rLrvr ntJ|[-/Elr]

as if it might acquire, a state of its own, with the sul:scrlucnt prornisc of full cultural citi-zenship, access to p.rimary school, emproymentand all. 0fteri, ,l"r"r" uri"nuted, upr.ooted,wandering populations may vacillate i"t*".., diverse "p,i".r,-"r-rir"y -uy oftu., .orr.to a provisional rest at-one or another temporary and transitional cultural resting place.,,Gellner, Nations and Nat ionalism, 46.

32. I thank Gina Marchetti for this succinct formulation.33' Back in 1992 in an_interview with yash chopra, a leading Bombay industry flrmmaker,I asked whv Hindi films, otherwise prerr-"a to rrurru; #;;oi,u, nuo never rep_resented Hindu-Musrim romance siories. srightly ararm;;;,il;tion, chopra spec_ulated such a repre_s_entation wourd p.rotu riots. Ironical ly, Bombay, the first firm totrnsgress the rigid Hindu-Muslim divide, was made on the heels of the worst riots since

ifJXHl'^;l iltill":r the desecrmion or the nrt";;;i,";;"r*y Musrim *o.q,.,

34' The farmers' movement gathered momentum in several states beginning in the lateI970s (despile differencei among them). Maharashtra,s Sharad Ioshi arriculares itsviews most clearly: the acutely ri"r".r Jevelopment of ,.b;;;;;;ural areas is builtinto nationar plans, siphoning off .".or..", from the countryside, concentratingwearrh in urban centrs, and iilpoveri.hi;;th";;;.r"ir'iJit.yria". This sen-

Iirii::H;l.or,n" anti_Nar'mada au,,,tou"_"nt thar gained international atren_35' sumita chakravarty, Nationar Identity in Indian popurar cinema, rg4z_BuAustin: un!versity ofTexas press, fg93), l4l.36' Colonial history began to be used as the central narrative only in the l9g0s. 1g42 A LoueSrory (Vinod Vidhu Chopra, 1994) is , ,igrrin;u.rt

"ruTplg: Covertly, of .or..., anythingwestern, perhaps due to the coroniar puJ, i. constantly vilifled through portrayars ofhe_$:nirlljadence'

rhis is consist".,i*irt, Hirai .i,r"*ul-"-u-iiliul."r".".,."s ro rhe37' Akbar s' Ahmed noin11

911t that-Nadira's performance in Aan isfashioned after MarleneDietrich's in Kismet (r944J. see rris "no*af rilms: The cirr"-u u.-u"iaphor for IndianSociery and politics," Modern asian Sruiiesia,, GsSz), zst.

" fl?l?Jt ilffif.::::""d bv sanssters from their consriruency marking their territory and

39' Rameshwari and Angela Koreth, "The Mother Image and the National Ethos in Four Re_cent Mainstream Hindi Fitms: pratighaar (netribrion, r9sil, "-ij*n,.,

t990), Amba(1990) and prahaar (Attack, l99l).,, lp", pr".".rted at the fvrirarrJ uoise coltege semi_nar, Universityof Delhi, April 1992.40' In the short story "Toba Tek singh," set in the.days leading to the partition, the epony_mous protagonisr is localed in a pakistani asyru, *r,i.r,l?""i."il;;;p"rr. saner lhanlhe rest of (he subcontinent. The ,*o.,urll'o".ide ro transfer asyrum inmates to thecountry of their relatives' choosing. Toba Tek singh resists ,rru ,rurr.r". ,o an asylum in

i:i,,:,::l dies in a no_man,s_ta.,db"t*u", the two uoraur" ti,uil,

"rli,rr", rndia nor

4l' womenwhoaresexuallyharassedbymenonthestreetsoftensucceedinchastisingthemby invoking men's rerationshrps *rtn trrei, oirrers and sisters.

42' As Rameshwari andAngelaKoreth argue, ,,what seems enabring in pratighaatcould alsobe disturbing. . . the overvaruation wiich aris from deiflcation . . . the mythic substruc_ture which ensures the success and gloriflcation of an action or individual, also sets itapart as ' . . special, as something that only the unique individual -"rt"a by divinity iscapable of' It could sig-nal passivily ana -"t .o-priance for the rest who are not marked:#Ji1"^'*iii'rT;

"'"o.; o'.,",,t"d "rir."-rrai.""aa House cir"gili"ar, university

43.

N^r,tcY ]

It is perhaps this urban middle-class bias in the women's movement thil t llftltltlll wil|llFt rpolitically active in rural areas to begrudge the disproportionate attentioit lrn1l l1 r111r,ctic violence-dowry and dowry deaths, rather than land and proper.ty righin,

HAM I D NAFICY

Situating Accented CinemaFRoM An Accented Cinema

Born in Iran, Hamid Naficy (b. 't944) emigrated to the United states in r964 and ls currently John Evans Professor of Communication at Northwestern University School ofCommunicatlon, where he holds a joint appointment in the Department of Art History.A leading authority on Middle Eastern cinema and television, he has been awarded fel-lowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment forHumanities, and the Social Science Research Council. He edited the critically acclaimedvolume Home, Exile, Homeland: Fitm, Media, and the politics of ptace (r99g) and is the au-thor of The Making of Exile Cultures: lranian Television in Los Angeles(r993) and An AccentedCinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (zoor).

Naficy's work reflects the growing importance of global-or more exactly, transnational-cinema today. While Hollywood films continue to dominate cinema in most of the world,the increasing number of world film festivals and the wide availability of films throughDVD distribution and other technologies have added exponentially to the circulation offilms from a considerable variety of cultures. This new visibility and popularity includesemerging, and previously marginalized, cinemas, such as those from senegal, lran, southKorea, and Latin American nations, bringing into view the films of ousmane sembne,Abbas Kiarostami, Lucrecia Martel, and many others. ln addition, transnational films bydirectors working outside their country of origin like the work of Armenian CanadianAtom Egoyan, New Zealand's Jane Campion, Taiwanese American director Ang Lee, andDanish filmmaker Lars von Trier have entered the mainstream. ln very different ways,international co-productions travel the globe for locations, themes, and distinctive stylLs,creating perspectives that cross borders in many different ways.

ln the introduction to An Accented Cinema, "situating Accented Cinema,', Naficy con-siders filmmakers from emerging or postcolonial countries that have moved to ,,northerncosmopolitan centers" since the r96os and established innovative, often critical, per-spectives on their new cultures. For Naficy, "accented cinema" is a distinctive branchof postmodern film, one that typically enacts what he calls the ,,politics of the hyphen,"that is, a doubly defined identity and perspective. Still, while some versions of postmocl"ernism describe a fully destabilized world without origins or certainties, accented filmsoften retain and rely on a sense of a past homeland that anchors their visions. Historie ally,Naficy distinguishes two periods of accented filmmaking: the r95os to the r97os, whendecolonization around the world transformed many nations and cultures; and the tggos

through the r99os, when postindustrial economies arounrl tirc world reconfigured globalpopulations. Naficy then suggests that there are three types ol'accented cinema and film-makers, particularly evident in the latter phase: exilic filmmakers who were forced to leavetheir native country; diasporic filmmakers who retain a sense of loss or nostalgia for theirhomeland; and postcolonial ethnic filmmakers who see themselves as both displaced andplaced within a new homeland.

lf Fernando solanas and octavio Getino's "Towards a Third Cinema" (p.gz+) inaugu-rated postcolonial cinema studies, Naficy's work attends to the complex cultural formsthat have arisen in the wake of neocolonialism, globalization, migration, and technologi-cal change. Trinh T. Minh-ha (p.6sr) is an example of the filmmakers whose work Naficyilluminates.

READING CUES & KEY CONCEPTSl!* What does Naficy mean by his suggestion that mainstream Hollywood films are,,accent

free"?

&i While we all recognize accented speech, consider carefully and describe concretelywhat it means to describe a narrative or visual style as r...rt"d.

r* Consider Naficy's claim that "exilic and diasporic accent permeates the film,s deepstructure: its narrative, visual style, characters, subject matter, theme, and plot.,'whatdoes he mean by this statement?

