Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.1080/25785273.2020.1823076
G. Battaglia
ABSTRACT The twenty-first century has signalled the explosion of documentary film practices in India. Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted between 2007 and 2009, this article analyses contemporary documentary film festivals in India conceived as a combination of cultural performance and cultural activism. Through a combination of first person experience in the field and historical research, it argues for identifying a legacy of contemporary documentary film festivals not only in the most recent history of political activism and filmmaking, but also in early cinematic practices of film exhibition during the colonial period of the Indian subcontinent - that is, when documentary films were part of an already existing public entertainment.
{"title":"Between cultural performance and cultural activism: contemporary documentary film festivals in India","authors":"G. Battaglia","doi":"10.1080/25785273.2020.1823076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2020.1823076","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The twenty-first century has signalled the explosion of documentary film practices in India. Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted between 2007 and 2009, this article analyses contemporary documentary film festivals in India conceived as a combination of cultural performance and cultural activism. Through a combination of first person experience in the field and historical research, it argues for identifying a legacy of contemporary documentary film festivals not only in the most recent history of political activism and filmmaking, but also in early cinematic practices of film exhibition during the colonial period of the Indian subcontinent - that is, when documentary films were part of an already existing public entertainment.","PeriodicalId":36578,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Screens","volume":"35 1","pages":"233 - 247"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74030716","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.1080/25785273.2020.1823074
Yanling Yang
ABSTRACT This paper examines the recent trend of co-production between China and India since the signing of the Co-production Agreement in 2014 to map out the feature of co-production beyond the West. Drawing on an analysis of the Agreement and policies that were designed to facilitate co-production, interviews with film practitioners, and evaluations of the existing three China-India films Xuan Zang, Kong Fu Yoga and Buddies in India, this paper not only examines the misuse of the term ‘co-production’ but also indicates the politically driven feature of China-India collaboration in practice. This paper argues that co-production has been part of bilateral diplomatic strategy aligning the film industry with China’s statecraft, which provides an alternative perspective beyond the culturally driven and financially driven dimensions of co-production. By mapping out this newly emerging terrain of China-India collaboration, this paper contributes to prevent the vagueness and conflation that the use of the term and practice appears to invite in the discourse of co-production. It also contributes to the current scholarly debates on de-westernization in transnational cinema and Chinese and Indian films and their associated soft power.
{"title":"The Emergence of China-India Film Co-production: policy and practice","authors":"Yanling Yang","doi":"10.1080/25785273.2020.1823074","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2020.1823074","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper examines the recent trend of co-production between China and India since the signing of the Co-production Agreement in 2014 to map out the feature of co-production beyond the West. Drawing on an analysis of the Agreement and policies that were designed to facilitate co-production, interviews with film practitioners, and evaluations of the existing three China-India films Xuan Zang, Kong Fu Yoga and Buddies in India, this paper not only examines the misuse of the term ‘co-production’ but also indicates the politically driven feature of China-India collaboration in practice. This paper argues that co-production has been part of bilateral diplomatic strategy aligning the film industry with China’s statecraft, which provides an alternative perspective beyond the culturally driven and financially driven dimensions of co-production. By mapping out this newly emerging terrain of China-India collaboration, this paper contributes to prevent the vagueness and conflation that the use of the term and practice appears to invite in the discourse of co-production. It also contributes to the current scholarly debates on de-westernization in transnational cinema and Chinese and Indian films and their associated soft power.","PeriodicalId":36578,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Screens","volume":"18 1","pages":"202 - 217"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82777616","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.1080/25785273.2020.1823077
A. Devasundaram
ABSTRACT Within the archetypal vision of Dubai as ostentatious oil-rich global megacity, this essay’s alternative scoping sees a city of interconnected spatio-cultural archipelagos. In these crisscrossing synapses, marginal outsiders can occupy potentially disruptive positions within mainstream power matrices and exclusionary corridors of capitalism. Interrogating a commonly accepted paradigm of subaltern urbanism, I argue that the invariable typecasting of subaltern spaces and association of subaltern demographics with the spatial strictures of urban slums, shanty towns, ghettoes and favelas retrenches the imaginary of the subaltern as excluded abject destined to dwell apart and dislocated from the epicentre of legitimised social, cultural, economic and political activity. Instead, the subaltern presence within mainstream urban ecosystems of power concentration and capital dominance constitutes a chance for dispossessed outsiders to disrupt the legitimised linearity of privileged stakeholders’ entitlement and always-already assumed ‘right to the city‘. I will appraise two films where Dubai is positioned as a site for subaltern Asian disruptors acting as both silent and voluble agents from within elite social structures. British-Emirati director Ali F. Mostafa’s City of Life(2009) and Pakistani filmmaker Shazia Ali Khan’s Pinky Memsaab (2018) harness Dubai as a cosmopolitan canvas where inter-Asian informal and formal modes of lived experience intertwine with heterotopic transglobal textures of the city’s capital-dominated relational grid. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates how subaltern South Asian subjects in exilic global hubs such as Dubai carry potentiality of acting as internal agents, working within capitalism’s mainstream power structures to perform informality as a mode of organic and endogenous resistance.
