There have been a number of volumes in recent years that have begun to engage with the concept of World cinema in a more differentiated way than in the first decade of its use, when it largely served to describe something that wasn’t Hollywood. When planning a new intervention into the debate on what constitutes ‘world … Continue reading “On Exactitude in the Science of Editing a Book on World Cinema”
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Duality, Multiplicity and A Singularity of Purpose
The specific, targeted readership for the The Routledge Companion to World Cinema is a dual readership of scholars and students. We carefully selected and arranged the range of subjects and the expert contributors to ensure that the volume would be attractive to all levels of academia and when that didn’t work we asked our mates. … Continue reading “Duality, Multiplicity and A Singularity of Purpose”
When A Plan Comes Together
We love it! The digital 21st century has transformed the 20th century incentive to study film. Well over a decade into the new millennium, film studies is evolving to the extent that it is possible to posit a new and expansive concept of its academic and social worth within an international curriculum in communication, information … Continue reading “When A Plan Comes Together”
Meanwhile, The Middlebrow.
While we played with the incoming abstracts for The Routledge Companion to World Cinema, our new book series from Routledge entitled Remapping World Cinemas: Regional Tensions and Global Transformations was also taking shape. You might think that editing a book series is much bigger than editing a single book, but the truth is that there are so many working … Continue reading “Meanwhile, The Middlebrow.”
Building Blocks
Back in the pre-deadline ooze, when beautiful abstracts were putting plump flesh on the bare bones of our outline, it often seemed as if The Routledge Companion to World Cinema might actually meet its own remit of uniting contributors from key areas of world cinema studies and re-uniting several of the leading authors of key works that this … Continue reading “Building Blocks”
Flashforward
Telling the full story of how the Remapping World Cinema series and The Routledge Companion to World Cinema came to be means recapping, which has been the narrative of this blog until now. But on this update we’ll flash forward to today and check on how things are coming together. We have forty contributions in various … Continue reading “Flashforward”
Divide and Conquer
Film is globalised, but also regional, defined by socio-political processes that illustrate the interconnectivity between global changes in political and economic power, all-encompassing digital transformations and an arguably worldwide sedimentation of people in terms of their status within an increasingly neo-liberal world order. All this affects changes in regional film policies, creative activities, community ‘uprisings’ … Continue reading “Divide and Conquer”
If You Build It, They Will Come
And come they did. Abstracts for chapters in The Routledge Companion to World Cinema pinged into our inboxes from those we had initially invited. Constructing the volume would take time and a great deal of consultation but for the moment at least we were delighted to receive offers of collaboration from some expert scholars. Indeed, … Continue reading “If You Build It, They Will Come”
The Book Is The Hook But The Rationale Is The Bait
Compiling contributors for an edited book always reminds me of the scenes in The Magnificent Seven where Chris (Yul Brynner) recruits the titular septuplets one by one, raising his fingers to count them off every time he enrols a new one. Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, James Coburn…I hope Antoine Fuqua’s 2016 remake does the same. … Continue reading “The Book Is The Hook But The Rationale Is The Bait”
Where Does One Start Remapping World Cinema?
We wanted The Routledge Companion to World Cinema to be a touchstone publication for a crucial moment, when the industry, ideas and functions of film are in tremendous flux, not just from the effects of digital technologies and new screen media, but from economic and political changes that prompt us to question the very utility of … Continue reading “Where Does One Start Remapping World Cinema?”