Description
This collection of essays foregrounds the work of filmmakers in theorizing and comparing postcolonial conditions, recasting debates in both cinema and postcolonial studies. Postcolonial cinema is presented, not as a rigid category, but as an optic through which to address questions of postcolonial historiography, geography, subjectivity, and epistemology.
Current circumstances of migration and immigration, militarization, economic exploitation, racial and religious conflict, enactments of citizenship, and cultural self-representation have deep roots in colonial/postcolonial/neocolonial histories. Contributors deeply engage the tense asymmetries bequeathed to the contemporary world by the multiple,diverse, and overlapping histories of European, Soviet, U.S., and multi-national imperial ventures. With interdisciplinary expertise, they discover and explore the conceptual temporalities and spatialities of postcoloniality, with an emphasis on the politics of form, the ‘postcolonial aesthetics’ through which filmmakers challenge themselves and their viewers to move beyond national and imperial imaginaries.
Contributors include: Jude G. Akudinobi, Kanika Batra, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Shohini Chaudhuri, Julie F. Codell, Sabine Doran, Hamish Ford, Claudia Hoffmann, Anikó Imre, Priya Jaikumar, Mariam B. Lam, Paulo de Medeiros, Sandra Ponzanesi, Richard Rice, Mireille Rosello and Marguerite Waller.
Table of Contents
Introduction, Sandra Ponzanesi and Marguerite Waller Part I Cinemas of Empire Introduction to Part I, Sandra Ponzanesi and Marguerite Waller 1. Italian Fascism’s Empire Cinema: Kif Tebbi, the Conquest of Libya, and the Assault on the Nomadic, Ruth Ben-Ghiat 2. Blackface, Faciality, and Colony Nostalgia in 1930s Empire Films, Julie Codell 3. The Socialist Historical Film, Anikó Imre Part II Postcolonial Cinemas: Unframing Histories Introduction to Part II, Sandra Ponzanesi and Marguerite Waller 4. From ‘Over There’ to Inside: Camp de Thiaroye, The Battle of Algiers and Hidden, Hamish Ford 5. Fraught Frames: Fatima, l’algérienne de Dakar and Postcolonial Quandaries, Jude Akudinobi 6. Postcolonial Relationalities: Toulon, Oran, Mecca, and Palestine: Philippe Faucon's Dans la vie, Mireille Rosello 7. The Postcolonial Condition of "Indochinese" Cinema from Việt Nam, Cambodia and Laos, Mariam B. Lam Part III Postcolonial Cinemas: Aesthetics Introduction to Part III, Sandra Ponzanesi and Marguerite Waller 8. Spectral Postcoloniality: Lusophone Postcolonial Film and the Imaginary of the Nation, Paulo de Medeiros 9. The Aesthetics of Postcolonial Cinema in Raul Ruiz’s Three Crowns of the Sailor, Sabine Doran 10. The Postcolonial Circus: Maurizio Nichetti’s Luna e l’altra, Marguerite Waller 11. Postcolonial Adaptations: Gained and Lost in Translation, Sandra Ponzanesi Part IV Postcolonial Cinemas and Globalization Introduction to Part IV, Sandra Ponzanesi and Marguerite Waller 12. Unpeople: Postcolonial Reflections on Terror, Torture and Detention in Children of Men, Shohini Chaudhuri 13. Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding and the Transcoded Audiologic of Postcolonial Convergence, Kanika Batra and Richard Rice 14. Nollywood Films in Transit: The Globalization of Postcolonial African Cultural Productions, Claudia Hoffmann Postface: On Teaching Postcolonialism and Cinema, Interview with Priya Jaikumar conducted by Marguerite Waller
