Moving pictures, migrating identities / Eva Rueschmann.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rueschmann, Eva, 1962-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Emigration and immigration in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

xxx, 265 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2003]

Summary:

In recent decades the experiences and political struggles of immigrants, exiles, and sojourners have inspired some of the most provocative feature films and documentaries in world cinema. These have sparked theoretical debates about cultural identity, place, and representation in the media. The thirteen essays in this anthology contribute to a growing interest in the emerging international genre of exile and diaspora films, treating a variety of motion pictures from Europe and the United States in their national and transnational contexts. These essays examine how contemporary cinema -- both fiction feature film and documentary -- has imagined the experience of migration and displacement, the struggle for citizenship and cultural belonging, and the encounter and negotiation of different cultures and identities. The authors discuss the ways cinema explores the many contradictions of exile and diaspora -- the complicated meanings of home, the exile's nostalgia for origins, the hopes and tragedies of border crossings, the difficulties of belonging to a strange society and being a stranger, and the conundrums of gender for the migrant, especially women's conciliation of different social roles and cultural expectations.

Included are discussions of such well known films as The Crying Game, Lamerica, Journey of Hope, Exotica, Chocolat, Lone Star, and Flying Down to Rio, as well as smaller productions by diasporic or immigrant filmmakers who deserve critical attention, including Seyhan Derin's I'm My Mother's Daughter, Mina Shum's Double Happiness, and Yanina Benguigui's Immigrant Memories: Maghrebi Heritage. Encompassing different models of intercultural theory, this collection draws on the fields of anthropology, political economy, production and reception studies, feminism, travel writing, and postcolonial criticism and captures the complex, diverse, and continually changing body of diaspora film and its intertextual connections.

Contents:

1. A Century of Exiles: National Cinemas and Transnational Mediascapes / Allen Meek 3

2. Traversing the Screen Politics of Migration: Xavier Koller's Journey of Hope / Angelica Fenner 18

3. Traveling Pictures from a Turkish Daughter: Seyhan Derin's Ben annemin kiziyim

I'm My Mother's Daughter / Mine Eren 39

4. Solidarity and Exile: Blonder Tango and the East German Fantasy of the Third World / Barton Byg 55

5. Servus Deutschland: Nostalgia for Heimat in Contemporary West German Cinema / David N. Coury 72

6. The Desire of the Other: Balkan Dystopia in Western European Cinema / Rodica Diaconescu-Blumenfeld 90

7. Voices Unveiled: Memoires d'immigres. L'heritage maghrebin / Mark Ingram, Florence Martin 105

8. More Than Meets the Eye: Meandering Metaphor in Claire Denis's Chocolat / Carolyn Durham 121

9. Crossing the Border: The Post-Colonial Carnival in Neil Jordan's The Crying Game / Catherine Wynne 137

10. Egoyan's Exotica: The Uneasy Borders of Desire / Adam Knee 159

11. Mediating Worlds/Migrating Identities: Representing Home, Diaspora and Identity in Recent Asian American and Asian Canadian Women's Films / Eva Rueschmann 180

12. Feigning Marriage/Befriending Nations: The Case of Flying Down to Rio / Norman S. Holland 195

13. Forget the Alamo: Reading the Ethics of Style in John Sayles's Lone Star / Todd F. Davis, Kenneth Womack 211.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-252) and index.

ISBN:

1578065429

OCLC:

50294981