Robert Fenne's style and the features of the expressionist school in world cinema

Of Marabouts, Acrobats, and Auteurs:Framing the Global-Popular in Moumen Smihi's World Cinema Peter Limbrick (bio) One of the critical commonplaces in the study of Arab cinemas is the idea that we can distinguish between Egyptian cinema, a dominant popular and industrial cinema akin to Hollywood, and smaller national or regional cinemas (Palestinian, Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan), which are typically discussed as auteur or art cinemas. While historically defensible, in that Egypt preceded these others in having its own studios and industry, such an assessment nonetheless tends to foreclose on the possibilities for those films inhabiting the "non-Egyptian" model to ever be accorded the status of popular cinema. Moreover, where local distribution and exhibition for North African films has been historically partial or nonexistent (due to commercial decisions that have historically favored Egyptian, Indian, and Euro-American productions), it has been difficult for many directors in countries like Morocco to avoid the charge that their films—which are often more visible in European festivals than at home—are made for other markets or audiences. Whether in sympathy with the idea of distinctive local or national cinemas and resistance to cultural hegemony or in suspicion of the politics of international funding and coproduction, many critical treatments of non-Egyptian Arab films make of the popular an evaluative term that signifies local authenticity and a resistance toward European art cinema tendencies and that privileges commercial success over experimentation. This essay takes a more expansive approach to the idea of the popular in an Arab cinematic context. Using the work of Moroccan filmmaker Moumen Smihi as an example, I will show how the history of Maghribi cinema forces us to rethink notions of the popular in a global frame. Smihi's films construct a dialogue between vernacular, local, and popular elements in Morocco and the Maghrib and elements [End Page 60] of the wider culture of the Arab world. More than that, however, his films construct a global-popular that is also in dialogue with European, Asian, and American cultural forms—both cinematic and literary. While treating Smihi's cinema as a global modernist form within the history of world cinema, I show here that the assumed characteristics and preoccupations of art cinema can mask a surprisingly thoroughgoing and transformative engagement with the popular. Addressing Smihi's development of a global-popular is thus instructive not only for elucidating his films' deep emplacement within the local but for thinking about wider discourses of art cinema, global modernist forms, and cinematic histories. 1 In deploying the term "world cinema" in its very title, and below, this essay does not suggest some kind of flattened terrain where everything circulates either in relation to Hollywood or in a multicultural sameness. In keeping with the cautionary perspectives on nomenclature developed in this issue's introduction, I here deploy the term "world" in productive tension with the term "global" in order to suggest the world-making, generative possibilities that the global-popular can unleash. I mean to recognize not only the "irreducible contradictions" invoked by the editors with respect to global cinematic practices but also the sense that the "flexible geographies" (Nagib, 35) created by Smihi's cinema can reconfigure the relations that so far separate "the Arab world" from "the West" or that structure Maghribi production along axes assumed to follow those established by colonialism. By forging connections across different and more unpredictable paths, Smihi's films engage and exploit the global in service of what I've elsewhere termed a new kind of Nahda, a renewed Arab renaissance (Limbrick 2020). It's for that reason especially—to hold on to the possibilities for reconfigured relations within and between Arab and non-Arab worlds as engaged by a cinema of the global-popular—that I use the term "world cinema" here. With its purchase on the transformative power of cinema's imaginaries, it offers not only the space for critique of what is but also a gesture to what might still be, a doubled perspective that is particularly helpful in assessing Smihi's work. Born and raised in Tangier, Moumen Smihi began a degree in literature in Rabat before winning a scholarship to study filmmaking...

Beyond the global platforms, it is also important to perceive a specific type of more artisanal and less mainstream world cinema, which occupies primarily niche and not global streaming platforms, giving visibility to a peripheral cinema of the periphery itself, which are often not seen in their own countries, which could be called, in counterpoint, of a worldly cinema. Based on the analysis of some films distributed on niche streaming platforms in Brazil, this paper intends to discuss the constitution of peripheral films in world cinema as opposed to a globalized world cinema distributed by global streaming platforms. How are world cinema aesthetics, more global or peripheral, organized into more global or niche streaming platforms?

