World Cinema, Dudley Andrew

Parallel 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 Tweedies 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 Andr 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 Bazins writings on the New Media of the 1950s will appear.
Andrews 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 Japans 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 20 th 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