Global Cinema - Subject Outline (Spring 2021)

This subject focuses on key developments in global cinema with an emphasis on films that challenge students to think critically and creatively about the world in which they live.

Studies in World Cinema, 2020

The world envisioned by the idea of world cinema is often tied to a conception of the planet in terms of the global circulation of films and networks of production, consumption and distribution. This article argues for the need to confront the world as a representational and aesthetic category in and of itself.

This chapter aims to present an overview of the history of the transnational in film studies, and consider the ways in which the discipline has responded to developments in the social sciences following a transnational momentum in film studies from 2005, with the following years seeing a number of conceptual and theoretical essays and edited volumes and the founding of a journal, Transnational Cinemas in 2010. It outlines the key areas of focus in the first phase of transnational cinema studies: migration and cinema and exilic and diasporic filmmaking; transnationalising readings of national and regional cinema; historical readings of transnational cinema; and film festival studies. Following this, the chapter discusses approaches to transnational film theory through an analysis of a selection of definitional essays on the subject. The final section of the chapter presents an overview of the second phase of transnational film studies, and considers the expanded reach of the transnational to the many fields that make up the discipline.

2014

Syllabus for a one semester course for PhD and MA students at the University of Hong Kong, Spring 2012.

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Starting with an analysis of the usefulness of the concept of global cinema in the context of contemporary cinema, and utilizing a cosmopolitan perspective, this paper reflects over what it means to conceive of the world, how it can be shown, who can speak about it and how it is configured as an aesthetic challenge. Thus, the experience of globalization becomes everyday; memory, affect are translated, interpreted, not only as a theme but as a structural element, within a multidirectional network, as in the discussions raised by Negri and Hardt, under the aegis of Empire, deconstructing categories such as First/Third world and, by extension, the theory of Third Cinema. In developing these issues, the paper analyzes Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World (1991) and The World (Jia Zhang-ke, 2004), relating them to other films and emphasizing the construction of space and characters.

2021

National and transnational contexts of contemporary cinema as well as historical practices of film production and criticism across these contexts. Discussion of these frameworks alongside other related concepts: genre, industry economics, cross-cultural remakes, festival culture, globalization, media regulation, nationalism, and reception. This module addresses national and transnational contexts of contemporary cinema as well as historical practices of film production and criticism across these contexts. These frameworks will be discussed alongside other related concepts: genre, industry economics, cross-cultural remakes, festival culture, globalization, media regulation, nationalism, and reception.

This report describes the three-part film programme Envisioning the World: How Film Shapes the Earth which took place at Close-Up Film Centre in London, 8-22 June.

International Cinema and the Girl, 2016

The Global Cinema series publishes innovative scholarship on the transnational themes, industries, economies, and aesthetic elements that increasingly connect cinemas around the world. It promotes theoretically transformative and politically challenging projects that rethink film studies from cross-cultural, comparative perspectives, bringing into focus forms of cinematic production that resist nationalist or hegemonic frameworks. Rather than aiming at comprehensive geographical coverage, it foregrounds transnational interconnections in the production, distribution, exhibition, study, and teaching of film. Dedicated to global aspects of cinema, this pioneering series combines original perspectives and new methodological paths with accessibility and coverage. Both "global" and "cinema" remain open to a range of approaches and interpretations, new and traditional. Books published in the series sustain a specific concern with the medium of cinema but do not defensively protect the boundaries of film studies, recognizing that film exists in a converging media environment. The series emphasizes a historically expanded rather than an exclusively presentist notion of globalization; it is mindful of repositioning "the global" away from a US-centric/Eurocentric grid, and remains critical of celebratory notions of "globalizing film studies."