SCMS Award Winner "Best Edited Collection" The standard analytical category of "national cinema" has increasingly been called into question by the category of the "transnational." This anthology examines the premises and consequences of the coexistence of these two categories and the parameters of historiographical approaches that cross the borders of nation-states. The three sections of World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectivescover the geopolitical imaginary, transnational cinematic institutions, and the uneven flow of words and images.

Transnational Cinema: The Film Readerprovides an overview of the key concepts and debates within the developing field of transnational cinema. Bringing together seminal essays from a wide range of sources, this volume engages with films that fashion their narrative and aesthetic dynamics in relation to more than one national or cultural community. The reader is divided into four sections: From National to Transnational Cinema Global Cinema in the Digital Age Motion Pictures: Film, Migration and Diaspora Tourists and Terrorists.  

Memories that evoke the physical awareness of touch, smell, and bodily presence can be vital links to home for people living in diaspora from their culture of origin. How can filmmakers working between cultures use cinema, a visual medium, to transmit that physical sense of place and culture? In The Skin of the Film Laura U. Marks offers an answer, building on the theories of Gilles Deleuze and others to explain how and why intercultural cinema represents embodied experience in a postcolonial, transnational world. Much of intercultural cinema, Marks argues, has its origin in silence, in the gaps left by recorded history. Filmmakers seeking to represent their native cultures have had to develop new forms of cinematic expression. Marks offers a theory of "haptic visuality"--a visuality that functions like the sense of touch by triggering physical memories of smell, touch, and taste--to explain the newfound ways in which intercultural cinema engages the viewer bodily to convey cultural experience and memory. Using close to two hundred examples of intercultural film and video, she shows how the image allows viewers to experience cinema as a physical and multisensory embodiment of culture, not just as a visual representation of experience. Finally, this book offers a guide to many hard-to-find works of independent film and video made by Third World diasporic filmmakers now living in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. The Skin of the Film draws on phenomenology, postcolonial and feminist theory, anthropology, and cognitive science. It will be essential reading for those interested in film theory, experimental cinema, the experience of diaspora, and the role of the sensuous in culture.

In An Accented Cinema, Hamid Naficy offers an engaging overview of an important trend--the filmmaking of postcolonial, Third World, and other displaced individuals living in the West. How their personal experiences of exile or diaspora translate into cinema is a key focus of Naficy's work. Although the experience of expatriation varies greatly from one person to the next, the films themselves exhibit stylistic similarities, from their open- and closed-form aesthetics to their nostalgic and memory-driven multilingual narratives, and from their emphasis on political agency to their concern with identity and transgression of identity. The author explores such features while considering the specific histories of individuals and groups that engender divergent experiences, institutions, and modes of cultural production and consumption. Treating creativity as a social practice, he demonstrates that the films are in dialogue not only with the home and host societies but also with audiences, many of whom are also situated astride cultures and whose desires and fears the filmmakers wish to express. Comparing these films to Hollywood films, Naficy calls them "accented." Their accent results from the displacement of the filmmakers, their alternative production modes, and their style. Accented cinema is an emerging genre, one that requires new sets of viewing skills on the part of audiences. Its significance continues to grow in terms of output, stylistic variety, cultural diversity, and social impact. This book offers the first comprehensive and global coverage of this genre while presenting a framework in which to understand its intricacies.

This introductory text analyzes 25 years of popular French film including recent developments in all genres. Reflecting French cinema's diversity since the new Wave, chapters include the Heritage film; thrillers; war movies; Cinema-du-Look; representations of sexuality; women film-makers; andothers. Each chapter introduces the public reception and critical debates surrounding a given genre, interwoven with detailed accounts of individual films from "Les Valseuses" to "Les Visiteurs" and "Delicatessen". Those looking at French film for the first time should have the opportunity to read at length about the internationally renowned work of Cinema-du-Look directors Luc Besson, Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax, as well as recent blockbusters of the Heritage genre from "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Jeande Florette" to "Germinal" and "La Reine Margot". The book includes a glossary and detailed filmography.

