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Arguments over inclusion and excusion flare when terms like ‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ hit the headlines and tensions are exacerbated when nation-states change as a result of a coup, conflict, referenda or elections by which national identity may freeze into a bordered block when nationalism is released or melt into common areas as treaties break boundaries. … Continue reading “Enough of Experts”

Ever watched the hurdles?  Think of them as deadlines. You’ve got your sprinters with incredible focus who effortlessly straddle them, dip and come up smiling with medals around their necks. Then you’ve got your runners-up, who jostle together to claim a meaningful position. After them at some distance comes the pack, a jumble of contributors, each … Continue reading “Dead Deadlines”

One of the biggest challenges to editing The Routledge Companion to World Cinema is defining what is meant by a ‘cinema’. Is it a building, a small group of films, an omnitudinous category or an abstract ideal? If I pay to watch a film in a building is that cinema? How about if I stream … Continue reading “Other Screens, Another World”

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”

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”

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.”

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”

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”

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”

Professor Paul Cooke of the University of Leeds and I have been collaborating for many years on research workshops, funding bids, co-written articles and edited books. Our latest project is the co-edited book Screening European Heritage, which will soon be published by Palgrave. With Paul being Centenary Chair in World Cinemas and Head of the Centre … Continue reading “How Did The Remapping World Cinema Project Come About?”