Graduate Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies 5:1 (2007), 89-93 REVIEW Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim. Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, Wallflower Press, London and New York, 2006, 203 pp. ISBN 1-904764-62-2. THE SOUBRIQUET world cinema is an amorphous phrase, frequently used to describe a diverse array of cinema while evading any clear cut definition of what this category actually entails. While this is understandable, it has often had the unfortunate side effect of creating a theoretical vacuum for analysing and approaching films which fall into this elusive category. In response to this ambiguity, it is not uncommon for world cinema to be reductively atomised and reduced to a category comprised of individuated national cinemas. Thus world cinema is concretised by a conceptual orthodoxy one that appeals to the palate of the cosmopolitan cinephile by constructing a cinema that displays the requisites of the diverse, the exotic and above all, the foreign. In Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, editors Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim attempt to address what is tantamount to a deceptively simple question : What is world cinema? 1 Fortunately, both they and the various contributors to this collection acknowledge the futility of seeking definitive answers and choose instead to provide a cautious, considered account of how world cinema is both discursively and empirically constituted. As a result, fifteen well crafted, rigorous essays analysing an assortment of films have been collated in this volume. Diverse theoretical approaches are thoughtfully fielded in an attempt to interrogate and reconfigure existing orthodoxies of world cinema predicated on the notion of nationalised films. Let me not be coy. We still parse the world by nations, notes Dudley Andrew in An Atlas of World Cinema. 2 This observation is particularly critical of the rigid, often nationalistic cartographies currently maintained in film studies. Not only is Andrew concerned with re defining film studies as an academic discipline, but he is simultaneously attentive to issues of pedagogical practice. Consequently, he advocates a departure from panoptic practices that merely survey the foreign, while moving towards a pedagogy of localised engagement which may subsequently disorient and even discomfort the student or audience: Displacement, not coverage, matters most; let us travel where we will, so long as every local cinema is examined with an eye to its complex ecology. 3 Andrew s use of political, demographic, and linguistic maps not only lends concision to the dilemma of how world cinema might be approached, but also offers alternative models of re conceptualisation. In his essay the term orientation, for example, refers to the emergence of a local global nexus in which film displays a perspective that is firmly situated in the local, yet remains outward looking and interactive. Drawing on Deleuze Guattari s The Nomad, Andrew contemplates marginalised practices of production and distribution that are situated beyond Western epistemes. Gibbs/Review of Remapping World Cinema 89
He also constructs a somewhat idealised, yet useful set of topographical cartographies in order to specifically ruminate on a nomadic cinema. According to his conception, the nomadic is defined as marginal to more orthodox studio based and industry financed models of production and distribution, and is consequently posited in an imagined periphery. This reveals a highly localised, free flowing process of film production one that is characterised by flux, invisibility, indigeneity and an elusive resistance to the centripetal logic of imperial classification and institutionalised film. While Andrew s various cartographies are periodically acknowledged as promising by other authors, they remain, by and large, abstract proposals confined to the borders of his essay. Nevertheless, the opportunity exists for other writers and readers to actively pursue and utilise the diverse approaches that are proposed. Andrew aside, there are several equally informative, even outstanding contributions on offer in this collection which covers territory ranging from South American to East German cinema. Discourses of post colonialism, race, gender, and the ways in which they contribute to or disrupt national filmic identity are also interrogated and critiqued. Rosanna Maule for instance, investigates the spectre of colonial displacement and alienation that haunts the post colonial films of French director Claire Denis. Consequently, the burgeoning seeds of transnational identity scattered through Denis work are brought to light for further examination. Issues of gender and sexual orientation are simultaneously explored, an approach which ultimately complicates, and thus unsettles, monolithic conceptions of (French) national identity, and by extension, (French) national cinema. A later sub section entitled Interrogating Gender is comprised of twin chapters that foray into the shifting politics of on screen gender representation in Japan and China, both past and present. Issues of identity are further explored