Transnational Co-production Research Articles

Book Review: TV drama in the multiplatform era: Transnational coproduction and cultural specificity

Book Review: TV drama in the multiplatform era: Transnational coproduction and cultural specificity

Scoring the Nation

This article analyses how transnational co-productions render Irish history audio-visually by comparing the soundtracks of Some Mother’s Son (1996) and The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006). The puzzle is whether history films can enhance immersive perceptual experiences of place by using local music, while catering to the audiovisual skills and expectations of global audiences. The study compares Bill Whelan’s and George Fenton’s respective soundtracks. On the one hand, Whelan’s avowedly Irish soundtrack performed by the Irish Film Orchestra with virtuosos from the Riverdance Orchestra crowds the images and prescribes audience feelings. On the other, Fenton lightly melds classical film orchestration with Irish melody and instrumentation and The Wind that Shakes the Barley blends diegetic singing with its more spacious soundtrack. The conclusion is that combining local instruments and diegetic song with limited cinematic orchestration succeeds better than neo-traditional instrumentation in screening Irish history.

Transnational co-production of technology: Sino-Soviet cooperation in the construction of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge, 1950–1957

ABSTRACT Using the construction of the Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge as a case study, this paper explores transnational co-production of technology between the Soviet Union and China in the 1950s. Focusing on the invention of the non-caisson method, it argues that non-state actors played an important role in the process, because successful construction of the bridge could not be separated from reciprocal wills and long-term face-to-face interactions between Chinese and Soviet engineers. Moreover, by examining Chinese workers’ contribution, this paper enriches the idea of hybrid technology, including not only the mingling of national identities in the process of knowledge making but also the combining of knowledge of both elites and masses. As a core project of China’s First-Five-Year Plan, the cooperation boosted China’s confidence in technological development and the Chinese Communist Party started to re-evaluate the Soviet technical aid, which to some extent influenced China’s science and technology policies afterwards.

Channel 4 and the South Series (1991-93): from the Third World to the Global South

This article provides a case study of a groundbreaking yet hitherto overlooked transnational coproduction experience on European broadcasting: the South series (1991–93). An ambitious initiative led by Channel 4’s Independent Film and Video Department (IFVD) and the South Productions company, headed by Argentine producer Ana de Skalon, the South series was widely conceived and promoted as the first magazine programme in the world to be directed by film and video makers from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Focusing on Latin America, this article reconstructs this unique experience of transnational collaboration on a global scale while also examining the shifting relationship between European broadcasting and the cinema of this region. Drawing on the internal production files of South Productions and using interviews with filmmakers, commissioning editors, and producers as well as the valuable information contained in Channel 4’s press packs, this article sheds light on this major effort of transnational coproduction. South not only constitutes the peak of the transatlantic collaborations developed between British television and Latin American cinema, but also embodies the conceptual shift from the Third World to the Global South through its broadening of film- and video-making practices, as is made clear through the series’ title.

Review: Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay, by Samhita Sunya

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.

The transnational tales of an Indian creative producer: the case of Guneet Monga

ABSTRACT Studies of Indian cinema have traditionally placed more emphasis on directors, stars, aesthetics and issues of ideology than on the practices of creative producers. Although these are important concerns, the role of Indian producers deserves careful scholarly attention, especially in the context of transnational film projects, where producers are often involved from the pre-development stage through production and distribution. To address this problem, this article examines the production stories of an Indian creative producer, Guneet Monga (1983-), who is well-known for setting up Indian-European co-productions that deviate from contemporaneous spectacle-driven mainstream Bollywood productions. Through an in-depth personal interview with the producer herself and insights from film and media production studies, this article demonstrates how Monga’s micro-production stories reveal larger creative and collaborative practices that are transforming India’s independent film production culture and making it more transnational. This article shows that producers––the least researched figure in Indian film scholarship––gain several navigational tactics through transnational co-productions such as telling tales of tenacity, hustling and interpersonal networking, among others. These tactics, in turn, challenge the precarious conditions of working in the Bollywood-dominated film culture of India.