{,F Key concepts: subaltern; rnternal Exile; External Exile; chronotope; Diaspora;Politics of the Hyphen; Hybridity; Accented Style; Group Style

Situating Accented Cinema

Accented FilmmakersThe exilic and diasporic filmmakers discussed here are "situated but universal,,figures who work in the interstices of social formations and cinematic practices.A majority are from Third world and postcolonial countries (or from the globalSouth) who since the 1960s have relocated to northern cosmopolitan centerswhere they exist in a state of tension and dissension with both thir original andtheir current homes. By and large, they operate independently, outside the studiosystem or the mainstream film industries, using interstitial and collective modesof production that critique those entities. As a result, they are presumed to bemore prone to the tensions of marginality and difference. while they share thesecharacteristics, the very existence of the tensions and differences helps preventaccented filmmakers from becoming a homogeneous group or a film movement.And while their films encode these tensions and diffeiencs, they are not neatlyresolved by familiar narrative and generic schemas-hence, their grouping undeiaccented style. The variations among the films are driven by many factors, whiletheir similarities stem principally from what the filmmakers have in common:Iiminal subjectivity and interstitial location in society and the fllm industry. what

',.;lilrrlps tlrl trt:r:r:trtgrl style is llrc r:orrrlritrittitltr atttl itttcrsct:tirltt ol lltr",r'r',rt t,t

I ronri ir rttl sirtt ilarities.t.t:r:rrtccl [ilrnmakers came to live and make fllms in the Wcst itt lwrr 1|'tt''r,rl

1ir,rr,irrgs.'l'hefirstgroupwasdisplacedorluredtotheWestfromtlttr lrtlt'l'l'rll'rllrlrr.riritl-1970sbyThirdWorlddecolonization,warsofnationalliberatiott, Iltllirrvlr'luri.rr's invasions of Poland and Czechoslovakia, Westernization, alttl it hlttrl rrl',rrrtr.rrr1l decolonization" in the West itself, involving various civil rigltts, ( olrlrlr'l

r rrltrl'1, and antiwar movements. Indeed, as Fredric Jameson notes, tho hrrgirrrrlrr;i

ol rlrt:lteriodcalled"thesixties"mustbelocatedintheThirdWorlddecoltlttiz'itliorrtlrrl s6 pr.ofoundly influenced the FirstWorld sociopolitical movements (19tt4' lll(l)I'lrc sr:cond group emerged in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of the failurc ol rr;r

llrrurlism, socialism, and communism; the ruptures caused by the emergertt:l ol

lxrstindustrial global economies, the rise of militant forms of Islam, the returtt ol

r,'ligious and ethnic wars, and the fragmentation of nation-states; the changes in t lrtr

tirrropean, Australian, andAmerican immigration policies encouraging non-Westertt

irrrrrrigration; and the unprecedented technological developments and consolida-

tion in computers and media. Accented filmmakers are the products of this dualpostcoloniai displacement and postmodern or late modern scattering' Because of

ilrcir displac"-nt from the margins to the centers, they have become subjects in

world history. They have earned the right to speak and have dared to capture the

nleans of representation. However marginalized they are within the center, theirirlrility to aciess the means of reproduction may prove to be as empowering to tht:

rrrarginalia of the postindustrial era as the capturing of the means of productktrt

would have been to the subalterns of the industrial era'It is helpful, when mapping the accented cinema, to differentiate three typcs

,l film that constitute it: exilic, diasporic, and ethnic. These distinctions are llolSard-and-fast. A few films fall naturally within one of these classifications, whilcthe majority share the characteristics of all three in different measures. Within eaclr

type, too, there are subdivisions. In addition, in the course of their careers, manyfilmmakers move not only from country to country but also from making one tyPe

of fl1m to making another type, in tandem with the trajectory of their own travels ol'

identity and those of their primary community.

EXILIC FILMMAKERS

Traditionally, exile is taken to mean banishment for a particular offense, with aprohibition of return. Exile can be internal or external, depending on the location

io which one is banished. The tremendous toll that internal exile, restrictions, clo-

privations, and censorship in totalitarian countries have taken on filmmakers h:rs

teen widely publicized. What has been analyzed less is the way such constraittts,

by challenging the filmmakers, force them to develop an authorial style. Many {i lrrr

makers who could escape internal exile refuse to do so in order to flght the gorrl

flght at home-a fight that often defines not only their film style but also their itlcrt

tiiy as oppositional flgures of somc stature. Byworking under an internal regitttc oI

"*it", tt .y choose their "site ol'stltrggle" and their potential social transfortltitliott

(Harlow 1991, 150). When thcy spcak from this site at home, they have an itttlrrtt.t,

evenif, and oftenbecausc, thcy arc ptrnishedforit. Infact, interrogation, censorslrip'

u I lrI Iu r\Ar rur\AL Ar\1, rKANSt\Ar rut\AL rtLlvl HtSt(rKtE5

and jailing are all proof that they have been heard. llu t i l' I lroy nlovo ouI into oxle rnnlexile in the West, where they have the political freecloln to speak, no one may hearthem among the cacophony of voices competing for attention in the market. In thatcase, Gayatri Spivak's famous question "Can the subaltern speak?" will have to bcreworded to ask, "Can the subaltern be heard?" Because of globalization, the inter.nal and external exiles of one country are not sealed off from each other. In fact,there is much traffic and exchange between them.

In this study, the term "exile" refers principally to external exiles: individualsor groups who voluntarily or involuntarily have left their country of origin and whomaintain an ambivalent relationship with their previous and current places and cul-tures. Although they do not return to their homelands, they maintain an intense de-sire to do so-a desire that is projected in potent return narratives in theirfllms. Inthemeantime, they memorialize the homeland by fetishizing it in the form of cathectedsounds, images, and chronotopes that are circulated intertextually in exilic popu-lar culture, including in films and music videos. The exiles' primary relationship, inshort, is with their countries and cultures of origin and with the sight, sound, taste,and feel of an originary experience, of an elsewhere at other times. Exiles, especiallythose fllmmakers who have been forcibly driven away, tend to want to define, at leastduring the liminal period of displacement, all things in their lives not only in rela-tionship to the homeland but also in strictly political terms. As a result, in their earlyfllms they tend to represent their homelands and people more than themselves.

The authority of the exiles as filmmaking authors is derived from their position assubjects inhabiting interstitial spaces and sites ofstruggle. Indeed, all great authorshipis predicated on distance-banishment and exile of sorts- from the larger society. Theresulting tensions and ambivalences produce the complexity and the intensity that areso characteristic of great works of art and literature. In the same way that sexual taboopermits procreation, exilic banishment encourages creativity.l Of course, not all exilicsubjects produce great orlasting art, butmanyof the greatest andmost enduringworksof literature and cinema have been created by displaced writers and filmmakers. Butexile can result in an agonistic form of liminality characterized by oscillation betweenthe extremes. It is a slipzone of anxiety and imperfection, where life hovers betweenthe heights ofecstasy and confldence and the depths ofdespondency and doubt.'Z

For external exiles the descent relations with the homeland and the consent re-Iations with the host society are continually tested. Freed from old and new, they are"deterritorialized," yet they continue to be in the grip of both the old and the new,the before and the after. Located in such a slipzone, they can be suffused with hybridexcess, or they may feel deeply deprived and divided, even fragmented. Lithuanianfilmmaker and poet |onas Mekas, who spent some four years in European displacedpersons camps before landing in the United States, explained his feelings of frag-mentation in the following manner:

Everything that I believed in shook to the foundations-all my idealism, andmyfaith in the goodness of man and progress of man-allwas shattered. Some-how, I managed to keep myself together. But really, I wasn't one piece any lon-ger; I was one thousand painful pieces. . . . And I wasn't surprised when, uponmy arrival in New York, I found others who felt as I felt. There were poets, andfilm-makers, and painters-people who were also walking like one thousandpainful pieces. (quoted in O'Grady 1973,229)

NArrLy 5r[uaung,qEElIruEIt (,tniim0 J ,El

Ncithcr the hybrid fusion nor the fragmentation is total, permarlonl, r)t'ltallllFr,( )rr lhe one hand, like Derridian "undecidables," the new exiles can bo "lrullr gtrtlrrcitlrer": the pharmacon, meaning both poison and remedy; the hynrcrt, iltHlillHlro(lr membrane and its violation; and the supplement, meaning both adrlltlntt nrttllcplacement (quoted in Bauman 1991, 145-46). On the other hand, they could apllylrc called, in Salman Rushdie's words, "at once plural and partial" (1991, I5). s pat.tial, fragmented, and multiple subjects, these fllmmakers are capable of protlttclttgrr rnbiguity and doubt about the taken-for-granted values of their home and ltoill i{}.r:ioties. They can also transcend and transform themselves to produce hybrldknd,syncretic, performed, or virtual identities. None of these constructed and inr;lttrnirlentities are risk-free, however, as the Ayatollah Khomeini's death threat agrltrr*lSalman Rushdie glaringly pointed out.3

Not all transnational exiles, of course, savor fundamental doubt, strive to.ward hybridized and performative self-fashioning, or reach for utopian or virtullimaginings. However, for those who remain in the enduring and endearing crisesirnd tensions of exilic migrancy, liminality and interstitiality may become passion-ate sources of creativity and dynamism that produce in literature and cinema thelikes of James Joyce and Marguerite Duras, ]oseph Conrad and Fernando Solanas,lizra Pound and Trinh T. Minh-ha, Samuel Beckett and Sohrab Shahid Saless, Sal-rnan Rushdie and Andrei Tarkovsky, Garcia Mrquez and Atom Egoyan, VladimirNabokov and Raril Ruiz, Gertrude Stein and Michel Khleifi, Assia Djebar and JonasMekas.

