Defining Transnational Cinema

While watching the Ethnic Notions movie and reading the Collins’ essay, some of the images that made an impact are the images of the brute, and mammies, as describe by Collins. Throughout the early and middle of the 20th century, black people have been portrayed negativity in movies, TV shows, as well as books and this gave people the notion that black people acting like this in real life. People’s perceptions of black people were based on what they see in the media, but these perceptions can be changed with time. As I was watching the documentary, I can recall the disturbing ways that black people were portrayed and the fact that this has been happening for a long period of time. The portrayed of the brute for the African American male has been depicted as far back as the movie

In a film directed by Karim Ainouz, the story of Joao Francisco dos Santos’ rise to fame as the Brazilian Pop Culture icon, Madame Sata, comes to life. The film, also titled Madame Sata, addresses issues of race, gender and sexuality in relation to Brazilian culture through various cinematic effects and the depiction or interpretations of characters through their actions and dialogue.This film has many layers that can be taken apart and analyzed with the underlying social issues in mind while providing a somewhat accurate account of the major events leading up to Francisco dos Santos’ stardom. Journals, like The American Historical Review, Cineaste, and Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts, discuss the film and the film’s intent while Newspapers, like The New York Times and The Los Angeles times, take on a less critical view on the film and focus in on the story line and life of the director of the film. In comparing the two different forms of print media and writing, the views of the authors and their intended audience about certain social issues are revealed.

A nation’s cultural texts are often used and appropriated in its quest for self-definition.2 Canada’s national identity is a much-debated topic and has often been conceptualized as a crisis, especially through important cultural products like film. Canadian cinema bears a responsibility of reflecting and creating a national identity, with blurred boundaries and a lack of coherent definition. Negatives often seem to outweight positives; Canadian cinema, more prominently its English industry, is considered amateurish and boring, and one bad Canadian film tends to reflect on the industry as a whole. These views often derive from Canadians themselves, and such self-loathing stances originate from a history of industrial and socio-cultural effects,

Au Revoir Les Enfants and La Lengua de la Mariposa: A Closer Look at European Films

According to Carlos Diegues, a leader of Brazil’s revolutionary Cinema Novo movement, “Every country has two national cinemas: its own, and Hollywood (Sterritt, David).” The American Film Industry is the oldest in the world and its styles and methods have exerted a powerful influence on filmmakers and audiences worldwide since the early twentieth century. Foreign film industries don’t necessarily actively seek to adopt the practices and styles of American film; rather, international countries have been flooded with the big-budget spectacles that intrigue and engage the audience through their grand style of narrative storytelling, which inevitably impacts the way foreign filmmakers produce their films. Audiences worldwide have been conditioned

Eurocentrism can be defined as the sensibility that Europe is historically, economically, culturally and politically distinctive in ways which significantly determine the overall character of world politics (Sabaratam 2013). It’s a worldview based on European colonial empires that hold western civilization as superior. Eurocentrism also tends to explain the different path taken up by the European in one hand and the eastern civilization on the other, pounds to modernity and industrial success of the west. Cinema serves as a powerful tool to accentuate Eurocentric colonial ideas and indigenous perspective. Cinema has also contributed in the obstruction and misrepresentation of Indigenous understandings of the world. This essay will be foregrounded in Eurocentrist-colonial concepts through cinema viewpoint. The film Avatar will be discussed as a Eurocentric film. The film is written and directed by David Cameroon, released in December 2009. In general, the film seems to be denouncing imperialism however it represents the act of initiation of imperialism and capitalism. This essay explores, how the film Avatar reflects the act of imperialism and capitalism and its link to colonisation history in real, civilization culture and race, and interracial relationship expressed in Eurocentric worldview.

