treatment of spaces in which these rights bring about adaptations, inversions, and transformations of colonizing relationships, I propose that the film can be understood to reimagine human rights culture. In order to interpret the film’s representation of human rights, my article identifies and analyzes the processes of negotiation by which the relationship between rights and colonialism is revealed to be an unstable and malleable one, continually subject to change and in need of criticism that takes its adaptive character into account.

Torres. Students who assisted at the event with zeal and distinction include Laura de Socarraz Novoa and Kimberly Cacicedo O'Connor. Our keynote speaker, James Curran, got the conference off to a rousing and provocative opening and maintained a profile throughout the event. The highly positive feedback and the "vibes" that this small-to-medium sized conference generated was a group effort as it engenders considerable cooperation to pull off such an event. In producing this volume, we thank Carol Koulikourdi at Cambridge Scholars Publishing for taking on our project. Friends and colleagues who composed detailed reviews of chapters helped our contributors to "raise their games". As editors, we thank the following people for agreeing to review chapters and offering their generous and constructive insights in areas of expertise:

Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971) is a film about transitions: movement between childhood and adulthood, country and city, pre-modernity and modernity. My analysis of Roeg’s classic is part of a study of the genre of environmental film: representations or re-visioning of the human-nature relationship. I explore Walkabout’s transitions by observing how the film interweaves two coming-of-age stories: an aboriginal youth, Black Boy (David Gumpilil) on a walkabout (a trial to prove his readiness for manhood); and the Anglo children, Girl (Jenny Agutter) and White Boy (Lucien John, the director’s son), he rescues in the Australian outback, especially a girl on the threshold of womanhood. But these rites of passage in turn contribute to the film’s larger fabula told primarily through visual narrative: a critique of the post-industrial world’s attitudes towards nature, including its disconnect from (or repression of) what is untamed or natural in human nature.

This essay examines the representation of Linosa in Emanuele Crialese's "Terraferma" (2011) as a dialectic site that engages with competing ideas about sovereignty, stability, and mobility. The theoretical framework incorporates studies on tourism, migration, borders, and neocolonial practices of globalization, in order to show that Linosa's configuration as an island creates multiple conditions of liminality for the diverse actors that assemble here. Drawing on multiple conceptions of liminality, including my own analysis of the framing of film protagonists in «spaces on the margins», I assert that "Terraferma" ultimately succeeds in drawing unexpected parallels between the citizens of Linosa and clandestine migrants.

In Vampires, Race, and Transnational Hollywoods, Dale Hudson explores the movement of transnational Hollywood's vampires, between low-budget quickies and high-budget franchises, as it appropriates visual styles from German, Mexican and Hong Kong cinemas and off-shores to Canada, Philippines, and South Africa.

A consideration of vampire film production through the lens of transnational cinema

The figure of the vampire serves as both object and mode of analysis for more than a century of Hollywood filmmaking. Never dying, shifting shape and moving at unnatural speed, as the vampire renews itself by drinking victims’ blood, so too does Hollywood renew itself by consuming foreign styles and talent, moving to overseas locations, and proliferating in new guises.

The first inclusive collection to examine post-2008 developments in Balkan cinema, this book brings together a number of international scholars to explore its industrial contexts and textual dimensions. With a focus on transnational links, global networks and cross-cultural exchanges, the book addresses the role of national and supranational institutions as well as film festival networks in supporting film production, distribution and reception. It also identifies key characteristics in the subject matter and aesthetics of Balkan films made since the global economic crisis. Through critical and comprehensive country profiles, and with a focus on smaller and underrepresented cinemas from Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Albania, the collection argues for the continuing relevance of the concept of ‘Balkan cinema’.

Tutti i saggi pubblicati sono stati sottoposti a un processo di peer review del tutto anonimo (double blind), ad opera di due referee esterni alla rivista, specialisti del tema trattato ed appartenenti a istituzioni diverse da quelle degli autori.