MS5039

WORLD
CINEMAS
Week 1
National and Transnational Cinema
CW2 PRESENTATION
• For your presentation (CW2) you must select one of the films listed as viewing material from the preceding week, present
it to the class, and explain how, in your opinion, it connects to the specific historical and geographical context in which it
was made (decade and country).

• Presentation slides must include a bibliography and filmography, and you must screen a short sequence from your
chosen film to support your arguments.

• Finally, you must prepare 1 question for the class and lead the seminar discussion around it.
• You will all have to do this at some point, so help each other out and get involved in the discussion!

• Presentation is 10 minutes, discussion is 5 minutes. Make sure you rehearse and time your presentation beforehand.

• Think about the layout and design of your slides – do not put all your text on there and simply read from it. Use dot points and
visuals, such as film stills, photographs, maps, and other images.

• After your presentation, please send your slides to l.a.hallam@uel.ac.uk

• W2 Presentations take place throughout the term. You will sign
up to a week during the Week 1 class.

• Once agreed, the slot is not inter-changeable without prior

agreement with the lecturer.

• Failure to present at the appointed day and time will result in a

mark of ZERO.
QUESTIONS:

• Why is it important for each nation to have its own cinema?

• Why is looking at cinema from around the world important for a film student
to do?
• How can what you learn in this module contribute to your future career?

• Do you remember the first film you ever watched with subtitles?
 • United States cinema – Hollywood, art, independent
Varieties of nation- • Asian commercial successes (could also include Nigerian
state cinema (from film industry, aka ‘Nollywood’, which has the 2nd largest
output of films in the world, behind Bollywod)
Stephen Crofts’ • Other entertainment cinemas – commercial and genre
cinema around the world, anglophone cinemas that
“Concepts of imitate Hollywood (Canada, Australia)
• Totalitarian cinemas
National Cinema”) • Art cinemas
• International co-productions
• Third cinemas
• Sub-state cinemas – suppressed, Indigenous, diasporic,
regional
Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas, 1996)

• French film, made by a French director

• Assayas very influenced by Taiwanese cinema
• Film stars Maggie Cheung, a star of Hong
Kong cinema, as herself
• The director character is played by Jean-
Pierre Leaud, star of French New Wave films
• About a remake of the French silent serial Les
vampires (1915)
• Discussions in the film about whether to be
more like Hollywood (or like Asian action
cinema) – cinema as entertainment rather
than art 1:04:00
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

(Ana Lily Amirpour, 2013)

• “Iranian Vampire Western” - 36:10

• Made by an Iranian-American filmmaker

• Shot in America, everyone speaks Farsi

• Clash of American and Iranian cultures and

iconography
CINEMA AND THE NATION

• Benedict Anderson: Nation is an imagined political community

• The Western ideology of nationalism and the concept of the nation-state were
the effects of the French Enlightenment and Revolution

• What does cinema as a cultural artefact tell us about national identity? How
does it problematise the very concept of the national?
NATIONAL CINEMA THEORY

• Cinema as a signifying process which reflects socio-political change, and where myths are
created about a nation’s origin and identity.

• Cinema can affirm or subvert mythologies of the nation (for example, the rugged
outdoorsman of Crocodile Dundee (Peter Faiman, 1986) becomes a racist, homophobic,
outback serial killer in Wolf Creek (Greg McLean, 2005))

• A national cinema enunciates concepts of identity (state and citizen) and difference
(state/citizen and other)
 The “Aussie bloke” from
Crocodile Dundee to Wolf Creek

• The myth:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=_eED8IAv_Ac
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=dSnosk4tWrg

• The subversion:
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=mSpO3aQWxZ4
• What are some issues that arise when looking at a film solely as a product of a
nation? How do you designate a film as ‘belonging’ to a specific nation?
TRANSNATIONAL CINEMA

• Other terms: transcultural cinema, world cinema(s), cosmopolitan cinema

• 3 approaches:
• Focus on the national/transnational binary – the movement of films and
filmmakers across national borders
• Examination of film cultures & nations with a shared cultural heritage
• Exploration of diasporic, exilic, and postcolonial cinema
• “I tend to retain “transnational” to think of objects of study that, in themselves, move between or among
nations. In this regard, the transnational might be a narrower category than “world cinema”, less interested
in films that speak to or about their place in the world and more interested in the specific ways in which
films recode the world through transits, circuits, and flows. Of course, these transits might speak to funding,
modes of production, shooting locations, talent, or to distribution, exhibition, or audiences, or to textuality,
themes, and narrative. Since cinema has always been a global phenomenon, it’s easy to see any film or
other cinematic object of study as transnational, and I suspect this plasticity is at once the appeal and the
difficulty in the term. Nonetheless, there’s a value to bringing these relationships into critical focus, and at
its best, transnational cinema studies leverages this focus to make connections among these various levels
(institutional, industrial, textual etc.). […] the transnational asks us to look at cinema in terms of processes
and transits, rather than objects and states.” Rosalind Galt from “Transnational Cinemas: A Critical
Roundtable” https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/100112/1/transnational_cinemas_a_critical_roundtable.pdf
Mississippi Masala (Mira Nair, 1991)

• Indian director, produced and made in the

USA, co-production with UK
• Cross-cultural romance between Indian
woman and African American man
• Concerns history of exile – Indians who were
forced out of Uganda under Idi Amin
• Set in Mississippi, a site with a history of
racial violence against Black citizens
• Transnational career of Mira Nair:
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0619762/?
ref_=tt_ov_dr

• https://www.kanopy.com/en/uel/watch/vide
o/13354660
49:30
Phörpa/The Cup
(Khyentse Norbu, 1999)
• First film produced by Bhutan to be released internationally; in
Tibetan language
• Director Norbu is a lama, most of the actors in the film are monks
playing themselves
• Norbu went to NYU Film School
• Film was shot in a Tibetan refugee village in India, the monks are in
exile from Tibet
• Produced by British producer Jeremy Thomas, who met Norbu when
he was an advisor on Bernardo Bertolucci’s Little Buddha (1993);
international crew; distributed by Fine Line Features, a specialty film
division of New Line Cinema
• https://www.bitchute.com/video/M2aI2YgJBuLi/ 25:40
• Can you think of a film or filmmaker that is an example of the following
approaches:
• the national/transnational binary – the movement of films and filmmakers
across national borders
• Examination of film cultures & nations with a shared cultural heritage
• Exploration of diasporic, exilic, and postcolonial cinema?
• What do you remember about filmmaker Ousmane
Sèmbene from the lecture on Pan-African cinema in
Film History last year?
 La noire de…/Black Girl
(Ousmane Sembène, 1966)
• Senegal gained independence from France in
1960
• First feature film made by a sub-Saharan African
filmmaker to attract international notice
• Giving voice to the colonised, subverts
representations – no longer a nameless group;
direction of travel is from Africa to Europe (a
‘reverse colonisation’?)
• “In Sembène’s films, the crises of singular
individuals are always emblematic of larger
structures” – Chrystel Oloukoï
https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/where-begin-with-ousmane-sembene#:~:
text=The%20best%20place%20to%20start%20%E2%80%93%20Black%20Gi
rl&text=(Black%20Girl%2C%201966)%2C,powerful%20exploration%20of%2
0immigrant%20experience
.

• Motif of the mask

• Content Warning (15 rating): racism, suicide,
bloody images
WORLD CINEMA PROJECT
• Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007 with the Criterion Collection
• https://www.film-foundation.org/movieweb-wcpn
• https://www.film-foundation.org/world-cinema