Cinema at the Periphery

Cinema at the Periphery
Author: Dina Iordanova
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2010
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780814333884

Highlights the industries, markets, identities, and histories that distinguish cinema beyond the traditional hubs of mainstream Western cinema. From Iceland to Iran, from Singapore to Scotland, a growing intellectual and cultural wave of production is taking cinema beyond the borders of its place of origin--exploring faraway places, interacting with barely known peoples, and making new localities imaginable. In these films, previously entrenched spatial divisions no longer function as firmly fixed grid coordinates, the hierarchical position of place as "center" is subverted, and new forms of representation become possible. In Cinema at the Periphery, editors Dina Iordanova, David Martin-Jones, and Belén Vidal assemble criticism that explores issues of the periphery, including questions of transnationality, place, space, passage, and migration. Cinema at the Periphery examines the periphery in terms of locations, practices, methods, and themes. It includes geographic case studies of small national cinemas located at the global margins, like New Zealand and Scotland, but also of filmmaking that comes from peripheral cultures, like Palestinian "stateless" cinema, Australian Aboriginal films, and cinema from Quebec. Therefore, the volume is divided into two key areas: industries and markets on the one hand, and identities and histories on the other. Yet as a whole, the contributors illustrate that the concept of "periphery" is not fixed but is always changing according to patterns of industry, ideology, and taste. Cinema at the Periphery highlights the inextricable interrelationship that exists between production modes and circulation channels and the emerging narratives of histories and identities they enable. In the present era of globalization, this timely examination of the periphery will interest teachers and students of film and media studies.

Peripheral Visions

Peripheral Visions
Author: Kenneth Scott Calhoon
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780814329283

The eight essays in this volume consider questions concerning spatial transformations in and around Weimar cinema. They analyse the periphery - the other spaces that are implicated, if not present, in the films themselves.

Cinema of the Other Europe

Cinema of the Other Europe
Author: Dina Iordanova
Publisher: Wallflower Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2003
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781903364611

Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film is a comprehensive study of the cinematic traditions of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia from 1945 to the present day, exploring the major schools of filmmaking and the main stages of development across the region during the period of state socialism up until the end of the Cold War, as well as more recent transformations post-1989. In encouraging a more inclusive and comprehensive understanding of European cinema, much needed for the new unified Europe `enlarged' towards its Eastern periphery, this book maps out the interactions, key concerns, thematic spheres and stylistic particularities that make the cinema of East Central Europe a vital part of European film tradition. Cinema of the Other Europe is thus a timely appraisal of Film Studies debates ranging from the representation of history and memory, the reassessment of political content, ethics and society, the rehabilitation of popular cinema, and the rethinking of national and regional cinemas in the context of globalisation.

Heritage Film

Heritage Film
Author: Belén Vidal
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2012
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0231162030

The British heritage film : nation and representation -- Production cycles and cultural significance : a European heritage film? -- Narrative aesthetics and gentered histories : renewing the heritage film -- Afterword: tradition and change.

Gender Meets Genre in Postwar Cinemas

Gender Meets Genre in Postwar Cinemas
Author: Christine Gledhill
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2012-01-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0252093666

This remarkable collection uses genre as a fresh way to analyze the issues of gender representation in film theory, film production, spectatorship, and the contexts of reception. With a uniquely global perspective, these essays examine the intersection of gender and genre in not only Hollywood films but also in independent, European, Indian, and Hong Kong cinemas. Working in the area of postcolonial cinema, contributors raise issues dealing with indigenous and global cinemas and argue that contemporary genres have shifted considerably as both notions of gender and forms of genre have changed. The volume addresses topics such as the history of feminist approaches to the study of genre in film, issues of female agency in postmodernity, changes taking place in supposedly male-dominated genres, concepts of genre and its use of gender in global cinema, and the relationship between gender and sexuality in film. Contributors are Ira Bhaskar, Steven Cohan, Luke Collins, Pam Cook, Lucy Fischer, Jane Gaines, Christine Gledhill, Derek Kane-Meddock, E. Ann Kaplan, Samiha Matin, Katie Model, E. Deidre Pribram, Vicente Rodriguez Ortega, Adam Segal, Chris Straayer, Yvonne Tasker, Deborah Thomas, and Xiangyang Chen.