Many exilic filmmakers and groups of filmmakers are discuss edinlAnAccented,Cinemal-Latin American, Lithuanian, Iranian, Turkish, Palestinian, and Russian.They are not all equally or similarly exiled, and there are vast differences evenamong filmmakers from a single originating country.

DIASPORIC FILMMAKERS

Originally, "diaspora" referred to the dispersion ofthe Greeks after the destructionof the city of Aegina, to the Iews after their Babylonian exile, and to the Armeniansafter Persian and Turkish invasions and expulsion in the mid-sixteenth century.The classic paradigm ofdiaspora has involved the Jews, but as Peters (1999), Cohen(1997), Tllyan (1996), Clifford (L997,244-:77), Naflcy (1993a), and Safran (1991) haveargued, the definition should no longer be limited to the dispersion of the Jews, formyriad peoples have historically undergone sustained dispersions-a process thatcontinues on a massive scale today. The term has been taken up by other displacedpeoples, among themAfrican-Americans in the United States andAfro-Caribbeansin England, to describe their abduction from their African homes and their forceddispersion to the new world (Gilroy 1993, 1991, 19BB; Mercer 1994a, 1994b, 19BB;Hall 1988). In these and other recodings, the concept of diaspora has become muchcloser to exile. Consequently, as Khachig Tllyan notes, "diaspora" has lost some ofits former specificity and precision to become a "promiscuously capacious categorythat is taken to include all the adjacent phenomena to which it is linked but fromwhich it actually differs in ways that are constitutive" (1996, B).

Here I will briefly point out the similarities and differences between exile anddiaspora that inform this work. Diaspora, like exile, often begins with trauma, rup-ture, and coercion, and it involves the scattering ofpopulations to places outside their

I FFE r ,tv raA r fvrrL A

lrotneland. Sotllclintus, lrowever, the scattering is cntrsud by a desire for increased trade,for work, or fbr colonial and imperial pursuits, Consecluently, diasporic movementscan be classi[ied according to their motivating factors. Robin Cohen (1997) suggestedthe following classifications and examples: victim/refugee diasporas (exemplified bythe Jews, Africans, andArmenians); labor/service diasporas (Indians); trade/businessdiasporas (Chinese and Lebanese); imperial/colonial diasporas (British, Russian); andcultural/hybrid diasporas (Caribbeans). Like the exiles, people in diaspora have anidentity in their homeland beforetheir departure, and their diasporic identity is con-structed in resonance with this prior identity. However, unlike exile, which may beindividualistic or collective, diaspora is necessarily collective, in both its originationand its destination. As a result, the nurturing of a collective memory, often of an ideal-ized homeland, is constitutive of the diasporic identity. This idealization maybe state-based, involving love for an existing homeland, or it may be stateless, based on a desirefor a homeland yet to come. The Armenian diaspora before and after the Soviet era hasbeen state-based, whereas the Palestinian diaspora since the 1948 creation of Israelhas been stateless, driven by the Palestinians' desire to create a sovereign state.

People in diaspora, moreover, maintain a long-term sense of ethnic conscious-ness and distinctiveness, which is consolidated by the periodic hostility of either theoriginal home or the host societies toward them. However, unlike the exiles whoseidentity entails a vertical and primary relationship with their homeland, diasporicconsciousness is horizontal and multisited, involving not only the homeland butalso the compatriot communities elsewhere. As a result, plurality, multiplicity, andhybridity are structured in dominance among the diasporans, while among the po-litical exiles, binarism and duality rule.

These differencestendto shape exilic and diasporicfilms differently. Diasporizedfilmmakers tend to be centered less than the exiled filmmakers on a cathectedrelationship with a single homeland and on a claim that they represent it and itspeople. As a result, their works are expressed Iess in the narratives of retrospection,loss, and absence or in strictly partisanal political terms. Their films are accentedmore fully than those of the exiles by the plurality and performativity of identity.In short, while binarism and subtraction in particular accent exilic films, diasporicfilms are accented more by multiplicity and addition. Many diasporic fllmmakersare discussed here individually, among them Armenians. Black and Asian Britishfilmmakers are discussed collectively.

POSTCOLONIAL ETHNIC AND IDENTITY FILMMAKERS

Although exilic, diasporic, and ethnic communities all patrol their real and sym-bolic boundaries to maintain a measure of collective identity that distinguishesthem from the ruling strata and ideologies, they differ from one another principallyby the relative strength of their attachment to compatriot communities. The postco-Ionial ethnic and identity filmmakers are both ethnic and diasporic; but they differfrom the poststudio American ethnics, such as WoodyAllen, Francis Ford Coppola,and Martin Scorsese, in that many of them are either immigrants themselves orhave been born in the West since the 1960s to nonwhite, non-Western, postcolonial6migr6s. They also differ from the diasporic filmmakers in their emphasis on theirethnic and racial identity within the host country.

usllu Lilr.r[r I ,9I

'Ihe dil'lbrcut emphasis on the relationship to place creates dil't'orotrtly BrlFtllFrllilms. Thus, exilic cinema is dominated by its focus on there and thert ltt lltti lttllttoland, diasporic cinema by its vertical relationship to the homelarrd anel lty llr Iutet ulrelationship to the diaspora communities and experiences, and postcolt)nll FtlIlUand identity cinema by the exigencies of life here and now in the country ln whlt'hthe filmmakers reside. As a result of their focus on the here and noq etlr trls ltlnttlllyfilms tend to deal with what Werner Sollors has characterized as "the ce nt rul d IH iltin American culture," which emerges from the conflict between descent rulntlonltemphasizing bloodline and ethnicity, and consent relations, stressing sell'-lttado,contractual affiliations (1986, 6). In other words, while the former is concernttcl wllltbeing, the latter is concerned with becoming; while the former is conciliatory, tltfllatter is contestatory. Although such a drama is also present to some extcnt lt1 tlx.ilic and diasporic films, the hostland location of the drama makes the ethnlc nurlidentity films different from the other two categories, whose narratives afc ol'lctlcentered elsewhere.

Some of the keyproblematics of the postcolonial ethnic and identity cinelna arcencoded in the "politics of the hyphen." Recognized as a crucial marker of ethnicityand authenticity in a multicultural America, group terms such as black, Chicano/a,Oriental, and people of color have gradually been replaced by hyphenated termssuch as African-American, Latino-American, and Asian-American. Identity cin-ema's adoption of the hyphen is seen as a marker of resistance to the homogenizingand hegemonizing power of theAmerican melting pot ideology. However, retainingthe hyphen has a number of negative connotations, too. The hyphen may imply alack, or the idea that hyphenated people are somehow subordinate to unhyphen-ated people, or that they are "equal but not quite," or that they will never be totallyaccepted or trusted as full citizens. In addition, it may suggest a divided allegiance,which is a painful reminder to certain groups of American citizens.n The hyphenmay also suggest a divided mind, an irrevocably split identity, or a type of paraly-sis between two cultures or nations. Finally, the hyphen can feed into nativist dis-courses that assume authentic essences that lie outside ideology and predate, orstand apart from, the nation.

In its nativist adoption, the hyphen provides vertical links that emphasize de-scent relations, roots, depth, inheritance, continuity, homogeneity, and stability.These are allegorized in family sagas and mother-daughter and generational con-flict narratives of Chinese-American fi.lms such as Wayne Wang's Eat a Bowl of Tea(1989) and The Joy Luck Club (1993). The fllmmakers' task in this modality, in StuartHall's words, is "to discover, excavate, bring to light and express through cinematicrepresentation" that inherited collective cultural identity, that "one true self" (1994,393). In its contestatory adoption, the hyphen can operate horizontally, highlightingconsent relations, disruption, heterogeneity, slippage, and mediation, as in TrinhT. Minh-ha's Surnqme Viet Giuen Name Nam (1985) and Srinivas Krishna's Masala(1990). In this modality, filmmakers do not recover an existing past or impose animaginary and often fetishized coherence on their fragmented experiences and his-tories. Rather, by emphasizing discontinuity and specificity, they demonstrate thatthey are in the process of becoming, that they are "subject to the continuous 'play'of history, culture and power" (Hall 1994, 394). Christine Choy and Rene Tajima'saward-winning fllm Who Killed Vincent Chin? (l9BB) is really a treatise on tlre

t'-'-'-*

problematic of the hyphen in the Asian-American 0ot'tl()x l, os it centers on tho lnur-der of a Chinese-American by out-of-work white Detroit arrtoworkers who, resentfulof ]apanese car imports, mistook him for being Iapanesc,

Read as a sign of hybridized, multiple, or constructed iclentity, the hyphen canbecome liberating because it can be performed and signified upon. Each hyphen isin reality a nested hyphen, consisting of a number of other intersecting and overlap-ping hyphens that provide inter- and intraethnic and national links. This fragmen-tation and multiplication can work against essentialism, nationalism, and dyadism.Faced with too many options and meanings, however, some have suggested remov-ing the hyphen, while others have proposed replacing it with a plus sign.s Martinscorsese's ITALIANAMERICAN (1974) cleverly removes the hyphen and the spaceand instead joins the "Italian" with the 'Arnerican" to suggest a fused third term.The film title by this most ethnic of New Hollywood cinema directors posits thatthere is no Italianness that precedes or stands apart from Americanness. I haveretained the hyphen, since this is the most popular form of writing these compoundethnic designations.

