QUESTION 1)
Define and illustrate the concept of World Cinema with reference to Raise the Red
Lantern
Materials
World Cinema since the 1990s
Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou, 1991)
Film Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMwHE8Po-oc&t=239s
Questions to keep into consideration
What problems exist with regard to defining World Cinema?
How is it distinct from Third Cinema?
What are First and Second World Cinema?
Screening Questions:
How is Raise the Red Lantern an example of cinema ‘that “others” the other’ (Elsaesser 2005: 509); in what ways could it be seen as playing to a transnational, western audience?
Why do you think it was more acclaimed and successful in Europe and the West than at home in China?
The film was released just two years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, and some critics have seen it as a criticism of the government – though director Zhang Yimou denies this. Do you see any evidence to support or disprove this reading?
What is the significance, if any, of the representation of differences in class and status in the film?
Zhang Yimou’s use of colour was much praised upon the film’s release; why do you think this is?
Assigned reading:
Thompson and Bordwell, 4th Edition pp. 620-651; 2nd Edition, pp. 633-676
Further reading:
Linda Badley and Barton Palmer (eds.), Traditions in World Cinema (Edinburgh UP, 2005), esp. Chapters 13 and 14.
Chris Berry, China on Screen (Columbia UP, 2006)
Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim (eds.) Remapping World Cinema, Columbia UP 2006 (esp. the Introduction)
Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu (ed.), Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender, University of Hawaii Press, 1997, esp,.
Sheldon Lu’s chapter on The Films of Zhang Yimou
Thomas Elsaesser, ‘European Cinema as World Cinema’, in: European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood, Amsterdam UP 2005
Lucia Nagib, Chris Perriam and Rajinder Dudrah (eds.), Theorising World Cinema, I.B. Tauris 2012
QUESTION 2)
In diasporic European cinema, generational conflict in the family is always underpinned by the clash between two cultures. Discuss with reference to Head-On
Materials
Global Film
Head-On (Fatih Akin, Germany 2004)
Film Link: https://primewire.es/movie/head-on-0l79/1-full
Assigned reading:
Thompson and Bordwell, Chapter 29, pp. 686-702
Further reading:
Daniela Berghahn, ‘No Place Like Home? Or Impossible Homecomings in the Films of Fatih Akin’, New Cinemas, Vol. 4 no. 3, 2006, pp. 141-157
Daniela Berghahn & Claudia Sternberg (eds), European Cinema in Motion: Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe (Palgrave, 2010)
Daniela Berghahn, Head-On / Gegen die Wand (BFI Film Classics, 2015)
Jigna Desai, Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film (London, Routledge, 2004)
Nataa Durovicova & Katherine E. Newman (eds), World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives (Routledge/AFI Film Readers, 2009)
Sabine Hake and Barbara Mennel (eds.) Turkish German Cinema in the New Millennium, Berghahn Books, 2012(various chapters on Fatih Akin)
Barbara Korte & Claudia Sternberg, Bidding for the Mainstream: Black and Asian British Film Since the 1990s (Editions Rodopi, 2004)
Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema (Princeton University Press, 2001)