HBO’s the Sleepers: How Spy Genre and Transnational Co-Production Challenged the Memory of Communism in the Czech Republic

This study centers on the problem of transposition of historical reality into the artistic form. Using the example of HBO Europe’s Czech six-part drama Bez vědomí (The Sleepers, 2019), I would like to discuss how the transnational co-production, the effort to attract international audiences, and the selected genre influenced the portrayal of the past. In the context of Czech audiovisual production, the series represents a rather exceptional example. First, it reflects on the period around the Velvet Revolution, which has not been the focus of many Czech films or TV series. It is set in late 1980s Prague, and captures the time of political and societal changes that resulted in the collapse of the communist regime. Secondly, the series uses the spy genre, which is also unique in local production. Drawing from film and TV studies and from memory studies, I will explore the concept of transnational memory in relation to HBO’s original production. In particular, however, I would like to focus on the formative role of the genre and argue that the choice of the genre in itself contributes to challenging the prevailing narratives and already established interpretations of the past.

“The boundary has been moved”: Hollywood cinéma-monde, film borders, and the multilingual assassin in Sicario and Inglourious Basterds

Transnational coproductions, multilingual dialogue, and border-crossing of many forms are growing increasingly common in contemporary cinemas. As a result, assigning a nationality to a film can prove a slippery and even arbitrary process. This article takes a new approach to films such as Sicario (Denis Villeneuve 2015) and Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino 2009), analyzing texts traditionally viewed as American through the lens of cinéma-monde (Marshall 2012). It focuses in particular on these films’ use of maps, and on their strikingly similar multilingual assassination scenes, reading them through Bill Marshall’s characterization of a cinema that “dramatically focuses attention on four elements: borders, movement, language, and lateral connections” (42). Each of these films was directed by an established auteur working in a “foreign” space and non-native languages, and each depicts continual border-crossing, code-switching, and violence committed across geographic and linguistic lines. With significant American and other characteristics, neither Sicario nor Inglourious Basterds could be neatly categorized as Quebecois nor French respectively. Yet these films implicate the French-speaking world in diverse ways. Ultimately, the ways in which these films traverse, theorize, and weaponize the border begs a questioning of how far the concepts of national cinemas, and indeed of cinéma-monde, can be extended.

Transnational Co-production of Knowledge: The Standardisation of Typhoon Warning Codes in the Far East, 1900–1939

The why and the how of knowledge production are examined in the case of the transnational cooperation between the directors of observatories in the Far East who drew up unified typhoon-warning codes in the period 1900–1939. The why is prompted by the socioeconomic interests of the local chambers of commerce and international telegraphic companies, although this urge has the favourable wind of Far Eastern meteorologists’ ideology of voluntarist internationalism. The how entails the persistent pursuit of consensus (on ends rather than means) in international meetings where non-binding resolutions on codes and procedures are adopted. The outcome is the co-production of standardised knowledge, that is, the development of a series of processes and practices that co-produce both knowledge and ideas about the social order in a force field characterised by negotiations and power struggles.

Netflix speaks Arabic, Arabs speak Netflix: How SVOD is transforming Arabic series screenwriting

While subscription of video-on-demand (SVOD) services has become increasingly popular across the world in recent years, the arrival of Netflix to the Arab world was transformational. As it stepped up to produce original Arabic series, Netflix-modelled services from the region proliferated, promising to challenge the existing Arabic series’ (musalsalat) routines in content and form. Since the Arab World is scarcely mentioned in the growing scholarly literature on SVODs, this article attempts to understand how the Arabic TV drama industry is recalibrating to this new transnational co-production context, particularly when it comes to developing series ideas and screenplays. Our aim is to analyse the creative interplay in which these ideas and screenplays are evaluated and developed. To this effect, we draw on original interviews with screenwriters, development producers and creative executives who have worked with Netflix on original Arabic series, as well as those who have worked with Shahid VIP, a Saudi-owned pan-Arab SVOD platform. Informed by the ‘Screen Idea System’ framework that suggests an understanding of the dynamics between the shaping elements of any new idea made for the screen, we explore whether the current business model results in certain cultural narratives and how this affects the perceptions of quality and success of the produced series. Our findings show that transnationalism is instigated by the writers’ perception of a transnational target audience, and is reflected strongly on the levels of production and creative decision-making. Moreover, the systems in which the series of both platforms are developed are in constant negotiations with the musalsalat conventions, while aiming to prompt novelty based on a Western perception of the idea of quality.

