World Cinema between the rock of the unknowable and the hard place of the as yet unknown

Rob Stone,Luis Freijo

doi:10.1080/25785273.2021.1873572

Abstract

ABSTRACT 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.

Highlights

Hypotheses that instigated the possibility of destabilising and dewesternising film theory have inspired a critical framework for analysing World Cinema that demands new and evolving under standings of its construction and fluidity, in relation to its lost pasts and possible futures
Deploying and dismantling genre the ory 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 wes tern 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
The concepts of World Cinema that were erected on the ‘scholarly space’ incorporated flux so that ideas ‘from sources outside of the traditional Western spheres of influence’ were equal to those attempts at ‘understanding how case studies drawn from a range of global film cultures can inform contemporary debates in film theory’ (Bâ and Higbee 2012, 12)

Summary

Introduction

This lost past of Mr Chow and China was not unknowable, only deferred and as yet unknown, pending 2046 (Wong 2004), the sequel to Faa yeung nin wa, when the two films could be read as two half-stories about the lost past and potential future of Southeast Asia, much like the two half-stories of Hong Kong in Chung Hing sam lam.

Results

Conclusion