Reviewed by: Shakespeare and World Cinema by Mark Thornton Burnett, and: Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace by Mark Thornton Burnett Courtney Lehmann Shakespeare and World Cinema. By Mark Thornton Burnett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp xii + 272. $99.00. Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace. By Mark Thornton Burnett. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 (paperback 2012). Pp vii + 227. $100 (hardback), $28 (paperback). It would be hard to find two better-paired volumes than Mark Thornton Burnett’s recently-republished Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace (Palgrave 2007 and 2012) and his new Shakespeare and World Cinema (Cambridge 2012). While the former explores Anglophonic Shakespeare films through the lens of global market forces, the latter offers highly localized readings of non-Anglophonic adaptations. In fact, Shakespeare and World Cinema seems almost to “talk back” to its earlier counterpart, critiquing the “general relegation or bypassing of the non-Anglophone Shakespeare film” by offering “an account that eschews the domination of Hollywood—and the English language—[a]s a political obligation” (3). Both books are essential contributions to the field, but Shakespeare and World Cinema is unrivaled with respect to rigor, information, and ingenuity. Demonstrating compelling, deeply situated knowledge of seventy-three films in regions ranging from Southeast Asia to Africa, Latin America to Lapland, Burnett’s most recent work resonates with an unusual sense of urgency, demanding attention to and critical engagement with films that have never had the benefit of commercial circulation. The importance of Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace lies in the fact that it is one of a mere handful of books that acknowledges and investigates the economic exigencies and market-based energies that drive the production, distribution, and reception of contemporary Shakespeare films. Organized around a series of wide-ranging themes—including theatricality, sequelization, localization, racial and religious politics, spirituality, and post-millennial parody—Burnett’s book presents a longitudinal analysis of the commercial paratexts that trouble our understanding of both canonical and distinctly “minor” cinematic adaptations released between 1993 and 2007. Chapter one examines the ways in which the dynamic forces of globalization have led to the primacy of cinema—and Hollywood in particular—over theatre, a communal crisis staged in spinoffs such as In the Bleak Midwinter (Kenneth Branagh 1995), Beginner’s Luck (James Callis, Nick Cohen 2001), Get Over it [End Page 755] (Tommy O’Haver 2001), and Indian Dream (Roger Golby 2003). Unable to completely escape the centrifugal forces of the global economy, these films “fragment Shakespeare at the same time as they try to unite the shards of his cultural memory, urgently reflecting on the means whereby theatre, and Shakespeare’s relation to it, might still be manageable and meaningful” (26). Chapter two focuses on the production of meaning from a different perspective by exploring the ways in which “Shakespeare is distributed in a sequelized global age” (46). Beginning with the bold assertion that Michael Hoffman’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999) is actually derived from, and thus serves as a “sequel” to, Kenneth Branagh’s landmark comedy Much Ado About Nothing (1993), Burnett contends that the relationship between “original” and “copy” in this case is largely vampiric. “[T]aking energy from the charisma of its model,” he explains, Hoffman’s adaptation “extends, expands and amplifies in the interests of confronting and providing a Shakespeare that enjoys a cross-cultural appeal” (29). As “cross cultural” becomes shorthand for profitable, both films remain unabashedly imbricated in the contentious spirit of international commerce, insuring that even “Shakespeare is obliged to contend with himself, with proliferating manifestations of his own narratives in a variety of styles and genres” (33). A refreshing point of departure within this chapter is the analysis of the gender conversation embedded in Much Ado and Dream. If, according to Burnett, Beatrice serves as the former’s “internal auteur,” then in the latter film, it is the bicycle that assumes this directorial function, driving the narrative expression of women’s sexual and socioeconomic mobility (38-39). As a broader application of this theme, these films capitalize on the cultural mobility of Shakespeare as a means of engaging the “transatlantic aspirations” of their directors (35). Despite the inevitable tensions...

