Subtitles as Revoicing: Film Festivals and the Globalization of Film

Abstract

Subtitles as Revoicing:Film Festivals and the Globalization of Film Antoine Damiens (bio) Film festivals constitute a privileged vantage point for thinking about "the transnational dynamics of cinema."1 In screening films from all over the world, they shape film traffic and articulate particular discourses on the globalization of national cinemas.2 As cultural gatekeepers, festivals presuppose a form of cinematic knowledge organized in discrete and distinct programmatic categories; through their curatorial decisions and selections, programmers (re)order the grids of intelligibility through which we come to understand particular films. Liz Czach eloquently argues that "programmers are making powerful decisions. . . . The programming decisions amount to an argument about what defines that field, genre, or national cinema."3 While scholars have argued that festivals translate the idea of world cinema or define what we mean by "national" cinemas, the question of actual translation made by and at festivals has remained undertheorized.4 This is quite paradoxical: festivals routinely position themselves as panoramas of international films; they presuppose the coexistence of various languages. In other words, the soundscape of the festival theater is fundamentally multilingual. In turn, this plurality of languages both refracts the imagined geography of world cinemas and reinforces festival locations as key nodes shaping film traffic and cinematic knowledge.5 [End Page 178] Translation at festivals is thus both a necessity and a mechanism that shapes how festivalgoers perceive world cinemas; it simultaneously enables curators to screen foreign films and positions festivalgoing as a local experience of international cinematic cultures. In that context, festival organizers have used various techniques to translate and revoice world cinemas for a festival's (local and international) audience. Ranging from simultaneous transcription to interpretation to subtitles, these techniques cannot be thought of as neutral devices that simply enable festivalgoers' experiences of world cinemas.6 For in fact the translation technique chosen by a festival fundamentally influences how festival-goers understand a foreign film and its relationship to a festival's curatorial focus. To that end, I argue that translation techniques at festivals revoice films as an experience of being in the world, thereby reinforcing the discursive and political parameters through which a festival operates. I contend that the translation techniques used by large international festivals exemplify how a festival defines transnational cinematic cultures: these festivals' use of subtitling often both bolsters their international prestige and localizes or domesticates world cinemas.7 I contrast the ideological effects of such festival translation to the amateur techniques used by smaller, identity-based festivals. Unable to professionally subtitle films, these events have developed ways of translating films that both visualize the work of translators and "give voice" to a festival's imagined audiences. Because of the cost, time, and labor needed to translate films, international festivals screened films in their original language—without any translation—through the 1950s.8 This situation corresponded to a specific historical context: up until the 1960s, international festivals were an instrument of diplomacy. At the time, international festivals (e.g., Cannes, Venice, Berlin) did not select the films they screened. Rather, they relied on the recommendations made by cultural embassies, with each country submitting a national entry. Festivals conceived of films as both reflecting the character of a country and replaying or pacifying conflicts through celluloid. During this phase, festivals did not seek to translate national films into other languages but rather willingly adopted untranslatability as a form of national representation.9 Festivals started providing their audiences with some sort of translation in the mid-1950s. At that time, most festivals changed their submission guidelines to require prints subtitled in the local language. In some cases, festivals provided additional translations through simultaneous interpretation. For instance, the Berlin International Film Festival supplied its audience with headphones plugged into high-frequency transistor receivers as early as 1959; the devices let festivalgoers access a live translation in [End Page 179] English, French, Spanish, and later Russian.10 This technique further refracted the geopolitical position of the Berlin festival: founded in 1951 by a film officer for the US military, it was explicitly conceived as an effort to promote Western cinemas and values.11 In that context, the festival's use of radio receivers enabled a form...