• MED2015
• Trans-National Cinema

From a transnational perspective, nationalism is a canny dialogical partner whose voice often seems to be growing stronger at the very moment that its substance is fading away' (Ezra and Rowden, 2006: 4). 'If First-World filmmakers have seemed to float above petty nationalist concerns, it is because they take for granted the projection of a national power that facilitates the making and the dissemination of their films. The geopolitical positioning of Third-World nation-states continues to imply that their filmmakers cannot assume a substratum of national power' (Shohat, 2006: 40) Transnational cinema, as a newly emerging critical category within film studies, engages with a range of concepts addressing the impact of globalisation on film cultures. This module will introduce students to debates that critically examine the significance, modalities and problematics of transnational film cultures. The notion of the 'transnational' will be explored in relation to the global flows set in place via migration, film finance, 'cosmopolitan' spectatorship, and new technologies of distribution and consumption. The module will encourage critical engagement with transnational film cultures by way of enabling an understanding of the currency and circulation of other related frameworks such as 'national cinema', 'world cinema', 'third cinema' and 'postcolonial cinema'. It will thus emphasise an appreciation of the 'transnational' as a process/perspective that is not just contemporary, but historicized. Importantly, the module will look at diverse film cultures across Africa, Asia, Europe, and America, not through the framework of the 'national' or aestheticised artistic hierarchies, but as a result of the socio-economic and cultural transformations set in place by globalization.

This module aims to: - Introduce the framework of the 'transnational' and its particular development within film studies; - Facilitate an understanding of some of the global flows that enable transnational film culture - Encourage a critical engagement with the political possibilities (or the lack thereof) of transnational film in relation to seemingly more radical frameworks such as third cinema or postcolonial cinema; - Develop the ability to look at film cultures as a combination of the local and global, paying attention to: trans-national and trans-cultural intervention of cine fans (Jenkins, 2003); performative manifestations of diasporic/migrant memory and identity (Naficy, 2001; Marcus, 2001); multinational investment into film production (Davis, 2006); new technologies of distribution and exhibition (Shefrin, 2006); - Encourage students to bring their critical - hopefully reflective -- understanding of theoretical frameworks to bear upon their production/practice work as subjects/authors embedded within the socio-cultural, economic and historical conditions explored in this module; - Encourage students to view films critically, while being cognisant of particularly constituted subject-positions, and their implications for film consumption and production.