The compound terms that bracket the hyphen also present problems, for atthe same time that each term produces symbolic alliance among disparate mem-bers of a group, it tends to elide their diversity and specificity. 'Asian-American,,,for example, encompasses people from such culturally and nationally diverseroots as the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, Iapan, Thailand, China,Laos, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Bangladesh, and pakistan. To calibratethe term, such unwieldy terms as "southeast Asian diasporas" have also beencreated. similar processes and politics of naming have been tried for the ',black,,British fllmmakers.

Independent film distributors, such as Third world Newsreel, Icarus-First RunFilms, and women Make Movies, exploit the hyphen and the politics of the iden-tity cinema by classifying these films themarically or by their hyphenated desig-nation. Such classifications create targets of opportunity for those interested insuch films, but they also narrow the marketing and critical discourses about thesefllms by encouraging audiences to read them in terms of their ethnic content andidentity politics more than their authorial vision and stylistic innovations. Sev-eral postcolonial ethnic and identity fllmmakers are discussed individually andcollectively.

Diaspora, exile, and ethnicity are not steady states; rather, they are fluid pro-cesses that under certain circumstances may transform into one another and be-yond. There is also no direct and predetermined progression from exile to ethnicity,although dominant ideological and economic apparatuses tend to favor an assimi-lationist trajectory-from exile to diaspora to ethnic to citizen to consumer.

t...I

The Stylistic ApproachHow films are conceived and received has a lot to do with how they are frameddiscursively. sometimes the fllms of great transplanted directors, such as AlfredHitchcock, Luis Bufluel, and Jean-Luc Godard, are framed within the "international,'

waEE urtrlr[. I -.

cincma category.(r Most often, they are classified within either the ntttlttual t'lttttlttgroI their host countries or the established film genres and styles. l['hus, I ltc flltttn nf lt,W. Murnau, Douglas Sirk, George Cukor, Vincent Minnelli, and lrritz l,ttttg are ttrttally considered as exemplars of the American cinema, the classical l-lollyworttl rtyla,rlr the melodrama and noir genres. Of course, the works of these a nd ttl ltnr rf h'lished directors are also discussed under the rubric of "auteurisrn." Altorllatlvnly,rnany independent exiled filmmakers who make films about exile ancl thtllr h$fftH.lands' cultures and politics (such as Abid Med Hondo, Michel Khleili, Mlra Nntt,and Ghasem Ebrahimian) or those minority filmmakers who make filrnn nhtttlltheir ethnic communities (Rea Tajiri, Charles Burnett, Christine Choy, (irrgttfyNava, Haile Gerima, and Julie Dash) are often marginalized a meroly nailtlttal,Third World, Third Cinema, identity cinema, or ethnic filmmakers, wlttl lro tllt'able to fully speak to mainstream audiences. Through funding, l'estivnl prorlllll-ming, and marketing strategy, these filmmakers are often encouragccl ltl ttlll{ltgtlin "salvage filmmaking," that is, making fllms that serve to preserve net rtltl(tvorcultural and ethnic heritage. Other exilic fllmmakers, such as Jonas Mckos, MtttttlHatoum, Chantal Akerman, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Isaac Iulien, and Shirin Ncslrtt, arcplaced within the avant-garde category, while some, such as Agns Varda and Cl'rrisMarker, are considered unclassifi able.

Atthough these classiflcatory approaches are important for framing films tobetter understand them or better market them, they also serve to overdetermineand limit the films' potential meanings. Their undesirable consequences are par-ticularly grave for the accented films because classification approaches are notneutral structures. They are "ideological constructs" masquerading as neutralcategories (Altman 1989, 5). By forcing accented films into one of the establishedcategories, the very cultural and political foundations that constitute them arebracketed, misread, or effaced altogether. Such traditional schemas also tend tolock the filmmakers into discursive ghettos that fail to reflect or account for theirpersonal evolution and stylistic transformations over time. Once labeled "ethnic,""ethnographic," or "hyphenated," accented filmmakers remain discursively soeven long after they have moved on. On the other hand, there are those, such asGregory Nava, Spike Lee, Euzhan Palcy, and Mira Nair, who have made the movewith varying degrees of success out of ethnic or Third World fllmmaking and intomainstream cinema by telling their ethnic and national stories in more recogniz'able narrative forms.

One of the key purposes of this study is to identify and develop the most ap'propriate theory to account for the complexities, regularities, and inconsistenciesof the fllms made in exile and diaspora, as well as for the impact that the liminaland interstitial location of the fllmmakers has on their work. Occasionally, such atheory is explicitly embedded in the fllms themselves, such as in lonas Mekas's k"rs[,Lost, Lost (1949-76), Fernando Solanas's Tangos: Exile of Gardel (1985), and PrajnuParasher's Exile and Displacement (1992). More often, however, the theory mut bodiscovered and defined as the film moves toward reception, by marketers, revieW'ers, critics, and viewers. Such a deductive process presents a formidable challengo'It requires discovering common features among disparate products of dilfere tttlysituated displaced filmmakers from varied national origins who are living urrdmaking films in the interstices of divergent host societies, under unfamiliar, ol'tctt

J FAlll lu l\All(Jl\ALA

lrostile, political and cinematic systems. I have opted t-r work with a stylistic ap-proach, designating it the "accented style."7 Stylistic history is one ofthe "strongestjustifications for film studies as a distinct academic discipline" (Bordwell 1997, B).But stylistic study is not much in vogue today. Fear of formalism, lack of knowledgeof the intricacies of film aesthetics and film production techniques, the importationof theories into film studies with little regard for the film's speciflc textual and spec-tatorial environments-all these can share the blame.

In the narrowest sense, style is the "patterned and significant use oftechnique"(Bordwell and Thompson 1993, 337). Depending on the site of the repetition, stylemay refer to a film's style (patterns of signiflcant techniques in a single fllm), a film-maker's style (patterns repeated in unique ways in a filmmaker's oeuvre), or a Sroupstyle (consistent use of technique across the works of several directors). Although at-tention will be paid here to the authorial styles of individual filmmakers, the groupstyle is the central concern ofthis book. In general, the choice ofstyle is governedby social and artistic movements, regulations governing censorship, technologicaldevelopments, the reigning mode of production (cinematic and otherwise), avail-ability of flnancial resources, and the choices that individual fllmmakers make associal and cinematic agents. Sometimes group style is formed by fllmmakers whofollow certain philosophical tendencies and aesthetic concerns, such as Germanexpressionism and Soviet montage. The accented group style, however, has existedonly in a limited, latent, and emergent form, awaiting recognition. Even those whodealwith the accented fllms usuallyspeak of exile and diaspora as themes inscribedin the films, not as components of style. In addition, the overwhelming majorityof the many valuable studies of filmmaking in exile and diaspora have been nar-rowly focused on the works of either an individual filmmaker or a regional groupof fllmmakers. There are, for example, studies (both lengthy and brief) devoted tothe fllmmakers Ra(rl Ruiz, Fernando Solanas, Valeria Sarmiento, Amos Gitai, MichelKhleifi, Abid Med Hondo, Chantal Akerman, Jonas Mekas, Atom Egoyan, and TrinhT. Minh-ha, and there are studies centered on Chilean exile films, Arab exile cin-ema, beur cinema, Chicano/a cinema, Iranian exile cinema, and black African, Brit-ish, and American diasporic cinemas. While these works shed light on the modusoperandi, stylistic features, politics, and thematic concerns of specific fllmmakersor of regional or collective diasporic fllms, none of them adequately addresses thetheoretical problematic of an exilic and diasporic cinema as a category that cutsacross and is shared by all or by many of them.B My task here is to theorize this cin-ema's existence as an accented style that encompasses characteristics common tothe works of differently situated fllmmakers involved in varied decentered socialformations and cinematic practices across the globe-all of whom are presumed toshare the fact of displacement and deterritorialization. Such a shared accent mustbe discovered (at least initially) at the fllms' reception and articulated more by thecritics than by the filmmakers.

The components of the accented style include the fllm's visual style; narrativestructure; character and character development; subject matter, theme, and plot;structures of feeling of exile; filmmaker's biographical and sociocultural location;and the fllm's mode of production, distribution, exhibition, and reception. I have de-voted entire chapters to some of these components or their subsidiary elements, whileI have dealt with others in special sections or throughout [An Accented Cinema].

