Introductory description

The category of ‘world cinema’ represents a point of convergence for both the flattening impulses of a universalizing neoliberalism and the more radical bents of internationalist coalition-building. In other words, such cinema figures large in affective negotiations of global culture, world community and international human rights. This course looks at the wide range of fictional feature films, including the work of Deepa Metha, Akira Kurosawa, Samira Makhmalbaf and Satyajit Ray, among others. This course addresses several specific topics, including: transnational marketing¬, the touristic gaze, the politics of dubbing/subtitling, and the slow cinema debates.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Sample outline:
Week 1. Which World? And Whose World?
Screening: Pather Panchali (Ray, 1955)
Required readings:

• Neepa Majumdar, ‘Pather Panchali: From Neorealism to Melodrama’ in Film Analysis, eds Jeffrey Geiger and R.L. Rutsky (New York: Norton, 2005).
• Satyajit Ray, ‘Under Western Eyes’ in Sight and Sound, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Autumn 1982): 268-74.

Week 2. Neorealism’s World
Screening: Riso Amaro / Bitter Rice (Giuseppe De Santis, 1949)
Required readings:

• Michael Silverman, ‘Italian film and American capital, 1947–1951’, in Patricia Mellencamp and Philip Rosen (eds), Cinema Histories, Cinema Practices (Los Angeles, CA: University Publications of America, 1984).
• Betz, Mark. ‘High and Low and in between’ Screen 54, no. 4 (December 1, 2013): 495–513.
• Wilinsky, Barbara. “Discourses on Art Houses in the 1950s.” In Exhibition, the Film Reader, edited by Ina Rae Hark, 67–75. London/New York: Routledge, 2002.

Week 3. Post-World-War II Arthouses Audiences and the Idea of the Foreign Film
Screening: Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
Required readings:

• Smith, Greg M. ‘Critical Reception of Rashomon in the West.’ Asian Cinema 13.2 (Fall/Winter 2002) 115-28. [http://www2.gsu.edu/~jougms/Rashomon.htm]
• Exhibitor manual for 1957 USA release of Rashomon, Edward Harrison distribution company, New

Week 4. Third Cinema: The Liberation Aesthetics of Postcolonial Films
Screenings: De cierta manera / One Way or Another (Sara Gómez, 1977)
Required readings:

• Espinosa, Julio García. ‘For an Imperfect Cinema’, translated by Julianne Burton in Jump Cut, no. 20, 1979, pp. 24-26.
• Espinosa, Julio Garcìa. ‘Mediations on Imperfect Cinema . . . Fifteen Years Later.’ Screen 26, no. 3–4 (1985): 93–94.
• Solanas, Fernando, and Octavio Getino. ‘Toward a Third Cinema: Notes and Experiences for the Development of a Cinema of Liberation in the Third World.’ In Twenty-Five Years of the New Latin American Cinema, edited by Michael Chanan and Michael (London: British Film Institute and Channel 4 Television, 1983): 17–27.

Week 5. Iranian Cinema: Revising Realism and Submerged Politics
The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998)
Required readings:

• Rosenbaum, Jonathan. ‘A Few Underpinnings of the New Iranian Cinema.’
• IndieWire. ‘Samira Makhmalbaf: God and Satan in The Apple.’
• Said, S.F. “‘This Girl Behaves against It’: An Interview with Samira Makhmalbaf.” In Corinn Columpar and Sophie Mayer, eds. There She Goes: Feminist Filmmaking and Beyond, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2009: 163–71.

Week 7. Slow Cinema’s Aestheticism, Auteurism, and Cinematicity
Screening: What Time Is It There? (Tsai, 2001)
Required readings:

• Ma, Jean. ‘Tsai Ming-liang’s Haunted Movie Theater’ in Global Art Cinema: New Theories and Histories, ed. Rosalind Galt and Karl Schoonover (Oxford University Press, 2010): 334-350.
• Schoonover, Karl. ‘Wastrels of Time: Slow Cinema’s Laboring Body, the Political Spectator, and the Queer’ Framework 53.1 (Spring 2012): 65-78.

Week 8. National Queers and the Question of the ‘Gay International’
Screening: Fire (Deepa Metha, 1996)
Required readings:

• Gopinath, Gayatri. ‘On Fire’ GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (1998) 4(4): 631-636;

Week 9. Neoliberalism’s World
Screening: Lan Yu (Stanley Kwan, 2001)
Required readings:

• David Eng ‘The Queer Space of China: Expressive Desire in Stanley Kwan’s Lan Yu.’ In Olivia Khoo and Sean Metzger, eds. Futures of Chinese Cinema Technologies and Temporalities in Chinese Screen Cultures. Bristol, UK/Chicago, USA: Intellect, 2009.

Week 10. Hong Kong Popular Cinema
Screening: Peking Opera Blues (Tsui, 1986)
Required readings:

• Lau, Jenny Kwok Wah, ‘Peking Opera Blues: Exploding Genre, Gender and History,’ in Film Analysis edited by Jeffrey Geiger and R.L. Rutsky (Norton, 2005): 738-755.
• Stringer, Julian, “Review: Peking Opera Blues by Tsui Hark” Film Quarterly Vol. 48 No. 3, Spring, 1995: pp. 34-42.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• At the end of this module, students should be able to describe and analyse a range of critical and historical debates about the study of world cinemas.
• In particular, they will be able to describe and analyse the ways in which national cinemas may be actively constituted in international critical discourses.
• They will be able to describe and analyse the representation of world concerns within a particular modes of world filmmaking and their reception.
• They will be able to describe and analyse ideas of genre, realism and authorship in relation to world cinemas.
• They will be able to describe and analyse definitions of identity and questions of cultural specificity in relation to world cinemas.

Indicative reading list

Generic Reading lists can be found in Talis

Research element

The module's essay requires students to work with primary documents from the film industry. To prepare for this essay, the students will be introduced to a series of exercises for developing their skills working with archival materials and developing arguments based upon these materials.

International

This module largely focuses on non-western cinemas and filmmaking practicing of the 'global south'. It aims to grant students with more elaborated and nuanced understandings of cultures from parts of the world without market dominance over media distribution channels. See the module description and aims for more details.

Subject specific skills

This module develops skills of audio-visual literacy, through close textual and/or contextual analysis in relation to the moving image and sound. It may also develops understandings of historical, theoretical and conceptual frameworks relevant to screen arts and cultures.

Transferable skills

• critical and analytical thinking in relation
• independent research skills, including working with primary documents from the film industry
• team work
• clarity and effectiveness of communication, oral and written
• accurate, concise and persuasive writing
• audio-visual literacy