Book Review| June 01 2023 Review: Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay, by Samhita Sunya Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay, by Samhita Sunya Swapna Gopinath Swapna Gopinath SWAPNA GOPINATH is an associate professor of film and cultural studies at Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Pune. She is a Fulbright fellow and is a coeditor of Historicizing Myths in Contemporary India (Routledge), a book on popular Hindi cinema. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Samhita Sunya, Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2022. $34.95 paper. 270 pages. Film Quarterly (2023) 76 (4): 106–107. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2023.76.4.106 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Swapna Gopinath; Review: Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay, by Samhita Sunya. Film Quarterly 1 June 2023; 76 (4): 106–107. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2023.76.4.106 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Samhita Sunya, Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2022. $34.95 paper. 270 pages. In her new book Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay, Samhita Sunya examines “public debates over gender, excess, cinephilia and the world via Bombay … over a ‘long’ 1960s period” (4). A fitting addition to the Cinema Cultures in Contact series, Sunya’s book considers the role of popular Hindi cinema in the nation’s embrace of modernity, but moves away from national allegorical approaches to explore the transnational visibility and circulation of popular Hindi films of the 1960s. More provocatively, Sunya’s case studies are not purely Bombay productions; rather, they are transnational coproductions or remakes of Madras productions, thereby enabling the reader to see beyond the hegemonic patterns of production and reception of Bombay cinema. This well-researched work lies at the intersections of film studies and... You do not currently have access to this content.

Hypotheses that instigated the possibility of destabilising and de-westernising film theory have inspired a critical framework for analysing World Cinema that demands new and evolving understandings of its construction and fluidity, particularly in relation to its lost pasts and possible futures. Referencing several key works in this field and responding to David Martin-Jones’s Cinema Against Doublethink: Ethical Encounters with the Lost Pasts of World History (2019) in particular, this article questions what is unknowable and as yet unknown about World Cinema. Following Derrida, it argues that the answers lie in how World Cinema gains meaning(s) through the process of différance (difference and deferral of meaning), particularly through genre. Deploying and dismantling genre theory in case studies of Wind River (Sheridan 2017), Chung Hing sam la/Chungking Express (Wong 1994), Faa yeung nin wa/In The Mood for Love (Wong 2000), Moonlight (Jenkins 2016) and Widows (McQueen 2018), the article targets the logjam of ethical hesitancy in approaching World Cinema and, holding that impurities in western cinema constitute trace evidence of new paradigms happening elsewhere in World Cinema, posits empathy and its deferral as essential to an understanding of the dynamics of the cinemas of the world.

This article examines the origins of BBC2's reputation as a purveyor of films from around the world, exploring the significance and impact of the strand World Cinema (1965–74) and assessing the range and diversity of its offer. Foreign-language titles had been broadcast by the Corporation since before the Second World War, due partly to their ready availability at a time when Hollywood films were ‘off limits’, given the hostility of American (and British) film companies towards the new rival medium of television. During this early period, however, these continental films were not popular, undoubtedly due to the fact that subtitles were very difficult to read on small, low-definition television screens. BBC2, with its commitment to minority tastes and interests and its use of both the higher-definition 625-line UHF system and colour, was perfectly placed to revive and foster interest in world cinema. For those who urged broadcasters to adopt and maintain an enlightened film policy, World Cinema became exemplary, as a rare exception to the general rules in early television of editing for content or length, block buying (the practice of buying the rights to a mixed package of films in order to acquire certain gems) and haphazard scheduling. For a generation of cinephiles, World Cinema was a formative and educative experience. Particular attention is paid here to the first five years of World Cinema, which saw the strand give attention to a variety of ‘New Waves’ and relay experiences from behind the Iron Curtain and further afield.

