World Cinema, Dudley AndrewParallel with the growth of World Literature studies the past three decades

has been the growth of an academic industry of world cinema studies. “World

Cinema” crops up in the titles of dozens of books and countless articles. In

our two weeks together our aim will be to get a grip on the “dimensions” of this

area, first by interrogating the spatial terms it has encouraged: i.e. films and

movements are labeled national, international, transnational, regional, world,

global. And they are studied through methods that refer to maps, atlases,

zones, and networks. These terms readily yield to more historical approaches

that want to account for at local movements, transnational influences, general

flows and specific restraints. But what should really count pedagogically is to

assist powerful and productive “encounters” with films from anywhere. And so

our discussions will be fueled by films that exemplify or befuddle the terms

used to “place” them. We will focus on ‘New Waves’ as movements that

spread differently in the 60s, the 80s and 90s, and in the new century if they

still spread at all. Asian cinemas will be our focus   You will be asked to watch

a feature film in the evening before each session, or to have seen these films

quite recently. Secondary readings will include a few that let us consider the

extent to which issues in World Cinema are similar to or distinct from those in

World Literature. Among these are questions of the canon, of translation

(subtitles), and of institutions such as prizes, festivals, agents, and criticism.

James Tweedie’s new book, The Age of New Waves Art cinema and the

staging of Globalization  provides continuity for us, and it is well worth

purchasing, though the key selections from the book will also be available in

pdf. .You can watch the films listed on the syllabus before July 7 on your own

or see them as a group in the evening prior to our discussion. The City

University local organizers have arranged for a mini-theatre (limited capacity:

15) where the screenings will take place in the evenings at 7.30pm, once the

IWL events for that day have ended.

Dudley Andrew is the R. Selden

Rose Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at Yale. Before moving to

Yale in 2000, he taug h t f or thirty years at the Univ. of Iowa directing the

dissertations of many illustrious film scholars. He began his career with three

book s commenting on film theory, including the biography of André Bazin,

whose thought he continues to explore in the recent What Cinema Is!, and the

edited volumes Opening Bazin, and A Companion to Francois Truffaut. Soon

his translation of Bazin’s writings on the New Media of the 1950s will appear.  

Andrew’s interest in aesthetics and hermeneutics led to Film in the Aura of

Art, 1984, and his fascination with French film and culture resulted in Mists of

Regret (1995) andPopular Front Paris (2005), co-authored with Steven Ungar.

Currently completing Encountering World Cinema, his teaching and research

take up 1) questions of World Cinema/literature, such as translation and

adaptation, 2) issues in 20th century French intellectual life, especially theories

of the image, and 3) French cinema and its literary and philosophical

relations.

 Session 1:  Where are we in the Discipline? D.Andrew, “Atlas of World Cinema” in Denison, Remapping World

Cinema (Wallflower, 2006)

N. Durovicova, Vector, Flow, Zone: Towards a History of

Cinematic Translatio” in Durovicova, World Cinema, Transnational

Perspectives (Routledge 2011)

M. Hansen “Vernacular Modernism,” in Durovicova, World Cinema,

Transnational Perspectives

Films: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 

Session 2:  Encountering Cinema; encountering Hong Kong

David Bordwell, “Made in Hong Kong” from Planet Hong Kong (Harvard U

Press, 2000)

David Desser, “Hong Kong Film and the New Cinephilia” in Hong Kong

Connections: Transnational Imagination in Action Cinema (Duke: 2006)

Adrian Martin, “An Encounter with Hong Kong Style in Contemporary Action

Cinema” InHong Kong Connections

Films: Chungking Express; Peking Opera Blues 

Session 3: What Time is it There? Tanizaki, Junichiro, “The Tumor with a Human Face” in Lamarre

(ed.) Shadows on the Screen(Univ. of Michigan Press, 2005)

D. Andrew, “Time Zones and Jetlag” in Durovicova, World Cinema

Transnational Perspecitves

Asada, Akira, “Infantile Capitalism and Japan’s Postmodernism,” South

Atlantic Quarterly 87 (3).

Films : Ugetsu, Ringu 

Session 4: Islands in a Sea of cinema (Taiwan, Quebec, Ireland)

 From James Tweedie, The Age of New Waves (Oxford Univ. Press, 2013).

Films: Dust in the Wind; The Crying Game [or City of Sadness] 

Session 5: Transnational Contagion D. Andrew, “Is Cinema Contagious? Transnationalism and Korea” Cinema

& Cie 20 (‘Winter 2014)

JungBong Choi, “Of Transnational-Korean Cinematrix,” Transnational

Cinemas vol 3, no. 1 (2012), 3-4.

Films: The Host; Three-Iron 

Session 6: An International Language? Amresh Sinha, “The Use and Abuse of Subtitles” from Ballfour, Subtitles:

on the Foreignness of Film (MIT, 2004).

Michael Raine, “From Hybridity to Dispersion: film subtitling as an adaptive

practice.”

Sheldon Lu, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Bouncing Angels:

Hollywood, Taiwan, Hong Kong” in S.Lu Chinese-Language Film (U of

Hawaii Press, 2005).

C. Klein, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: a Diasporic Reading,” Cinema

Journal (Summer 2004).

Film: YiYi 

Session 7: China: core and periphery From James Tweedie, The Age of New Waves.

Rey Chow, “Not One Less, Fable of Migration” in Chris Berry Chinese Films

in Focus (British Film Institute, 2003).

Sheldon Lu, “Chinese Film Culture at the End of the 20th c. Not One Less” in

S. Lu Chinese-Language Film.

Films: Old Well; Not One Less 

Session 8: Ubiquity and Insignificance: 21st c. media formations

From James Tweedie, The Age of New Waves. 

D. Andrew: “Beyond and Beneath the Map of World Cinema” in S.

Dennison (ed) World Cinema at SOCINE (Sao Paulo: Papirus, 2013).

Films: The World; This is Not a Film