Cinematic Narratives: Transatlantic Perspectives, edited by Morris Beja, Ellen Carol Jones, Cecilia Beecher Martins, José Duarte, and Suzana Ramos (original) (raw)

Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media

Though cinema is often defined by national and culture-specific influences, in a highly interconnected global world it is near to impossible for a film to be fully bound to one place. Indeed, cinema almost always exists in relation to a wide array of international forebearers as well as contemporaries dialoguing with and building upon one another. The idea of a purely national cinema is further complicated when taking into consideration that a large percentage of movies are indeed distributed, produced and screened all over the world, in the process not only being made accessible but also, to different extents, made comprehensible to a variety of cultural differences. Cinematic Narratives: Transatlantic Perspectives takes on an intricate journey to question the dynamic, and oftentimes blurred, relation between national and more globalised cinematic identities, conventions, as well as the lasting effects these can have on audiences. As stated in the introduction of the volume, these dynamics are of utmost interest as they not only reveal "how the local is both dominated by and yet effectively resists the global", but also because the transatlantic dimension of cinema ultimately can have more profound consequences by creating "spaces of alternative imagining, spaces of interrogation and intervention [that] can effect a hybrid moment of political change: the re-articulation, translation, transformation of authority" (11). Front and centre to this discussion stands the issue of diverse ways of border crossing, both in form of physical practices-as seen for instance in the endless journeys of migration that cross the Atlantic-and more intangible variations, which, amongst many others, include the transgression of traditional definitions of gender, nationality, race, and identity. Seeing that the matter at hand comprises a rather wideranging field of discussion, this anthology is divided into four sections, each featuring a selection of essays that focus on distinctive ways in which traditional boundaries can be subverted, in turn written by authors residing in countries from both sides of the Atlantic.