NAilLy srruAUng,CcEgntofl Cln6ml I

liarlicr, I tlivitlcd accented cinema into exilic, diasporic, and postcolorrlll glltrr [,f.ilrns-a div isirn based chiefly on the varied relationship of the films anrl llrrll rrrrr kers to existittg or irnagined homeplaces. Now I draw a further stylistic dlstltrr.lfulr,between featur:e and experimental films. The accented feature films are gcnor.ullynarrative, fictional, feature-length, polished, and designed for commercial distritru-tion and theatrical exhibition. The accented experimental films, on the other hand,are usually shot on lower-gauge film stock (16mm and super-B) or on video, making avirtue of their low-tech, low-velocity, almost homemade quality. In addition, they areoftennonfictional, varyinlengthfrom afewminutes to severalhours, andare designedfor nontheatrical distribution and exhibition. The feature fllms are generally moreexilic than diasporic, and they are often made by older 6migr6 fllmmakers. on theother hand, the experimental films and videos are sometimes more diasporic thanexilic, and are made by a younger generation of filmmakers who have been bornor bred in diaspora. The experimental films also tend to inscribe autobiography orbiography more, or more openly, than the feature fllms.s In them, the filmmakers,own voice-over narration mediates between film types (documentary, fictional)and various levels of identity (personal, ethnic, gender, racial, national). Althoughnarrative hybridity is a characteristic of the accented cinema, the experimentalfilms are more hybridized than the feature fllms in their intentional crossing andproblematization of various borders, such as those between video and fllm, fictionand nonfiction, narrative and nonnarrative, social and psychic, autobiographicaland national.ro

Accented StyleIf the classical cinema has generally required that components of style, such asmise-en-scne, fllming, and editing, produce a realistic rendition of the world, theexilic accent must be sought in the manner in which realism is, if not subverted,at least inflected differently. Henry Louis Gates Jr. has characterized black texts as"mulatto" or "mulatta," containing a double voice and a two-toned heritage: "Thesetexts speak in standard Romance and Germanic languages and literary structures,but almost always speak with a distinct and resonant accent, an accent that sig-nifies (upon) the various black vernacular literary traditions, which are still beingwritten down" (1988, xxiii). Accented fllms are also mulatta texts. They are createdwith awareness of the vast histories of the prevailing cinematic modes. They arealso created in a new mode that is constituted both by the structures of feelingof the filmmakers themselves as displaced subjects and by the traditions of exilicand diasporic cultural productions that preceded them. From the cinematic traditionsthey acquire one set ofvoices, and from the exilic and diasporic traditions theyac-quire a second. This double consciousness constitutes the accented style that notonly signifles upon exile and other cinemas but also signifies the condition of exileitself. It signifies upon cinematic traditions by its artisanal and collective modesof production, which undermine the dominant production mode, and by narra-tive strategies, which subvert that mode's realistic treatment of time, space, andcausality. It also signifies and signifles upon exile by expressing, allegorizing,commenting upon, and critiquing the conditions of its own production, and deter-ritorialization. Both of these acts of signifying and signification are constitutive

of the accented style, whose key characteristics alc cllllrrated upon in the follow-ing. What turns these into attributes of style is their rcllcr(ccl inscription in a singlefllm, in the entire oeuvre of individual fllmmakers, or in the works of various dis-placed filmmakers regardless of their place of origin or residence. ultimately, thestyle demonstrates their dislocation at the same time that it serves to locate themas authors.

LANGUAGE, VOICE, ADDRESS

In linguistics, accent refers only to pronunciation, while dialect refers to gram-mar and vocabulary as well. More specifically, accent has two chief deflnitions:"The cumulative auditory effect of those features of pronunciation which identifywhere a person is from, regionally and socially" and "The emphasis which makes aparticular word or syllable stand out in a stream of speech" (Crystal 1991, 2). Whileaccents may be standardized (for example, as British, Scottish, Indian, Canadian,Australian, or American accents of English), it is impossible to speak without anaccent. There are various reasons for differences in accent. In English, the majorityof accents are regional. speakers of English as a second language, too, have accentsthat stem from their regional and first-language characteristics. Differences in ac-cent often correlate with other factors as well: social and class origin, religious af-filiation, educational level, and potitical grouping (Asher 1994, 9). Even though froma linguistic point of view all accents are equally important, all accents are not ofequal value socially and politically. People make use of accents to judge not only thesocial standing of the speakers but also their personality. Depending on their ac-cents, some speakers may be considered regional, Iocal yokel, vulgar, ugly, or comic,whereas others may be thought of as educated, upper-class, sophisticated, beauti-ful, and proper. As a result, accent is one of the most intimate and powerful markersof group identity and solidarity, as well as of individual difference and personality.The flagship newscasts of mainstream national television and radio networks havetraditionally been delivered in the preferred "offlcial" accent, that is, the accent thatis considered to be standard, neutral, and value-free.

Applied to cinema, the standard, neutral, value-free accent maps onto thedominant cinema produced by the society's reigning mode of production. This typ-ifles the classical and the new Hollywood cinemas, whose fllms are realistic andintended for entertainment only, and thus free from overt ideology or accent. Bythat definition, all alternative cinemas are accented, but each is accented in cer-tain specific ways that distinguish it. The cinema discussed here derives its accentfrom its artisanal and collective production modes and from the fitmmakers' andaudiences' deterritorialized locations. consequently, not all accented films are ex-ilic and diasporic, but all exilic and diasporic fllms are accented. If in linguisticsaccent pertains only to pronunciation, leaving grammar and vocabulary intact, ex-ilic and diasporic accent permeates the fllm's deep structure: its narrative, visualstyle, characters, subject matter, theme, and plot. In that sense, the accented style infilm functions as both accent and dialect in linguistics. Discussions of accents anddialects are usually confined to oral literature and to spoken presentations. Littlehas been written-besides typographical accentuation of words-about what TaghiModarressi has called "writing with an accent":

NAHLy 5rxualrng /{cc6nI0 LtnemS J :

'fhe new language of any immigrant writer is obviously accented and, at leastinitially, inarticulate. I consider this "artifact" language expressive in its ownright. Writing with an accented voice is organic to the mind of the immigrantwriter. It is not something one can invent. It is frequently buried beneath per-sonal inhibitions and doubts. The accented voice is loaded with hidden mes-sages from our cultural heritage, messages that often reach beyond the capacityof the ordinary words of any language. . . . Perhaps it is their [immigrant andexile writers'l personal language that can build a bridge between what is famil-iar and what is strange. They may then find it possible to generate new and re-vealing paradoxes. Here we have our juxtapositions and our transformations-the graceful and the awkward, the beautiful and the ugly, sitting side by side ina perpetual metamorphosis of one into the other. It is like the Hunchback ofNotre Dame trying to be Prince Charming for strangers. (1992, 9)

At its most rudimentary level, making films with an accent involves using on-cameraand voice-over characters and actors who speak with a literal accent in their pro-nunciation. In the classical Hollywood cinema, the characters' accents were not areliable indicator of the actors' ethnicity.Il In accented cinema, however, the char-acters' accents are often ethnically coded, for in this cinema, more often than not,the actor's ethnicity, the character's ethnicity, and the ethnicity of the star's personacoincide. However, in some of these films the coincidence is problematized, as inthe epistolary films of Chantal Akerman (News from Home, 1976) and Mona Hatoum(Measures of Distance,19BB). In each of these works, a filmmaking daughter reads inan accented English voice-over the letters she has received from her mother. The au-dience may assume that these are the voices of the mothers (complete coincidenceamong the three accents), but since neither of the films declares whose voice weare hearing, the coincidence is subverted and the spectators must speculate aboutthe true relationship of the accent to the identity, ethnicity, and authenticity of thespeaker or else rely on extratextual information.

One of the greatest deprivations of exile is the gradual deterioration in andpotential loss of one's original language, for language serves to shape not only in-dividual identity but also regional and national identities prior to displacement.Threatened by this catastrophic loss, many accented fllmmakers doggedly insiston writing the dialogues in their original language-to the detriment of the films'wider distribution. However, most accented fllms are bilingual, even multilingual,multivocal, and multiaccented, like Egoyan's Calendar (1993), which contains a se-ries of telephonic monologues in a dozen untranslated languages, or Raril Ruiz's OnTop of the Whale (1981), whose dialogue is spoken in more than a half dozen lan-guages, one of them invented by Ruiz himself. If the dominant cinema is driven bythe hegemony of synchronous sound and a strict alignment of speaker and voice,accented films are counterhegemonic insofar as many of them de-emphasize syn-chronous sound, insist on first-person and other voice-over narrations deliverodin the accented pronunciation of the host country's language, create a slippagebetween voice and speaker, and inscribe everyday nondramatic pauses and longsilences.