This chapter focuses on one of the landmarks of Arab, third world and political cinema, Youssef Chahine’s Saladin (1963)1 Sponsored in part to celebrate Nasser’s consolidation of power, it was directed by one of the leading figures in modern Egyptian cinema, whose lifetime achievement in film has been complex, critical, and resistant. It is often cited as one of the few film versions of the Crusades from the point of view of the Saracen leader, and one of the few to regard the Crusades through Arab eyes. The geographic and medieval Other, that is, seems to be filming itself. The screenplay was partly written by Naguib Mahfouz, who later won the 1988 Nobel Prize for his novels. Chahine was appointed to replace the original director, Ezzeldine Zulfiqer, who fell ill in an early stage of the planning. Given Chahine’s reputation in world cinema, it is surprising how—at least superficially—conventional Saladin turns out to be, and how much it resembles in some respects the Hollywood versions of the Crusades that it seeks to answer. I will argue that this impression is in fact a result of the film’s strategy, which is as much to enter into dialogue with Western filmic representations of the Crusades as it is to set the historical record straight. Its status as a historical film depends more on its “film” than its “historical” nature.

Reviewed by: Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi by Peter Limbrick Terri Ginsberg (bio) Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi by Peter Limbrick. University of California Press. 2020. 302 pages. $90.00 hardcover; $34.95 paper; also available in e-book. Pressure has been placed on Arab film scholars to "delink" from Western and Eurocentric frames of intelligibility in the name of decolonial epistemologies. The ensuing debate is not new in academic circles, but it is undergoing a contemporary reconditioning as postcolonial states in the Middle East region turn to hybrid forms of nationalism fostered by neoliberal investment imperatives dominated by the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia in collaboration with the United States and Israel.1 The contemporary call to break with the West claims a different structural base than a similar call issued over thirty years ago by Egyptian political scientist Samir Amin, for whom "delinking" from the West was a revolutionary matter of transitioning from capitalism to socialism and carried no rejectionist position vis-à-vis European theory, in particular Marxism.2 For Amin, dismantling neocolonialism would require a radical internationalism, not today's reactionary isolationism whose interests lie in consolidating local and regional entities into competitive blocs within the global capitalist system. [End Page 214] The importance of Peter Limbrick's Arab Modernism as World Cinema: The Films of Moumen Smihi becomes evident within this context. Limbrick focuses his text on the overlooked Moroccan independent filmmaker Moumen Smihi, whose entire cinematic oeuvre and artistic life stands as a counter to contemporary currents. Smihi was born in Tangier, attended a French lycée, and frequented local ciné-clubs before pursuing higher education and cinematic training in France. There he was exposed to existentialist philosophy and poststructuralist theory, including works by Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan, and Roland Barthes, and to the revolutionary writings of Karl Marx. Smihi interpreted the significance of these works in the context of twentiethcentury Nahda (Arab Awakening) intellectuals such as Taha Hussein, considered by many the founder of Pharaonism, and Tawfiq al-Hakim, both giants of modern Egyptian literary culture, and in light of medieval philosophers of Islamic classical thought, such as the ninth-century theologian Al-Jahiz, who theorized evolution from the perspective of anti-sectarian rationalism, and the twelfth-century philosopher and novelist Ibn Tufayl, who argued for the interrelationship of religious and rational thought. Smihi went on to make films almost completely outside of the commercial structures and neocolonial state funding and distribution networks that continue to overdetermine the political aesthetics of Arab cinema. He has thus been able to formulate a cinematic intertext that integrates European modernist modalities—the neorealism of Roberto Rossellini, the ciné-ethnography of Jean Rouch, and the poetic realism of Pier Paolo Pasolini—while emphasizing their Arab influences and articulations. These include the Egyptian new realism of Salah Abu Seif and, especially, the literary arabesque. Through what amounts to a deconstruction of European modernism, Smihi's films enable what Limbrick calls a radicalization of Arab subjectivity: a renewed sense of Nahda founded upon an uncanny illumination of the proverbial Western civilizational narrative as it bypasses Islamic classicism and dissimulates its European scholastic appropriation—a tack now being followed on its obverse by the reactionary calls for delinking. Limbrick reading Smihi advances this "new Nahda" as against contemporary irredentism as a means of restoring European modernism to its historical moment—the intellectual legacy of Islamic rational philosophy. In turn, modernism and its profoundly transnational character are redeemed for Arab, not only Moroccan or Egyptian, cinema. Smihi's deconstructionism appears most saliently at the formal register of his films. For Limbrick, Smihi's films reconfigure Alexandre Astruc's caméra-stylo for the purpose of reconciling modernist ciné-écriture with the Defeat-conscious realism famously advocated by Tunisian cinéaste Nouri Bouzid as a remedy to the Arab world's cultural colonization.3 Such reconciliation is facilitated by intellectual montage, noncausal digressions, and a cinematography that resists omniscience and moral absolutism, recalling both early Soviet filmmaking and a certain immanentism attributable to some forms of Islamic textuality—for example, those related to Sufism. In this [End Page 215] way, Smihi's...