The Transnational Co-production of Interwar ‘Fascism’: On the Dynamics of Ideational Mobility and Localization

Interwar fascism achieved sensational international reach through the appeal and circulation of a set of generic ideological norms and political practices. Therefore, models of analysis must accommodate alternative local interpretations, adaptations, and a wide range of varied outcomes in the process of its diverse local translations. In this article, I propose the new trans-disciplinary mobility paradigm as a productive methodological extension of the transnational approach in fascism studies. I focus on the fluid dynamics of transnational circulation of ‘fascist’ ideas and political innovations, as well as on how these were perceived, (re-)interpreted, adopted/adapted by a wide set of local agents in interwar Europe. I employ a decentred, anti-literalist, and multi-directional mobility approach that analyses the history of interwar ‘fascism’ as the messy net force of diverse, multivalent agencies, of interactions and frictions, in the end of creative translation and trial-and-error. I argue that a focus on this mobility dynamic offers three advantages: first, it promotes the re-integration of diverse fragmented histories of interwar fascism; second, it is capable of exposing the dynamic co-production of the political history of ‘fascist’ over time and space; and third, it fosters a far better understanding of the reasons for the ideological travel and political traction of radical ideas and politics in interwar years.

Contemporary Balkan Cinema: Transnational Exchanges and Global Circuits by Lydia Papadimitriou and Ana Grgić

 Reviews Contemporary Balkan Cinema: Transnational Exchanges and Global Circuits. Ed. by L P and A G. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. .  pp. £. ISBN ––––. Featuring in-depth analyses of film production from the largest to the smallest of countries in the region, Contemporary Balkan Cinema, an eclectic volume brought together by editors Lydia Papadimitriou and Ana Grgić, breaks new ground in scholarship on the film industries of the Balkan Peninsula. e distinct aim of the volume is to reclaim the term ‘Balkan’ from its long association in the West with violence and fragmentation (p. ), and to create a volume ‘more concerned with offering an empirically grounded account of the cinematic activity within and across the region’ (p. ). e aim is a challenging one, primarily because of the scale of its coverage, which ‘widens the geographic focus in order to provide an inclusive view of the region and disband narrow identifications of the Balkans with the former Yugoslavia’ (p. ). e volume features chapters on Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, and Turkey. Although perhaps contrary to the ethos of the book, it is impossible not to mention that this is a controversial assemblage considering that there are ongoing political difficulties, acknowledged by several of the contributors, between a number of the nations included, and sometimes within countries themselves. As discussed in their respective chapters, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cyprus still face internal divisions along ethnic lines, affecting film production, something which Dijana Jelača suggests in her chapter on Bosnia and Herzegovina even ‘calls into question the possibility of unifying Bosnian cinema under the umbrella of singular national cinema’ (p. ). Meanwhile , several of the countries included do not officially recognize another country included, Kosovo, as an independent state. is is reflected in the limited scale of Kosovo’s intra-regional transnational co-productions (co-productions are highlighted by the editors as one of the major positives in recent developments in the region’s film industries: p. ). Nonetheless, the volume does offer neutral and purposefully equalized ground to explore the various industries in the light of their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as revealing the mostly rich landscape of transnational partnerships in the region. It brings together an array of established specialists to explore the film industries covered in each chapter, some of whose scholarship is not usually available in English. Many of the chapters focus on detailing the funding, structure, and output of their national film industries, as well as describing national film festivals and awards. e chapters on Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Montenegro represent particular milestones in view of the lack of scholarship on these industries in English ; and I would add to this list the chapter on Albania, which offers a fascinating overview of the long and bumpy history of national film production. e volume further contains an appendix with tables providing overviews of national film production, feature film releases, and box office data, and a list of key institutions and major festivals for each country. Anyone who has spent any time trying to MLR, .,   establish such data from incomplete records will appreciate the service this does for film scholarship on the region. Contemporary Balkan Cinema is not all facts, however. For those seeking overviews of filmic themes and their influences in the various nations under discussion, all the chapters cover these topics in varying levels of detail and examine the historical context shaping film production. More importantly, several chapters, particularly those on Croatia and North Macedonia, offer crucial insight into the ways in which political parties influence, or try to influence, film production. While political, economic, and social difficulties are undeniably still a pervasive presence in film from the region, this volume proves that film can also be a conduit for success and growth in these nations. U  N L T ...