André Bazin's writings on cinema are among the most influential reflections on the medium ever written. Even so, his critical interests ranged widely and encompassed the "new media" of the 1950s, including television, 3D film, Cinerama, and CinemaScope. Fifty-seven of his reviews and essays addressing these new technologies--their artistic potential, social influence, and relationship to existing art forms--have been translated here for the first time in English with notes and an introduction by leading Bazin authority Dudley Andrew. These essays show Bazin's astute approach to a range of visual media and the relevance of his critical thought to our own era of new media. An exciting companion to the essential What Is Cinema? volumes, André Bazin's New Media is excellent for classroom use and vital for anyone interested in the history of media.

Cinema and the Republic analyzes how contemporary French films represent immigrants as well as the residents of HLMs, suburban low-income housing estates in France. These groups have been and continue to be at the center of heated debates about security in France, and here Jonathan Ervine documents how French filmmakers have responded to such debates. Among the subjects he engages are the representations of undocumented migrants known as sans-papiers, the depictions of deportations made possible by the controversial double peine law, the relationships between young people and the police in suburban France, and tstereotypes about these groups.

"To a great extent, the story of French filmmaking is the story of moviemaking. From the earliest flickering images of the late nineteenth century as well as the many important technical innovations - which in France sometimes preceded, and often paralleled, the work of Edison and early British, German, and Russian inventors and artists - through the silent era, the Surrealist influence, the Nazi Occupation, the glories of the New Wave, on into the 1990s and beyond, Remi Lanzoni examines a large number of the world's most beloved films against the backdrop of their often turbulent times." "A final chapter considers the increasingly competitive business dynamic of contemporary French filmmaking as well as French television, the digital and high-definition revolution, and all the latest artistic and popular trends. This sweeping history is further enhanced by some ninety stills and other artwork, including rare, archival photographs of the personalities who have created, and still do, a grand international tradition."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The first book devoted to a wide-ranging study of developments in global French-language cinema, from Quebec to Mauritania and from Belgium to Cambodia, Cinéma-monde picks up on the lively scholarly debates generated by the related topic of littérature-monde. Extending the scope of this debate to cover the thriving and diverse area of international French-language cinema, this innovative book also considers cinema from France within the context of global production. With contributions from an international range of specialists, and with considerations of works by contemporary directors like Rachid Bouchareb, Abderrahmane Sissako and Rithy Panh, Cinéma-monde explores the porous borders around francophone spaces and the ways in which languages and identities 'travel' in contemporary cinema.

This examination of France's national cinema takes its primary artefact, the feature film and discusses both popular cinema and the `avant garde' cinema that contests it. Susan Hayward argues that writing on French national cinema has tended to focus on either `great' film-makers or on specific movements, addressing moments of exception rather than the global picture. Her work offers a thorough and much-needed historical textualisation of those moments and relocates them them in their wider political and cultural context. Beginning with an `ecohistory' of the French film industry, she then traces the various movements in French cinema and the directors associated with them, including the avant-garde, Poetic-Realist, New Wave and today's postmodern cinema. Her analysis includes, amongst other considerations, the social and political concerns these cinemas reflect.

The first substantial study of multilingual film in France. Unpacking the power dynamics at play in the dialogue of eight emblematic films, this book argues that many contemporary French films take a new approach to language and power.

'The French Cinema Book is an accessible and innovative survey of key topics in French cinema from the 1890s to the twenty-first century. This multi-authored volume proposes new insights into familiar areas and sets out a fresh agenda for the study and appreciation of French cinema: * Who are the men and women who have made French cinema happen? * What is the business culture in which French cinema has evolved? * How has technological change effected artistic and commercial innovation? * What have been the most popular and the most experimental forms? * What has French cinema shown us of France, its society, its citizens, its concerns? * How has the spectator's experience of film-going changed in the last 100 years? * How have debates about film reflected cinema's unique place in French culture? The book combines historical context and background information with detailed discussion of case-studies, analysis of films, recommendations for further reading and online resources. The French Cinema Book is addressed to all lovers of French cinema, students and teachers, specialists and fans.