Drawing upon examples from contemporary British and French cinema, this book explores the sights and sounds of “migrant” London and Paris, providing entirely new ways of visualizing and conceptualizing the cities we think we already know. The study of globalization in cinema assumes many guises, from the exploration of global cinematic cities to the burgeoning “world cinema turn” within film studies, which addresses the global nature of film production, exhibition and distribution. This book draws together these two distinctly different ways of thinking about the cinema, interrogating representations of global London and Paris as migrant cinematic cities, featuring the arrival, settlement and departure of migrant figures from the decline of imperial rule to the global present. The book also considers their world cinema status in light of their reconfiguration of established forms of filmmaking, from modernism to social realism. An illuminating analysis of London and Paris in world cinema from the vantage point of migrant mobilities, the book explores the ramifications of this historical shift towards the global, one that pertains in equal measure to cityscapes, their representation as world cinema texts, and to the rise of world cinema discourse within film studies itself.

Taking vital clues from the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, the chapter discusses slums both off and on screen, as urban as well as cinematic (or represented) spaces. It provides in that way an interdisciplinary discourse on some of the book’s larger conceptual frames: the ‘planet of slums’, the ‘cinematic city’, ‘representation’ and the notion of ‘world cinema’. The author suggests that it is important to take critical voices into consideration that explain the ‘mass production of slums’ (Davis) as an effect of global capitalism (Castells et. al.). However, in accordance with recent empirical research, particularly with UN-HABITAT’s global report The Challenge of Slums (2003), the author suggests to also acknowledge the diversity of slums. This double-perspective – acknowledging diversity while also considering the historical dynamics of globalisation – is also useful when approaching world cinema. The author conceives world cinema consequently in terms of global-local exchanges (or ‘glocalisation’): employing the riverine / maritime metaphors used by film and globalisation scholars alike, the author proposes to look at representative examples via their local historical contexts as well as through considering the larger global flows (currents or waves) of documentary and realist styles in world cinema.

Edward Yang (1947-2007) made only seven full-length films, but stands as a pivotal figure in Taiwanese cinema and the New Taiwan Cinema movement. This thesis delves into the evolution of Yang's reputation from local innovator to global cinematic icon. It charts his journey, highlighting external forces that transformed his image, such as distribution strategies and global rebranding efforts. Particular attention is given to his 1990s works, like A Brighter Summer Day and Yi-Yi: A One and A Two, which mark critical periods in his career. These films exemplify his integration into international film festivals and the emerging 'world cinema' category.