At the same time that accented films emphasize visual fetishes of homelancland the past (landscape, monuments, photographs, souvenirs, letters), as wcll

I l.ltl ,lu I\AilriJNAr l'\

as visual markolr,l ol'tlil'l'orence and belonging (postrlrc, look, style of dress andbehavior), thcy crprirlly stress the oral, the vocal, and tho musical-that is, ac-cents, intonaliorrs, vrices, music, and songs, which also demarcate individualand collectivc ickrnt ities. These voices may belong to real, empirical persons, likeMekas's voicc narrating his diary films; or they may be fictitious voices, as inMarker's LeLter from Siberia (1958) and Sunless (1982); or they may be accentedvoices whose identity is not firmly established, as in the aforementioned filmsby Akerman and Hatoum. Sergei Paradjanov's four feature films are not only in-tensely visual in their tableau-like mise-en-scne and presentational filming butalso deeply oral in the way they are structured like oral narratives that are toldto the camera.

Stressing musical and oral accents redirects our attention from the hegemonyof the visual and of modernity toward the acousticity of exile and the comminglingof premodernity and postmodernity in the films. Polyphony and heteroglossia bothlocalize and locate the fllms as texts of cultural and temporal difference.

Increasingly, accented films are using the film's frame as a writing tablet onwhich appear multiple texts in original languages and in translation in the formof titles, subtitles, intertitles, or blocks of text. The calligraphic display of thesetexts de-emphasizes visuality while highlighting the textuality and translationalissues of intercultural art. Because they are multilingual, accented films requireextensive titling just to translate the dialogues. Many of them go beyond that,however, by experimenting with on-screen typography as a supplementary modeof narration and expression. Mekas's Lost, Lost, Iosf, Trinh's Surname Viet GiuenName Nam, and Tajiri's History and Memory (1991) experiment with multipletypographical presentations of English texts on the screen linked in complicatedways to the dialogue and to the voice-overs, which are also accented in their pro-nunciation. In cases where the on-screen text is written in "foreign" languages,such as in Suleiman's Homage by Assassination {1991) and Hatoum's Measures ofDistance, both of which display Arabic words, the vocal accent is complementedby a calligraphic accent. The inscription of these visual and vocal accents trans-forms the act of spectatorship, from just watching to watching andliterally read-ing the screen.

By incorporating voice-over narration, direct address, multilinguality, andmultivocality, accented fllms, particularly the epistolary variety, destabilize theomniscient narrator and narrative system of the mainstream cinema and journal-ism. Film letters often contain the characters' direct address (usually in flrst-personsingular), the indirect discourse of the fllmmaker (as the teller of the tale), and thefree indirect discourse of the fllm in which the direct voice contaminates the indi-rect. Egoyan's Calendarcombines all three of these discourses to create confusion asto what is happening, who is speaking, who is addressingwhom, where the diegeticphotographer and his on-screen wife (played by Egoyan and his real-life wife) leaveoff and where the historical persons Atom Egoyan and Arsinde Khanjian begin. Theaccented style is itself an example of free indirect discourse in the sense of forcingthe dominant cinema to speak in a minoritarian dialect.

t...I

NAHLy 5tluaUng Accanled Ltnema I

Itotu)HR litrtru(:'l's, lloRDER WRITINGlirr'clcr cmscir.rrrsrress emerges from being situated at the border, where multipletlctcrminarrts ol'race, class, gender, and membership in divergent, even antagoni$.lic, l-ristorical and national identities intersect. As a result, border consciousnes{t,likc exilic liminality, is theoretically against binarism and duality and for a thirdoptique, which is multiperspectival and tolerant of ambiguity, ambivalence, anclchaos.

The globalization of capital, labor, culture, and media is threatening to makcborders obsolete and national sovereignty irrelevant. However, physical borders aroreal and extremely dangerous, particularly for those who have to cross them. In re-cent years no region in the world has borne deadlier sustained clashes over physical(and discursive) borders than the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia. The col-lisions over physical and literal lands, even over individual houses and their sym-bolic meanings, are also waged in the accented films. Since their widely receivedformulation by Anzaldria (1987), borderland consciousness and theory have beenromanticized, universalized, and co-opted by ignoring the specific dislocatory andconflictual historical and territorial grounds that produce them. However, bordersare open, and infected wounds and the subjectivity they engender cannot be post-national or post-al, but interstitial. Unequal power relations and incompatible iden-tities prevent the wound from healing.

Since border subjectivity is cross-cultural and intercultural, border filmmakingtends to be accented bythe "strategy of translation rather than representation" (HicksI991, xxiii). Such a strategy undermines the distinction between autochthonous andalien cultures in the interest of promoting their interaction and intertextuality. As aresult, the best of the border fllms are hybridized and experimental-characterize clby multifocality, multilinguality, asynchronicity, critical distance, fragmented or:multiple subjectivity, and transborder amphibolic characters-characters whomight best be called "shifters." Of these characteristics, the latter bears discussi:nat this point.

In linguistics, shifters are words, such as "I" and "you," whose reference canbe understood only in the context of the utterance. More generally, a shifter is an"operator" in the sense of being dishonest, evasive, and expedient, or even beinga "mimic," in the sense that Homi Bhabha formulated, as a producer of critical ex-cess, irony, and sly civility (1994). In the context of border filmmaking, shifters arecharacters who exhibit some or all of these registers of understanding and perfor-mativity. As such, they occupy a powerful position in the political economy of bothactual and diegetic border crossings. For example, in Nava's El Norte, a classic bor-der film, the shifters consist of the following characters: the pollo (border-crossingbrother and sister, Enrique and Rosa); the coyote (the Mexican middleman who fora fee brings the pollo across), the migra (the U.S. immigration offlcers who chascand arrest Enrique); the pocho (Americans of Mexican descent who speak MexicarrSpanish imperfectly, the man in the fllm who turns Enrique in to the immigratiorrauthorities); the chola/cholo and pachuca/pachuco (young inhabitants of the borelcrunderworld who have their own dialect called cal); and the U.S.-based Mexicnrror Hispanic contractors who employ border crossers as day laborers (among (ltcrtr,Enrique).l'zThe power of these border shifters comes from their situationist existclt:o,

I FAET r.0 NAI lsltlL A

their familiarity with (hc cultural and legal cldes ol'intoritcting cultures, and theway in which thoy rrrnrripulate identity and the asyltrrnctrical power situations itrwhich they find thcrnselves.

Accented filnrs inscribe other amphibolic character typcs who are split, double,crossed, and hyhriclized and who perform their identities. As liminal subjects andinterstitial artists, many accented filmmakers are themselves shifters, with multipleperspectives and conflicted or performed identities. They may own no passport orhold multiple passports, and they may be stranded between legality and illegality.Many are scarred by the harrowing experiences of their own border crossings. Somemay be energized, while others may be paralyzed by their fear of partiality. Theirfilms often draw upon these biographical crossing experiences.

THEMES

Understandably, journeys, real or imaginary, form a major thematic thread in theaccented films. Journeys have motivation, direction, and duration, each of whichimpacts the travel and the traveler. Three types of journeys are explored in thisbook: outward journeys of escape, home seeking, and home founding; journeys ofquest, homelessness, and lostness; and inward, homecoming journeys. Dependingon their directions, journeys are valued differently. In the accented cinema, west-ering journeys are particularly valued, partly because they reflect the filmmakers'own traiectory and the general flow of value worldwide. The westering journey isembedded, in its varied manifestations, in Xavier Koller's Journey of Hope (1990),NizamettinArig'sACry.for Beko(1992), and GhasemEbrahimian'sThe Suitors (1989).In Nava's El Norte, a south-north journey lures the Mayan Indians from Guatemalato the United States.

There are many instances of empowering return journeys: to Morocco in FaridahBen Lyazid's Door to the Sky (1989), to Africa in Raquel Gerber's Orl (1989), and toGhana in Haile Gerima's Sankofa (1993). When neither escape nor return is possible,the desire for escape and the longing for return become highly cathected to certainicons of homeland's nature and to certain narratives. These narratives take the formofvariedjourneys: from the dystopic and irresolute journey oflostness in Tarkovsky'sStalker (1979) to the nostalgically celebratory homecoming journey in Mekas'sReminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971-:72) to the conflicting return journey toIapan and China inAnn Hui's Songolthe Exile (i990).

Not all journeys involve physical travel. There also are metaphoric and philo-sophical journeys of identity and transformation that involve the films' charactersand sometimes the filmmakers themselves, as in Mekas's fllms or in Ivens and Lori-dan's Tale of the Wind.