in brief essays on Brazilian and French starlets Sonia Braga and Isabelle Adjani. These chapters detail their ethnic origins and subsequent trials and tribulations. There is an oblique discussion on how race is articulated through the performances of these actresses and an examination of the socio political implications of this process. Arguably however, both pieces are not only far too brief in their analysis, but are also too narrowly preoccupied with the cult of individual personality (and celebrity) to effect a wider, more fruitful discussion. A refreshing change of focus however, occurs midway through Remapping World Cinema as David Robb and Evelyn Preuss contribute thoughtful, theoretically rigorous pieces informed by the work of Bakhtin. The inclusion of these two essays diversifies a visible focus on South American and Asian cinemas and the prevalence of post colonial and feminist theory throughout the collection. Essays such as these successfully dispel any potential misapprehension that Remapping World Cinema is merely a critique of Third Cinema masquerading as world cinema. A preoccupation with East German film is evident as both writers describe a temporally framed cinema, wrought in the milieu of industrial modernity, yet rooted in the venerable traditions of commedia dell arte and comédie française. 4 An examination of the carnivalesque directs the reader toward a subversive cinema imbued with the potential to undermine the politics and propaganda of nationhood. Robb creates a compelling case study, comparing the overlooked talents of Karl Valentin to the undeniable genius of Charlie Chaplin. Fortunately, the work and 90 www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/gjaps
methods of the more obscure East German comic assiduously receives the lion s share of analysis. Valentin s ability to wed high art or the avant garde to the Volkssanger or folk tradition culminated in his portrayal of a Hanswurst a harlequinesque figure who evoked covert strategies of absurdity and defamiliarisation in order to provide a humorously veiled social critique. Both Robb and Preuss introduce a detailed and welcome element of class analysis to the collection. This draws attention to a cinema that reflected (German) national boundaries and spoke to internal social stratification, thus further redrawing the conceptual lines of world cinema. While most of the volume attempts to dispense with national lines of cinematic production, allowing for the titular remapping of cinema, it inadvertently occludes entire geographies of filmic imagination from its analysis. Although world cinema is remapped across these essays, it is noteworthy that this brave new cartography fails to feature any cinema external to established national sites of film production and distribution within the free floating categories of third and world cinema. Thus Pacific, Australasian, and Middle Eastern cinema along with any Asian film industries unfortunate enough to be positioned beyond the cinematic trinity of China, Japan and India, are conspicuous by their pronounced absence from the world stage, leading to a poverty of representation. The category of Fourth cinema is similarly excluded, thus foregoing any consideration of cinematic perspectives and practices that lie peripheral, parallel or in contradistinction to the notion of the nation state as logical site of cinematic production. In all fairness, these omissions will be partly attributable to pragmatic considerations such as the writers time not to mention the space available in this collection. Ultimately however, the decision to exclude these regions of cinema rests with Dennison and Lim and it is an editorial oversight that somewhat diminishes this collection. Nevertheless, the aforementioned absences leave a glaring swathe of cinema excised from the proceedings. Furthermore, a clear inequity exists among those cinemas that do receive representation. A glimpse of the Caribbean and Basque country is captured through Rob Stone s comparison of the films, Soy Cuba and Ama Lur. Discussion of Ama Lur in particular provides Remapping World Cinema with perhaps the only chapter to truly contemplate uniquely cultural and indigenous modes of filmic expression. Stone s overarching interest however, lies in examining contrasting modes of Marxist rhetoric that are present in both films. South American cinema is a vital presence, while Africa is mentioned, but only as a figment of the Western imaginary, rather than an extant site of cinematic creativity. Direct to video films in Nigeria are promising filmic territory that receive the most cursory, though admittedly tantalising, of glances in the latter stages of Dudley Andrew s contribution. Africa is revisited by both Keith Richards and Rosanna Maule in cogent analyses of the post colonial works of Claire Denis and Pier Paolo Pasolini respectively. Both essays identify the myriad ways in which the continent functions as a highly meditative, self reflexive site for both European directors. While these essays are interesting, accessible and a boon to any student or reader interested in both the insights and problems of the Western ethnographic gaze, scant if any attention is afforded to cinema actually crafted by African film makers. It is unfortunate that Lúcia Nagib s provocative proposal for, a method in which Hollywood and the West would cease to be the centre of film history Gibbs/Review of Remapping World Cinema 91
