I finished my chapter. Or at least the first draft of it. It’s too long but I don’t know what to cut and it’s gone off to external review in the hope that someone will tell me. It’s something of a culmination of theories that I’ve been following and developing since 2004, when I first … Continue reading “Finished! (My Chapter, Not The Book)”
Author: Rob Stone
So Where Were We?
If you’re counting, we’re up to chapter 15. 15 of 40. Except chapter 15 dropped out. So we’ll jump to 16 for the moment and come back to 15 when we’ve considered our options, rethought the structure and commissioned something new. Nobody could ever predict how an edited book might turn out. Not the publishers … Continue reading “So Where Were We?”
When Is A Film Not A Film?
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?”
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?”