AUTHORSHIP AND AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL INSCRIPTION

If prestructuralism considered authors to be outside and prior to the texts thatuniquely express their personalities, and if cinestructuralism regarded authors asstructures within their own texts, poststructuralism views authors as fictions withintheir texts who reveal themselves only in the act of spectating. Post-structuralisttheory of authorship is thus embedded in theories of ideology and subject formation,

NAFTCY Sttuating Accented Clnema I I

utttl it priviltlgos tiJ)cctatorial reading over that of authoring. Roland Barthes wentst I'itr as to clcclaro that "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death ofl lrc Author" ( 1977, l4B). In this figuration, the author as a biographical person ex.r:rcising parentage over the text disappears, leaving behind desiring spectators inscarch of an author. This author whom they construct is neither a projection noril representation of a real author but a flctive figure within the text (Barthes 1925,27). According to this formulation, the flctional structure or subject ,Atom Egoyan,,whom the spectators discover in the films of Atom Egoyan is not the same as, andcloes not necessarily map out onto, the empirical person named Atom Egoyan.Since texts create subject positions for both authors and spectators, poststructuraltheory must deal with the construction of both authors and spectators. specta-tors, however, like authors, are not only subjects of texts but also-Barthes to thecontrary-subjects in history, negotiating for positions within psychosocial forma-tions, producing multiple readings and multiple author and spectator effects. Theclassical Hollywood cinema's invisible style creates filmic realism by promotingthe impression of cohesiveness of time, space, and causality. As a result, diegetiireality appears to be authorless, natural, and mimetic, in an organic relationshipto the profilmic world. As John caughie notes, "The removal or suppression of theclear marks of 'authored discourse' transforms ideology from something producedout of a locatable, historical, determined position into something natural to theworld" (1981,202).

My project is precisely to put the locatedness and the historicity of the authorsback into authorship. To that extent, accented cinema theory is an extension of theauthorship theory, and it runs counter to much of the postmodern theory that at-tempts to either deny authorship altogether or multiply the authoring parentageto the point of "de-originating the utterance."r3 However, fllm authors are not au-tonomous, transcendental beings who are graced by unique, primordial, and origi-nary sparks of genius. Accented film authors are literally and flguratively everydyjourneymen and journeywomen who are driven off or set free from their places oforigin, by force or by choice, on agonizing quests that require diplacements andemplacements so profound, personal, and transformative as to shape not only theauthors themselves and their fllms but also the question of authorship. Any diicus-sion of authorship in exile needs to take into consideration not only the individual-ity, originality, and personality of unique individuals as expressive film authors butalso, and more important, their (dis)location as interstitial subjects within socialformations and cinematic practices.

Accented fllms are personal and unique, like flngerprints, because they are bothauthorial and autobiographical. Exile discourse needs to counter the move by somepostmodern critics to separate the author of the fllm from the enunciating subjectin the film, for exile and authorship are fundamentally intertwined with historicalmovements of empirical subjects across boundaries of nations- not just texts.

To be sure, there are postmodern accented filmmakers, such as Egoyan and cavehZahedi,inwhose films the relationship of the authoringfllmmakerto both the text andthe authoring structure within the text is one not of direct parentage but of convolntcclperformance. However, the questioning of the bond linking autobiography to autlrrlr.ship should not be used as a postmodernist sleight of hand to dismiss the specilicltyof exilic conditions or to defuse their subversive and empowering potentiaiity, Sucil

t'--'--

a move comes at the very moment that, lbr the cllasllollz,rrd subalterns of the world,history, historical agency, and autobiographical cousciuusncss have become signifi-cant and signifying components of identity, artistic prldrrction, and social agency.Accented authors are empirical subjects who exist outside and prior to their films.

In the accented cinema, the author is in the text in multiple ways, traversing thespectrum of authorship theories, from prestructuralism to poststructuralism. In alongitudinal and intertextual study of the films of individual fllmmakers, we maydiscover certain consistencies from which we can construct an authorial presencewithin the films. It is thus that authors become discursive figures (Foucault 1977)who inhabit and are constructed not only by history but also by their own filmictexts. How they inhabit their fllms, or, in Bordwell's term (1989, 151-68), how they are"personifled" varies: they may inhabit them as real empirical persons, enunciatingsubjects, structured absences, flctive structures, or a combination of these. In theaccented films, determining the mode of habitation of the author within the text is acomplex task, even in films in which the fllmmakers appear as empirical persons andas themselves either audiovisually (Mekas's fllms, including losf, Lost, Lost), or onlyvisually (Suleiman's Chronicle of Disappearance), or only vocally and as the film's ad-dressee (Akerman's NewsfromHome),or asflctionalcharacters (Egoyan's Calendar),or as author surrogates (Naderi's Manhattan by Numbers and Shahid Saless's -Rosesfor Africa, 1991). In all these cases, filmmakers are engaged in the performance ofthe self. In short, because of their interstitiality, even in situations of self-inscriptionexilic authors tend to create ambiguity regarding their own real, fictive, or discursiveidentities, thus problematizing Phillipe Lejeune's "autobiographical pact," whichrequires that the author, the narrator, and the protagonist be identical (1989, 5).

Exilic authorship is also a function of the fllmmakers' mode of production. Infact, in their multiple incarnations or personiflcations, the authors are producedby their production mode. If the cinema's dominant postindustrial productionmodes privilege certain kinds of authorship, then the artisanal accented produc-tion modes must favor certain other authorial signatures and accents. It is worthbearing in mind that such signatures or accents signify both the various incarna-tions oftheir authors and the conditions ofexile and diaspora. The interpretation ofthese signatures and accents depends on the spectators, who are themselves oftensituated astride cultures and within collective formations. Hence, the figures theycut in their spectating of the accented filmmakers as authors are nuanced by theirown extratextual tensions of difference and identity.

t...I

CLOSE-UP: ATOM EGOYAN,S ACCENTED STYLE

Like all approaches to cinema, the accented style attempts to reduce and to channelthe free play of meanings. But this approach is driven by its sensitivity to the pro-duction and consumption of films and videos in conditions of exilic liminality anddiasporic transnationality. The style designation also allows us to reclassify fllmsor to classify certain hitherto unclassifiable fllms. Thus, Mekas's Lost, Lost, Lost,which has been variously regarded as documentary, avant-garde, or diary film, willyield new insights if reread as an accented film. If one thinks of Bufluel as an exilicfilmmaker, as does Marsha Kinder (1993), further understanding about his films,

rrrrL I JtLuaLtnE EcFnTgo Ltnemt I

lritlrclto rrrrirvailable, will be produced. Likewise, a rereading of Migr-rel Littfn,sdocudrarrra 'l'he Jackal of Nahueltoro (El chacal de Nahueltoro, 1969), turns it intoa protoexilic film containing many components of the accented style in emergenlform, even though at first blush the story does not warrant such an interpretatiotr,

The accented style helps us to discover commonalities among exilic filmmakurtthat cut across gender, race, nationality, and ethnicity, as well as across bounrlttries of national cinemas, genres, and authorship. References to filmmakers rango lhrandwide, from Godard to Mekas, fromAkerman to Med IIonclo, anl from Solanurr loTrinh. Approached stylistically, fllms can be read, reread, ancl hack-read not only unindividual texts but also as sites of struggle over meanings and idcntities. lly pr6[.Iematizing the traditional schemas and representational prarcliccs, this aplliourtlrblurs the distinction, often artificially maintained, among various lilrrr typur* *rrr:lras documentary, fictional, and avant-garde. All of these typeri aro r:ontltkrrotl ltort',

The accented style is not a fully recognized and sanctioned filrrr gnrt 1r, 6ltl llrrrexilic and diasporic filmmakers do not always make accented films. In l'1rll, rlgrt gl'themwouldwish to be in Egoyan's place, to move out of marginal cinerla rrit:lrus intgthe world of art cinema or even popular cinema. Style permits the critics (o tlack t[eevolution of the work of not only a single fllmmaker but also a group of filmmakers.As I discuss in [An Accented cinema'sl chapters on mode of production, Asian pa-ciflc American filmmaking has gradually evolved away from an ethnic focus towarcldiasporic and exilic concerns, while Iranian exilic fllmmakers have evolved towarda diasporic sensibility. These evolutions signal the transformation of both filmmak-ers and their audiences. They also signal the appropriation of the fllmmakers, theiraudiences, and certain features of the accented style by the mainstream cinemaand byits independent offspring. Because it goes beyond connoisseurship to situatethe cindastes within their changing social formations, cultural locations, and cin-ematic practices, the accented style is not hermetic, homogeneous, or autonomous.It meanders and evolves. It is an inalienable element of the social material process ofexile and diaspora and of the exilic and diasporic mode of production.

NOTES1. I thank BiII Nichols for suggesting the parallel between exile and taboo. Also, see exile as

"aesthetic gain" in Kaplan 1996, 33-41.2. lhave incorporated these and other attributes ofexile and alterity to formulate a"para-

digm ofexile" (Naficy 1993a).3. IfRushdieisanexampleofexilichybridity,F.M.Esfandiaryisanexampleofexilicvirtuality.

In the 1960s, Esfandiarywrote novels from exile about the horror of life in his homeland Iran(The Identity Cardll966D, but in the late 1980s he changed his name to FM-2030 and devel-oped the concept of transhumanism, which dismissed all usual markers of continuity andidentity. To be a transhuman is to be a universal "evolutionary being" (FM-2030 f 9Bg, Z0S).