remains largely unaddressed. 5 Although Remapping World Cinema offers a pithy analysis of the West s presumed primacy in cinematic discourse, it fails to truly move beyond this paradigm. It is ironic that intelligent discussion concerned with decentring the West reifies it as an overriding theoretical preoccupation and point of reference. In effect the West, as theoretical construct, exerts an overweening hegemony through which all other cinema is filtered, compared, analysed and critiqued, operating as both indispensable counterpoint and frame. Both Hideaki Fujiki s essay and Kaushik Bhaumik s conclusive chapter provide exemplary cases in point as they demonstrate the pressing need to address Western hegemony on the one hand, and the potential pitfalls of a Western centric discourse on the other. Fujiki s considerable focus on Western cinema is understandable insofar as he accounts for a critical historical and cultural juncture wherein American cinema collided with and later informed female representation in traditional Japanese theatre. In this instance, an unfolding account of the Western gaze and its effects on later Japanese cinema is both pragmatic and essential; likewise with Rachel Hutchinson s considered analysis of authenticity, self appropriation and Occidentalism in jida geki or period action drama. 6 The notion of a filmic dialogue between America and Japan arises, and with it the exploration of cinematic techniques that both answer to and re assimilate Western conceptions of Japan. This not only further forges but critiques Japanese identity and cinema from a distinctly Japanese perspective. Bhaumik s essay similarly examines the conventions, concerns and cinematic contribution of Bollywood to world cinema and attempts to take the West s dismissive, often ignorant view of Bollywood to task. Unlike Fujiki and Hutchinson however, he is so wholly engaged with refuting the Western gaze that his work is inexorably paralysed in that self same glare, resulting in a largely reactionary, if lively piece. Bhaumik s focus on British and American failure to engage with Bollywood dominates his essay to such an extent that the cinema he describes is critically contained by the paradigm he seeks to dismantle. As a result, he strives to justify the filmic and cultural worth of Bollywood not to the world at large, but to the West. Reading this chapter, (entitled Consuming Bollywood in the global age: the strange case of an unfine world cinema ) one might assume that Bollywood was an unpopular, insular, and marginal form of film on the global stage. Such an assumption however, ignores Bollywood s widespread popularity throughout South East Asia and overlooks the rich opportunity to examine an artistic reciprocity within Asian cinema. Rather than merely proposing the radical de centring of the West, a strategic focus on Bollywood s immense international popularity could well provide the means to actually achieve this objective. Conditions of cinematic syncretism, such as those that often characterise Indian and Indonesian films, could be fruitfully appraised without constant referral to an imagined centre. Perhaps it is unfair to criticise this fairly comprehensive collection for what it fails to do, in light of its successes. There is, however a point at which theory and praxis must meet, where the former should be expressly materialised through the latter. A failure to do so renders even the most promising theoretical shift inert in the realm of abstraction. Sparkle Anne GIBBS University of Auckland 92 www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/gjaps
NOTES 1 Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, Introduction: Situating world cinema as a theoretical problem, in Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, eds, Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, Wallflower Press, London and New York, 2006, p.1. 2 Dudley Andrew, An Atlas of World Cinema in Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, eds, Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, Wallflower Press, London and New York, 2006, p. 26. 3 ibid., p.19. 4 David Robb, Carnivalesque meets modernity in the films of Karl Valentin and Charlie Chaplin in Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, eds, Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, Wallflower Press, London and New York, 2006, p.94. 5 Lúcia Nagib, Towards a Positive Definition of World Cinema in Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, eds, Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, Wallflower Press, London and New York, 2006, p.34. 6 Rachel Hutchinson, Orientalism or occidentalism? Dynamics of appropriation in Akira Kurosawa in Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim, eds, Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film, Wallflower Press, London and New York, 2006, p.176. Gibbs/Review of Remapping World Cinema 93