Narration in World cinema: Mapping the flows of formal exchange in the era of globalisation

Abstract

World cinema has become a popular concept in the film studies circles in an effort to arrange the growing terrain of national cinemas across the globe and compensate for a long-standing Eurocentric approach to film criticism. In my article I try to overcome some of the existing orthodoxies on the topic, such as the dichotomy between Hollywood cinema and the rest of the world, the American hegemony thesis and the hierarchical/linear models of analysis. By focusing on the narration of a number of films from across the globe, I trace a number of formal developments that urge us to reconsider the notion of western primacy in the production of cinematic forms and to seek new models of complex cultural interactions.