{"title":"Subalterns and the city: Dubai as cross-cultural caravanserai in City of Life and Pinky Memsaab","authors":"A. Devasundaram","doi":"10.1080/25785273.2020.1823077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2020.1823077","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Within the archetypal vision of Dubai as ostentatious oil-rich global megacity, this essay’s alternative scoping sees a city of interconnected spatio-cultural archipelagos. In these crisscrossing synapses, marginal outsiders can occupy potentially disruptive positions within mainstream power matrices and exclusionary corridors of capitalism. Interrogating a commonly accepted paradigm of subaltern urbanism, I argue that the invariable typecasting of subaltern spaces and association of subaltern demographics with the spatial strictures of urban slums, shanty towns, ghettoes and favelas retrenches the imaginary of the subaltern as excluded abject destined to dwell apart and dislocated from the epicentre of legitimised social, cultural, economic and political activity. Instead, the subaltern presence within mainstream urban ecosystems of power concentration and capital dominance constitutes a chance for dispossessed outsiders to disrupt the legitimised linearity of privileged stakeholders’ entitlement and always-already assumed ‘right to the city‘. I will appraise two films where Dubai is positioned as a site for subaltern Asian disruptors acting as both silent and voluble agents from within elite social structures. British-Emirati director Ali F. Mostafa’s City of Life(2009) and Pakistani filmmaker Shazia Ali Khan’s Pinky Memsaab (2018) harness Dubai as a cosmopolitan canvas where inter-Asian informal and formal modes of lived experience intertwine with heterotopic transglobal textures of the city’s capital-dominated relational grid. Ultimately, this paper demonstrates how subaltern South Asian subjects in exilic global hubs such as Dubai carry potentiality of acting as internal agents, working within capitalism’s mainstream power structures to perform informality as a mode of organic and endogenous resistance.","PeriodicalId":36578,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Screens","volume":"20 1","pages":"248 - 265"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91055655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.1080/25785273.2020.1823078
Yanling Yang, Clelia Clini, R. K. Dasgupta
ABSTRACT In light of the shift from the first phase to the second phase of transnational cinema studies, this special issue aims to examine a set of practices of transnational cinema that have been taking place within South and East Asia. In exploring transnational cinema activities in the form of transnational remakes, co-productions, cross-contamination of genres, diasporic and (post)colonial cinemas, as well as contemporary documentary film festivals, this issue puts the spotlight on critical trends in transnational cinemas occurring beyond the Western spheres of influences. Focusing on practical applications of case studies across China, Korea, India and United Arab Emirates, this special issue contributes to the debates on the definition and practical applications for research on transnational cinema studies.
{"title":"Critical trends in transnational cinema: Inter-Asian productions and exchanges","authors":"Yanling Yang, Clelia Clini, R. K. Dasgupta","doi":"10.1080/25785273.2020.1823078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2020.1823078","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In light of the shift from the first phase to the second phase of transnational cinema studies, this special issue aims to examine a set of practices of transnational cinema that have been taking place within South and East Asia. In exploring transnational cinema activities in the form of transnational remakes, co-productions, cross-contamination of genres, diasporic and (post)colonial cinemas, as well as contemporary documentary film festivals, this issue puts the spotlight on critical trends in transnational cinemas occurring beyond the Western spheres of influences. Focusing on practical applications of case studies across China, Korea, India and United Arab Emirates, this special issue contributes to the debates on the definition and practical applications for research on transnational cinema studies.","PeriodicalId":36578,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Screens","volume":"20 1","pages":"177 - 186"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73973852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-01DOI: 10.1080/25785273.2020.1823075
Clelia Clini
ABSTRACT Hong Kong’s martial arts film have been popular in India since the 1970s (Srinivas 2012, 66) and they have had a profound influence on the Hindi action films of the 1970s-1980s, as martial arts were progressively integrated into their narratives. This article investigates the appeal of Hong Kong martial arts films, and of the figure of Bruce Lee in particular, with specific reference to the social, cultural and political context of reception in India. The context within which Bruce Lee made his entrance on the Indian screens was in fact critical for his success. In particular, the article examines the appeal of martial arts, and their incorporation in the Hindi action films of the 1970s, in relation to (post)colonial discourses of Asian masculinity. Drawing upon Yvonne Tasker’s examination of the ‘anticolonial narrative’ embedded in Hong Kong martial arts films, the analysis discusses the incorporation of a martial arts style of combat within Indian popular films as a response to colonial and orientalist tropes of Asian effeminacy and softness and argues that martial arts allowed the 1970s Hindi action hero to articulate an alternative, anticolonial, version of Asian masculinity.