Transnational co-production, multiplatform television andMy Brilliant Friend

Rai/HBO co-production L’Amica Geniale/ My Brilliant Friend (2018–) provides an illuminating example of changing strategies for transnational drama co-production in television’s burgeoning ‘multiplatform’ era. Foregrounding institutional over textual analysis, the article places My Brilliant Friend ( MBF) within the industrial, creative and cultural contexts that have facilitated it. Important to these contexts is that transnational co-productions between non-US broadcasters and US-based premium networks are not only increasing but also exhibiting a new degree of cultural diversity. The article examines MBF’s origination as a literary adaptation, its genesis as a ‘cross-platform’ co-production, and its exemplification of changing drama commissioning strategies for Rai and HBO.

Transnational Television Distribution and Co-Production Challenges

This article explores the production and distribution process for television co-productions and explains the potential benefits and risks compared to other media joint ventures, like television formatting. Using a detailed case study of one television series within a larger co-production agreement between a German rights trader and a Hollywood studio, the author analyzes production and distribution challenges and complex contractual arrangements within the context of global media trade. Co-productions are situated in between, and as a transition from, acquiring rights to canned television programs, and acquiring rights to television formats. The author contends that a range of difficulties in co-productions has contributed to a turn to television formatting, where the production process is more easily controlled and customized by the partner acquiring the property, leading to more predictable and successful distribution outcomes.

The Last Serb on a Parade: co-producing the political satire in post-Yugoslav sphere

The 66th Pula Film Festival in Croatia opened with the war-time biopic The General (General, 2019), which chronicles the life of Croatian general Ante Gotovina and his involvement in the Yugoslav Wars during the 1990s. In the following days of the festivals, the audience saw two films that countered the narratives of self-adulation; co-produced with Serbia, both What a Country! (Koja je ovo Država, 2018) and The Last Serb in Croatia (Posljednji Srbin u Hrvatskoj, 2019) utilised the modes of irony and absurd to expose ideological discourses of nationalism and intolerance. Framing the most recent results of transnational co-productions within the Main national programme of the Pula Film Festival, this paper will further examine the interrelation between the co-productions and the genre of political satire in post-Yugoslav cinema, with a focus on the most recent films: Parade (Parada, 2009), and National Hero Lily Vidic (Narodni heroj Ljiljan Vidić, 2015). The intersection of film genres, nation states/cultures and transnational modes of production in the post-Yugoslav sphere will enable us to understand the shaping of the critical constituent of the film process, the post-Yugoslav spectator.

Co-opting the nation brand: The politics of cross-cultural co-production

This paper analyzes the political implications of aesthetic mimicry in the popular mobile game, Onmyoji. Created by the Chinese company, NetEase, Onmyoji takes advantage of the expansive network of signifiers revolving around the historical Japanese figure, Abe-no-Seimei, and co-opts this network to display a recognizable Japanese popular aesthetic. By remixing elements of Japanese culture, Onmyoji presents a commodifiable and mediated image of Japanese cultural authenticity that is recognizable globally. Mimicry and the co-opting of another nation’s cultural signifiers initiates a negotiated process of ambivalent national self-empowerment that has since resulted in shifting labor flows within the digital entertainment industries in East Asia. The malleability of cultural signifiers allows for the purposeful framing of global media texts. Such multivalent encodings of recognizable symbols emerge from the provocative slippages between media boundaries. This, in turn, engages with the dialectical processes of nation branding within the framework of transnational co-production models.