Afghanistan in the Cinema

Afghanistan in the Cinema
Author: Mark Graham
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2010-04-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 0252035275

In this timely critical introduction to the representation of Afghanistan in film, Mark Graham examines the often surprising combination of propaganda and poetry in films made in Hollywood and the East. Through the lenses of postcolonial theory and historical reassessment, Graham analyzes what these films say about Afghanistan, Islam, and the West and argues that they are integral tools for forming discourse on Afghanistan, a means for understanding and avoiding past mistakes, and symbols of the country's shaky but promising future. Thoughtfully addressing many of the misperceptions about Afghanistan perpetuated in the West, Afghanistan in the Cinema incorporates incisive analysis of the market factors, funding sources, and political agendas that have shaped the films. The book considers a range of films, beginning with the 1970s epics The Man Who Would Become King and The Horsemen and following the shifts in representation of the Muslim world during the Russian War in films such as The Beast and Rambo III. Graham then moves on to Taliban-era films such as Kandahar, Osama, and Ellipsis, the first Afghan film directed by a woman. Lastly, the book discusses imperialist nostalgia in films such as Charlie Wilson's War and destabilizing visions represented in contemporary works such as The Kite Runner.

Transnational Cinema

Transnational Cinema
Author: Steven Rawle
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2018-01-24
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1137530146

This core teaching text provides a thorough overview of the recently emerged field of transnational film studies. Covering a range of approaches to analysing films about migrant, cross-cultural and cross-border experience, Steven Rawle demonstrates how film production has moved beyond clear national boundaries to become a product of border crossing finance and creative personnel. This comprehensive introduction brings together the key concepts and theories of transnational cinema, including genre, remakes, diasporic and exilic cinema, and the limits of thinking about cinema as a particularly national cultural artefact. It is an excellent course companion for undergraduate students of film, cinema, media and cultural studies studying transnational and global cinema, and provides both students and lovers of film alike with a strong grounding in this timely field of film studies.

Premises and Problems

Premises and Problems
Author: Luiza Franco Moreira
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2021-05-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1438482485

World literature, many have stressed, is a systematic category. Both literary scholars and social scientists have argued that the prestige of the major literary languages is key to establishing the shape of the overall system. In order to critically interrogate world literature and cinema, Premises and Problems approaches this system from the perspective of languages and film traditions that do not hold a hegemonic position. This perspective raises new questions about the nature of literary hegemony and the structure of world literature: How is hegemony established? What are the costs of losing it? What does hegemony mask? How is it masked? The contributors focus predominantly on literatures outside the small circle of prestigious modern European languages and on films and film criticism produced outside the best-known centers. The inclusion of this unfamiliar material calls attention to some areas of obscurity that make key features of the system indistinct, or that make it difficult to trace relationships between texts that hold different levels of prestige, such as those of the Global North and the Global South. The book argues that the study of world literature and cinema will profit from a sustained and informed engagement with the body of work produced by historical social scientists committed to the perspective of the world-system.

Theorizing Art Cinemas

Theorizing Art Cinemas
Author: David Andrews
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2013-11-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0292747748

The term “art cinema” has been applied to many cinematic projects, including the film d’art movement, the postwar avant-gardes, various Asian new waves, the New Hollywood, and American indie films, but until now no one has actually defined what “art cinema” is. Turning the traditional, highbrow notion of art cinema on its head, Theorizing Art Cinemas takes a flexible, inclusive approach that views art cinema as a predictable way of valuing movies as “art” movies—an activity that has occurred across film history and across film subcultures—rather than as a traditional genre in the sense of a distinct set of forms or a closed historical period or movement. David Andrews opens with a history of the art cinema “super-genre” from the early days of silent movies to the postwar European invasion that brought Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, and the New German Cinema to the forefront and led to the development of auteur theory. He then discusses the mechanics of art cinema, from art houses, film festivals, and the academic discipline of film studies, to the audiences and distribution systems for art cinema as a whole. This wide-ranging approach allows Andrews to develop a theory that encompasses both the high and low ends of art cinema in all of its different aspects, including world cinema, avant-garde films, experimental films, and cult cinema. All of these art cinemas, according to Andrews, share an emphasis on quality, authorship, and anticommercialism, whether the film in question is film festival favorite or a midnight movie.

Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space

Silent Cinema and the Politics of Space
Author: Jennifer M. Bean
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2014-04-02
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0253015073

In this cross-cultural history of narrative cinema and media from the 1910s to the 1930s, leading and emergent scholars explore the transnational crossings and exchanges that occurred in early cinema between the two world wars. Drawing on film archives from around the world, this volume advances the premise that silent cinema freely crossed national borders and linguistic thresholds in ways that became far less possible after the emergence of sound. These essays address important questions about the uneven forces–geographic, economic, political, psychological, textual, and experiential–that underscore a non-linear approach to film history. The "messiness" of film history, as demonstrated here, opens a new realm of inquiry into unexpected political, social, and aesthetic crossings of silent cinema.