This video essay ‘The Hunt for the Wild Bunch: Simultaneous Multiplicity and Alternative Genealogies in World Cinema’ was created for the Centenary Symposium of the Bulletin of Spanish Studies held in Queen’s University Belfast in September 2023. It theorizes, constructs and illustrates a mode of analysis that exploits the potential of video essays in Film Studies. In addition, by way of considerations of alternative genealogies in World Cinema and the work of Carlos Saura and his influence on Sam Peckinpah, it contends that videographic criticism can be a vital, progressive component of contemporary scholarship.

Over the last ten years, a substantial number of Latin American directors have made films that have been supported by European funding bodies; they that have been showcased in festivals around the world, and in some cases distributed internationally. These funds have brought women filmmakers from Latin America into the spotlight, and those who have benefitted from support with production (and in many cases post-production) include the Peruvian director Claudia Llosa, the Argentinean directors Lucia Puenzo, Lucrecia Martel and Celina Murga, the Paraguayan Paz Encina, the Chilean Dominga Sotomayor, and the Mexican Yulene Olaizola, among others. This creates the curious scenario whereby Europe is instrumental in co-creating a boom in Latin American women’s filmmaking, a scenario that raises a number of interesting questions and ties in with wider debates around European subsidies for ‘world cinema’. Is this a form of neo-colonial European intervention in the cultural production of less developed nations? Is Europe looking to the world to supply a stream of exotic imagery for its entertainment? Should European funding bodies be celebrated for enabling the production of important films that would either not be made, or would have much lower budgets, and a much less visible trajectory without them? These questions will be addressed through the specific case of one of the most high profile and controversial Latin American directors, Claudia Llosa, whose films have won awards on the international festival circuit while provoking disquiet among Peruvian and Latin Americanist critics for what some see as a Westernising and racist representations of poor Peruvians. I consider the key positions in the European funding of ‘world cinema’ debates, and then position a reading of La teta asustada/The Milk of Sorrow (2009) within these debates. I begin with a brief discussion of Llosa’s first film Madeinusa (2006), as this film initiated the controversies surrounding Llosa’s depiction of indigenous Peruvians. Do Llosa’s films confirm the critical positions by being subject to a process of othering for a European cinephile festival audience? Or, do they challenge neo-colonialist readings of European co-funded projects? What findings can be drawn through the focus on single film texts? I warn against generalising conclusions and contrast Llosa’s approach with that of Lucrecia Martel and Lucia Puenzo in particular through their diverse approach to representations of ethnicity and class.

This article examines the term ‘World Cinema’ by comparing it to ‘world literature’, as understood by two German thinkers of the Romantic period: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Karl Marx, who attributed universal appeal to it. It argues that World cinema, like world literature, testifies to the unequal distribution of economic and cultural power. World Cinema refers to cinemas of peripheries, cinematic production of ‘developing’ or Third World countries or non-Hollywood. Moreover, it does not encompass everything which is produced in the peripheries, but only that part, which lends itself to the gaze of (broadly understood) western scholars. Inevitably, such gaze privileges ‘canonical works’, which have already received national recognition and which due to their subjects, forms or ideologies, align themselves with the production in the centre. However, there are also films created in the peripheries which transcended national boundaries despite being openly local and even hostile to the idea of competing with other films on the global market, especially films made in Hollywood or modelled on Hollywood, such as Third Cinema, whose analysis concludes the discussion.

Iranian cinema is today widely recognized not merely as a distinctive national cinema, but as one of the most innovative in the world. Established masters like Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf have been joined by newcomers like Samira Makhmalbaf, Majid Majidi, Ja'far Qobadi and Bahman Qobadi, all directors whose films are screened to increasing acclaim in international festivals. This international stature both fascinates Western observers and appears paradoxical in line with perceptions of Iran as anti-modern. The largely Iranian contributors to this book look in depth at how Iranian cinema became a true 'world cinema'. From a range of perspectives, they explore cinema's development in post Revolution Iran and its place in Iranian culture.