The way of the dog: Truman through the cosmopolitan lens

This article examines Truman (Gay, 2015) as an example of a transnational co-production between Argentina and Spain within the wider context of contemporary co-productions in Latin American cinema. The article uses cultural-industrial analysis and cosmopolitan theory – in particular, the notion of cosmopolitan performance and cosmopolitan spaces – as a framework for the exploration of the symbolic-ideological space that the film creates out of the real places in which the action is set and out of the various journeys inscribed in the cinematic identities of its main authorial voices. The Madrid neighbourhood in which most of the narrative develops, Las Salesas, is transformed in the movie through the presence in its midst of transnational star Ricardo Darín and the urban sensibility contributed by Barcelona-based director Cesc Gay. As a consequence, Truman’s construction of space becomes part of a Hispanic American imaginary which, originating in industrial practices, financial motivations and a vaguely defined common cultural space, attempts to supersede colonial history within the logics of globalization, transnationalism and cosmopolitan sensibilities.

"My Camera Is Not a Weapon": Indigenous Erasure in Lucía Puenzo's Wakolda

This article analyzes director Lucía Puenzo's film Wakolda (2013) in juxtaposition to the eponymous 2011 novella upon which the film was based. By examining Wakolda through the lens of Argentine cinematic history, this study highlights the ways in which transnational co-production trends and Puenzo's screen adaptions of nuanced literary texts impact the representation of Indigenous subjects in twenty-first-century Latin American film and further contribute to the erasure of historically marginalized groups that has occurred in national discourse throughout Argentine history.

Imag(in)ing the post-national television fan: Counter-flows and hybrid ambivalence in Dramaworld

In 2016, Viki.com and Netflix added the web drama Dramaworld to their libraries. The move represents a digital and transnational shift in programming and production. Co-produced by China's Jetavana Entertainment, South Korea's EnterMedia, and the US's Third Culture Content, Dramaworld signals the escalation of post-national television production. The show emerges where the splash of the ‘Korean Wave’ has flowed apart from and against flows of US-mediated domination, creating new possibilities for hybrid media. It simultaneously challenges cultural imperialism with the force of Korean soft power while also constructing the White female fan as the desired audience. This example of transnational co-production uses the global fan to mediate and reconfigure the shifting power relations between the US and Korea, thus providing a window into the ideological work performed by global media.

Suburra. La serie as "Patrimonio internazionale / International Patrimony"

This essay investigates fascinations surrounding glamorized criminals by looking at how recent Italian history and queer bodies are represented, negotiated, and received in Italy’s first made-for-Netflix series Suburra. La serie (2017 - ). In many ways, the series is a distinctly Italian production, especially in terms of the popular mafia-corruption plot that is based upon real life events. However, Suburra. La serie is a transnational production that engages viewers outside of Italy. This essay pays attention to the series’ interesting marketing strategy that flagrantly draws attention to fictional/historical consistencies, before addressing the physical allure and charisma of criminal antiheroes who appear trapped in a perpetual adolescence. Most importantly, I address how Suburra. La serie’s singularity as a transnational co-production allows for a unique representation of gender and sexuality on Italian small screens, as it marks an opening up of a mainstream space on the small screen to tell stories from the perspective of a non-normative sexual orientation. Suburra. La serie engages in a representation of queer masculinity that is distinctive in relation to Italian serial drama as a whole and especially in relation to serial dramas that depend upon sympathetic perpetrators to create relationships with viewers. As I argue, Suburra. La serie is a queer text with an address to viewers spanning continents, cultures, and languages.