When it’s long form TV? Ask me what the best new films I’ve seen recently are and nothing I’ve seen in the cinema or on DVD comes to mind. What comes to mind are the knowing and affectionate Stranger Things and the weird, stylish and wonderful Fargo season 2 with its incredible soundtrack on Netflix, … Continue reading “When Is A Film Not A Film?”
Month: August 2016
Meanwhile…The Screening Rights Film Festival
The Screening Rights Film Festival 2016 is almost upon us – festival passes are on sale and the exciting programme is available! The Screening Rights Film Festival 2016 is a four-day programme of important and inspiring Social Justice films by award-winning and new directors from across the globe. Taking place across Birmingham, all films will … Continue reading “Meanwhile…The Screening Rights Film Festival”
Interconnections
Staying with Crofts’ problematic view that Australian and Canadian cinemas are “imitations of US cinema” brings us to our abstract on Canadian cinema(s) from Christopher E. Gittings (note the optional s). This chapter was a big ask. Canadian cinemas are complex, multifarious and very little known outside of the art house and horror genre. This chapter … Continue reading “Interconnections”
Revise, Rewatch, Rewrite
One of the most obvious ways in which the revisionism and usefulness of The Routledge Companion to world Cinemas will be tested is by comparison with prevailing theories and frameworks of World cinema. Unafraid to take on Benedict Anderson’s theory of imagined communities or the long-standing paradigm of eight concepts of national cinemas elaborated by Stephen Crofts, The … Continue reading “Revise, Rewatch, Rewrite”
Betwixt and Between Brexit
If any chapter was going to hit home how volatile is World Cinema and how incredibly difficult is the task of its remapping, it would have to be the one on British cinema. We invited James Chapman to do the remapping of it pre-referendum, but the chapter came in post-it. James is Professor of Film Studies … Continue reading “Betwixt and Between Brexit”
Shifting Sands
It often seems as if some areas of the world have declared open season on cartographers, to the extent that no amount of remapping can keep pace with the changes taking place. Shifts in territories and the emergence of new cosmopolitan areas can have a dramatic effect on the cinemas of the region and, indeed, complicate … Continue reading “Shifting Sands”
Short and Sweet
“Mystification is simple; clarity is the hardest thing of all,” wrote Julian Barnes in Flaubert’s Parrot. Thanks to Mariana Liz, who is Lecturer in Film Studies in the Centre for World Cinemas in the University of Leeds, co-editor of The Europeanness of European Cinema (2014) and author of Euro-Visions: Europe in European Cinema (2015), for providing this concise … Continue reading “Short and Sweet”
World Cinema or World Cinemas?
Working from the outside in, if ‘World Cinema’ denotes the periphery containing all films made on this planet, then perhaps it is a perfunctory categorisation rendered so by its omnitude. It suggests a tight-knit patchwork of national cinemas covering the planet, when the reality is rather more ragged. As we have already seen, American, African … Continue reading “World Cinema or World Cinemas?”
The Trump Companion to World Cinema
Thank you so much. That’s so nice. Isn’t that great? Asking me to…coming on here and – and I have to tell you I’m here, and very strongly here, because I have great respect for World cinema and everybody, and tremendous respect for it. So much. World cinema doesn’t get a fair press; it doesn’t … Continue reading “The Trump Companion to World Cinema”
Another Time, An Auteur Place
In addition to countering a tendency to see World cinema in terms of its coagulation in national cinemas, The Routledge Companion to World Cinema also does battle with auteurism, that belief that the vision, input and guidance of a single creative individual (the director) is what determines the final film. It can be hard to shake … Continue reading “Another Time, An Auteur Place”