{"title":"Is everybody Kung Fu fighting? Indian popular cinema and martial arts films","authors":"Clelia Clini","doi":"10.1080/25785273.2020.1823075","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2020.1823075","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Hong Kong’s martial arts film have been popular in India since the 1970s (Srinivas 2012, 66) and they have had a profound influence on the Hindi action films of the 1970s-1980s, as martial arts were progressively integrated into their narratives. This article investigates the appeal of Hong Kong martial arts films, and of the figure of Bruce Lee in particular, with specific reference to the social, cultural and political context of reception in India. The context within which Bruce Lee made his entrance on the Indian screens was in fact critical for his success. In particular, the article examines the appeal of martial arts, and their incorporation in the Hindi action films of the 1970s, in relation to (post)colonial discourses of Asian masculinity. Drawing upon Yvonne Tasker’s examination of the ‘anticolonial narrative’ embedded in Hong Kong martial arts films, the analysis discusses the incorporation of a martial arts style of combat within Indian popular films as a response to colonial and orientalist tropes of Asian effeminacy and softness and argues that martial arts allowed the 1970s Hindi action hero to articulate an alternative, anticolonial, version of Asian masculinity.","PeriodicalId":36578,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Screens","volume":"12 1","pages":"218 - 232"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87084340","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-23DOI: 10.1080/25785273.2020.1823073
C. Balmain
In 2004, the first Bunshinsaba film was released. Directed by Ahn Byeong-ki, it was a modest hit at the Korean box-office although it did well enough globally to warrant a dubbed as well as subtitl...
{"title":"Repetition and difference in East Asian gothic cinema: the Bunshinsaba film series","authors":"C. Balmain","doi":"10.1080/25785273.2020.1823073","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2020.1823073","url":null,"abstract":"In 2004, the first Bunshinsaba film was released. Directed by Ahn Byeong-ki, it was a modest hit at the Korean box-office although it did well enough globally to warrant a dubbed as well as subtitl...","PeriodicalId":36578,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Screens","volume":"161 1","pages":"187 - 201"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84788147","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-15DOI: 10.1080/25785273.2020.1823079
Pablo Méndez Shiff
In the midst of the pandemic of Covid-19, Netflix launched a series of 17 short films called Homemade. Filmed by directors from different parts of the world, the project was conceived by Chilean di...
{"title":"Socially distanced and yet connected: the case of Netflix’s Homemade","authors":"Pablo Méndez Shiff","doi":"10.1080/25785273.2020.1823079","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2020.1823079","url":null,"abstract":"In the midst of the pandemic of Covid-19, Netflix launched a series of 17 short films called Homemade. Filmed by directors from different parts of the world, the project was conceived by Chilean di...","PeriodicalId":36578,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Screens","volume":"71 1","pages":"83 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76734732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-08-04DOI: 10.1080/25785273.2019.1682273
Christopher Jeansonne
ABSTRACT The Grudge was unique among transnational Japanese horror remakes due to several factors: Ju-On’s director Shimizu Takashi was retained for the Hollywood-financed version, as was its Japanese setting, even as the narrative’s protagonists were replaced with an American cast and the film’s plotlines restructured to accommodate this change. Using Iwabuchi Koichi’s notion of ‘cultural odor’ as a theoretical framework, and informed by scholarship on other J-Horror films and their transnational remakes, the explicit intentions of Ju-On/The Grudge’s producers and creators are contrasted with evidence from the texts themselves, and contextualized through an examination of critical and popular reception of the films as cross-cultural products. This investigation reveals fundamental shifts in dynamics of identification: In Ju-On the horror threat resonates with culturally proximate concerns, and the climactic sequence functions to create a circle of identification between the monster, the protagonist, and the viewer. Conversely, in The Grudge, the monster’s nature as culturally abject in relation to the central protagonist forecloses the potential for such identification, and foreignness itself becomes central to the horror affect.
{"title":"Globalizing ‘a rage that never dies’ (but can’t stay the same): shifting dynamics of identification in the transnational remaking of Ju-On into The Grudge","authors":"Christopher Jeansonne","doi":"10.1080/25785273.2019.1682273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785273.2019.1682273","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Grudge was unique among transnational Japanese horror remakes due to several factors: Ju-On’s director Shimizu Takashi was retained for the Hollywood-financed version, as was its Japanese setting, even as the narrative’s protagonists were replaced with an American cast and the film’s plotlines restructured to accommodate this change. Using Iwabuchi Koichi’s notion of ‘cultural odor’ as a theoretical framework, and informed by scholarship on other J-Horror films and their transnational remakes, the explicit intentions of Ju-On/The Grudge’s producers and creators are contrasted with evidence from the texts themselves, and contextualized through an examination of critical and popular reception of the films as cross-cultural products. This investigation reveals fundamental shifts in dynamics of identification: In Ju-On the horror threat resonates with culturally proximate concerns, and the climactic sequence functions to create a circle of identification between the monster, the protagonist, and the viewer. Conversely, in The Grudge, the monster’s nature as culturally abject in relation to the central protagonist forecloses the potential for such identification, and foreignness itself becomes central to the horror affect.","PeriodicalId":36578,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Screens","volume":"10 1","pages":"102 - 87"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85673939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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