Eliminating distance, a film made in a different place to another can be seen as showing different viewpoints, whether that be from the filmmakers perspective or through the innate customs of the characters. An Irish film viewed in England could be seen as transnational due to the difference in country, therefore allowing audiences to understand different traditions. Transnational cinema includes the national, rather than declining

We will also investigate the transnational representation of the Iranian woman in cinema, specifically how the Iranian woman is represented in Iranian cinema in contrast with American cinema. Through this investigation, we will find that despite the differences in representation, the Iranian woman has been, and is a partner, the equal, and the colleague of the Iranian man. Her presence is a creative one – whether in carrying out societal duties or the specific roles assigned to her, as a capable manager or mother whose perceptive and structured approach to life represents her distinct aptitudes. If we disregard these facts, we are blameworthy of disregarding the unabridged truth that is the Iranian

I want to examine how a movie(s) shapes the thoughts of a society. More specifically, the matter of immigration portrayal in movies bears the brunt of societal indifferences or acceptance depending on the approach and the motive behind the politics of the presentation. The documentary, Well-Founded Fear, speaks about the legal processes that people have to go through to get asylum in the US. And Sin Nombre is a movie about two young people trying to find their way as recent immigrants. Both stories on the topic of immigration accidentally coincide and present to the movie audience and the world some real struggles surrounding the issue of immigrants and their acceptance in the receiving country. And then there is Inch’ Allah Dimanche by Yamina, the other comparison, taking a different direction and delivering a different message on the topic of immigration..

‘National Cinema’ is often used to describe simply the films produced within a particular nation state’. (Higson, 2015) Nations have distinctive stylistic devices, often featuring stereotypical settings and characters in the attempt to represent the essence of the nation’s culture. This is apparent when comparing the Australian drama, Australia (2008) with A Separation (2011), an Iranian drama. Both films reflect through a set of norms, behaviours, beliefs and customs their nations culture, demonstrating that films are not made in a vacuum. (Smith, 2015)

Therefore, if any film production is to become successful in the Caribbean, investors and producers should over view the theories of media and society and analyze how functional analysis, agenda setting, uses & Gratification, social learning, spirial of silence, media logic, and cultural analysis would indirectly and directly affect they business and the tragited

Over the years, Bollywood has emerged as its own distinct identity in the global Film industry. Bollywood is the global leader in production of movies with a staggering 27,000 featured films and thousands of short films. ( Pillania 1) However, Hollywood is still the leader in revenues generated. Due to the growth of the Indian market and globalization, Bollywood has made its way to the international markets. Globalization is often misrepresented as the growing influence of the western culture in the world and so we tend to state that Hollywood is influencing Bollywood to a great extent. An argument can be made to justify the validity of that statement. However, this paper aims at presenting the influence of Bollywood on Hollywood in

Hyland argues that Asian extreme cinemas which are produced by individual filmmaker studios, show a political reaction to the closed vertically integrated studio systems with extreme and aesthetic. He exemplifies the argument with the movie Audition (1999), a thought-provoking extreme movie using extreme aesthetic. When it is controversial issue of the violent plots’ reality, Hyland interprets the film’s violence plots allegory rather than realistic. I strongly agree with his interpretation towards the movie.

The cinema “embraced several contrasting ideological positions and included arguably the most heterogeneous array of filmmakers at work in Western Europe”(The New German Cinema and Beyond). The movement began with an early phase known as Young German Film. In Young German Film “the viewer was mainly somebody to manipulate rather than respect” (Strathausen). Shortly after, came the mature phase in which, “sought to engage the audience in a more productive way, calling on viewers as potential allies that could be rallied for a common cause” (Strathausen). With this revised mature phase, the focus of German cinema on social and political issues quickly became known as the “national” cinema of

For generations, Hollywood has dominated the global movie scene. In many countries American films capture up to 90 percent of the market (Campbell 201). Cultural studies is in fact the study of the ways in which culture is constructed and organized and the ways in which it evolves and changes over time. More recently, as globalization has started to intensify, and the United States government has been actively promoting free trade agendas and trade on cultural products, which led Hollywood into becoming a world-wide cultural source. As the foreign film market in the US continues to shrink, American distributors play increasingly larger roles as cultural gate-keepers. However, there has been controversies over the way Hollywood portrays other countries, their people, and cultures, especially Hollywood’s portrayal of Africa, Middle East, and Asia. Internet Movie Database suggests that they are roughly 1,367 films that mention the African continent. The problem is not about the mention of the continent, but about how the continent is constantly portrayed. The controversies around media images and themes depicting the way in which the ‘developing’ world is portrayed, have been going on since the mid-1970s (Cohen, 2001, in Manzo, 2006).