Film Studies 1022 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Kanesatake, Quebec, Cinema Of India, Alanis Obomsawin
6 Jun 2018
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National Cinema
• The nation is not an organic, homogeneous, unitary entity
- Through political struggle, the unitary notion of nation is produced culturally,
selected into existence from such heterogeneous and conflicting materials as
language, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, gender and sexuality to masquerade
as the oneness that is the mythical terrain of the national
• Social formations reproduce themselves as atios i part fariatig a fitie
ethiit that stads i for the atioal ethi opositio
• The atio is a ipossile uit
• Natios are iagied ouities → the adet of prit-languages laid the bases
for national consciousness by making possible a symbolic gathering of the nation
- The oie audiee is a proisioal atio forged spetatorship
o Cinema could play a more assertive role in fostering group identities →
unlike the novel, it is not dependent on literacy, but is consumed in a public
space by a community of spectators
• Ideology performs through cultural forms in hailing or recruiting subjects to recognize
themselves as members of the national community, as national subjects
• Ciea is the etork of apparatuses ad dail praties
- Implicit in every national cinema is its antination
- Part of ieas atio-uildig role has ee to douet that atios others as
those held at the limit of national belonging
o African Americans, Native Americans, etc.
National Cinema, Political Economy and Ideology
• National cinema frequently takes on the responsibility of representing the nation to its
citizens for the purpose of communicating what constitutes national identity in the
context of an overwhelming flow of cinematic images from a globally aggressive
Hollywood industry
• In the interest of nation building and maintain national cultures, countries such as,
Canada, Australia, Britain, France and Italy have created various state institutions to
fund and produce national cinemas
- These states see beyond its commodity value → it is an ideological act with the
futio of ietig iagiar or foral solutios to uresolale soial
contradictions
• Hollywood is a major component of most national film cultures where audience
expectations shaped largely by Hollywood are exploited by domestic producers
- Many national cinemas translate Hollywood genres into their own national contexts
o Idigeizes the → for example, the Mad Max series
o More critically and commercially successful practitioners of genre
idigeizatio is Fraes Lu Besso, Nikita
find more resources at oneclass.com
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Document Summary
The nation is not an organic, homogeneous, unitary entity. Ideology performs through cultural forms in hailing or recruiting subjects to recognize themselves as members of the national community, as national subjects: ci(cid:374)e(cid:373)a is (cid:862)the (cid:374)et(cid:449)ork of apparatuses a(cid:374)d dail(cid:455) pra(cid:272)ti(cid:272)es(cid:863) Implicit in every national cinema is its antination. Part of (cid:272)i(cid:374)e(cid:373)a(cid:859)s (cid:374)atio(cid:374)-(cid:271)uildi(cid:374)g role has (cid:271)ee(cid:374) to do(cid:272)u(cid:373)e(cid:374)t that (cid:374)atio(cid:374)(cid:859)s others as those held at the limit of national belonging: african americans, native americans, etc. In the interest of nation building and maintain national cultures, countries such as, Canada, australia, britain, france and italy have created various state institutions to fund and produce national cinemas. Differences in cultural context exists not only outside of nations, but also within them. Colonial/postcolonial cinemas: cinema was exploited by imperialist nations, postcolonial cinema attempts to disrupt such national cinemas and de-neutralize them as colonizing entities. Articulating the discourse of contested indigenous nations: kanehsatake: 270 years of resistance abenaki filmmaker alanis.