4. This is particularly true for the fapanese-Americans whose loyalty to the United Stateswas questioned during World War II and to the Muslim Americans whose loyalty is oftenquestioned in contemporary times.

5. Peter Feng suggests removing the hyphen from 'Asian-American," while Gustavo p. Fir-mat recommends replacing it with a plus sign for "cuban + American" (1994, 16). someinsert a forward slash between the two terms. On the politics of the hyphen, especially forAsian-Americans, see Feng 1995, 1996; Lowe 1g91.

6. Although',international,,,even,,transnational,,, thcsc tllnrr.tors_whom Douglas (iornery(1991) labels "the individual as internatiorrul filn, urtisti,l -,,',..,,

"ri'.-icrered,,exilic,,or"diasporic,, by the deflnition used here.7' In an earlier pubricllt:::^, explored the promise of trrcorizing rhese films as a transna_tional "genre" (Naficy I9969).B' on regional exilic film.making, the following are notabre studies: on Latin-American exilefilmmakers, see pick (1993, G7_85) u"J er:rro., (1986); on Chilean exile films, see King(1990); on cuban exile.films, see Lopez (ts96j; on cinemas of the black diasporu, see Martin(1995) and Ukadike (1994); on btack Sritlsh ina"p"rra",r, nh";J" N;;;;er (1994a), Diawara(1993b), and Fusco (1988); on brack Americardiaspora nr-., ,u" oiuwara (rg93a) andReid (1991); on postcolonial and multicultl diaspric fiim., ."" it

"t ", "nd stam (1994)and sherzer (r996); on women and African and Asin dia.p;;;;r-;, .;e r,oster (r997); onCaribbean exilic fllms, see Cham (rsgz); o;Asiarr_a.,,"ri.urr--f-r,,s""" L"o.rg (1991); onchicano/a cinemas, see Fregoso (1993i and Noriega (19;;;;;;"iliddle Eastern exilefilms' see Friedlander (1995J nd Nn./ri"r, o. yiddirh nr-r,."" Horerman (lgg1a);on Iranian exile films, see Naficy trgga); on Turkish erilu nri ,e" Naficy (1996g); onsoviet and Eastern European fllmmakers ir, ,rru w".,, ."" p"tri r o*y". (1990); onexile and 6migr6 cinema, particularly in France and Europe, in.irJi.r!

"r,"rrsive fllmog-raphies, see the followingipecial issues ol ilnemactionmagazine:no. 7, ,.cin6ma contreracisme" (n.d.); no. e, ,,!ing1as. de I,6migration,, (summer 1979); no. 24, ,,Cin6mas deI'6migration" (n.d.); no. 56, "cin6mas m6tis: De Hollywood ur;i;;i"rrs,, (Iury 1990).

?;"r;:::;i#L?;)r;,1.r^_"k",,, .o,,,,rt th" index or th" il;;_;il;ctions throughout

9. On experimental diaspora cinema, see Marks 1994.10. Even these two types of accented films are not fixed, for the works of some flrmmakersmay fall only partially into one or share attrilutes of both. this is another way in whichthese fllms are hybrid. For example, sotarrust zrgo s: Exile of Gartleland Krishna ,s Masalamay be categorized as hybrid fiims in their crossing of the bounJari". uro the mixing ofelements of musical.and-merodrama, ,.ug"y ,"a iomedy, ,urruiir" urra nonnarrative,fictional and nonfictionar, realism u"a."iir*, p.rrori

""J"riir. However, bothsolanas and Krishna make feature-rength fllms, have high ,ilil;;,;;d have large mar_kets in mind. A kev difference u"t*"""it * is trrat wnil,ua;;;;;p" rafirm, Tangosremains exilic' for it isJo^cused solely on exile and on a binary relationship with the home-land' Likewise' Mekas's films.ttur. *" it"hl characteri"i.. "ir"i-r,

rlature firms (rheirlength) and experimenral fllms ttheir aestheiicsl.ll' In the classical Hollvwood cinema. the stars who retained rheir,,foreign,,accents fareddifferentry. some courd nor ser parrs;;.*;;;i;;;i;;;;;;;..;r,::,s"Jnainuuiun .tr,r,particularly Grera Garbo, sonji Henie, and Ingrid Bergmn, *"." ,*,y cast as Euro-pean and soviet foreign characters. some British-born stars,,such as cary Grant, acquireda "transatlantic accent,"

::^1uT:d p".trup.-ru.u.rse it was both readily comprehensibleand hard to place (Iarvie 1991, 93).12' other middlemen figures in the border drama include sanctuary movement advocateswho assist potential refugees to gain a.ytumlntrr" united states.13. I have borrowed this phrase from pfeil l9BB, 387.

BIBLIOGRAPHYAltman, Rick. 1989. The American Film Musicar.Broomington: Indiana university press.Barthes' Roland' 1977. Image, Music, Text.Trans. stephen Heath. New york: HiIl and wang.Bauman, Zygmunt. 1991. "Modernity andAmbivalence.,, rn Global culture: Nationalism, Glo_barization and Modernity, eaite uy nait" p"*i"rrro.re, 143-69. London: sage.

NAilLT srrUAUng ACCenXeO Lrnema I trr

lllrrrlrhir, llonriK. lll!14.'l'h,eLocationofCulture.London:Routledge.Itrrrtlwcll, David. l9lt9. MakingMeaning: InferenceandRhetoricinthelnterpretationof Cinema,

Oambriclgc, Mass.: Flarvard University Press.*-. 1997. OntheHistoryof FilmStyle. Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversityPress.

llrrrclwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. 7993. Film Art: An Introduction.4th ed. New York:McGraw-Hill.

lltrrton, Julianne, ed. 1986. Cinema and Social Change in Latin America: Conuersations withFilmmakers. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Oaughie, Iohn, ed. 1981. Theories ofAuthorship: AReader. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,(llifford, James. 1977. Routes: Trauel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Oohen, Robin. 1997. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: UCL Press.(lrystal, David. 1991. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics.3d ed. New York: Blackwell.

Diawara, Manthia. 1993. Black American Cinema. New York: Routledge.Feng, Peter. 1996. "Being Chinese American, Becoming Asian American: Chan Is Missing."

Cinema Journal 35, no. 4:BB-I18.

Foucault, Michel.1977. Language, Memory, Practice. Ed. D. F. Bouchard. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Fusco, Coco. 1988. Young British and Black: A Monograph on the Work of Sankofa Film/VideoCollectiue and Black Audio Film Collectiue. Buffalo, N.Y.: Hallwalls.

Gates, Henry Louis, Ir. L9BB. The Signifuing Monkey: A Theory of African-American LiteraryCriticism. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

Gilroy, Paul. 1993. TheBlackAtlantic: Modernity andDoubleConsciousness. Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press.

1991. " There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack": The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation,Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

I9BB. "Nothing But Sweat inside My Hand: Diaspora Aesthetics and Black Arts inBritain." ICA Documen s, no. 7: 44-46. [Special issue on black fllm, British cinema.]

Gomery, Douglas. 1991. Mouie History: A Suruey. Belmont, Calif.; Wadsworth.

Hall, Stuart. 1988. "NewEthnicities." ICADocuments,no.7:27-3L [SpecialissueonBlackfllm,British cinema.l

Harlow Barbara. 1991. "Sites of Struggle: Immigration, Deportation, Prison, and Exile." InCriticism in the Borderlands, edited. by H6ctor Caldrdn and Josd David Saldivar, 149-63.Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Hicks, D. Emily. 1991. Border Writing: The Multidimensional lexf. Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press.

Iameson, Fredric. 1984. "Periodizing the 60s." In The 60s withoutApology, edited by SohnyaSayers et al., 178*209. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Jarvie, Ian C. 1991. "Stars and Ethnicity: Hollywood and the United States, 1932-51." lt Un-speakablelmages: Ethnicity andtheAmerican Cinema, editedbyLester Friedman, S2-111.Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Kaplan, Caren. 1996. Questions of Trauel: Postmodern Discourses of Displacemenr. Durham,N.C.: Duke University Press.

King, Iohn. 1990. "Chilean Cinema in Revolution and Exile." It Magic Reels: A History of Cin-ema in Latin America, 169-87. New York: Verso.

Lejeune, Phillipe. 1989. On Autobiography. Ed. Paul Eakin. Minneapolis: University ol'Minnesota Press.

,rE J FAilT IU NAIIETFIt AFIIJ IKANsNllUNAL rlLM"Flltl'\lltlEl

l,opez, Ana M" l9(i(i, "( lr'(!llor Cuba." In The Ethnic liyo: l,ttthut Mulla Arts, edited by ( lltott ,Noriega and Alru M. l,opez, 38-58. Minneapolis: [lrrivcrslty of Minnesota Prens.

Lowe, Lisa. lggl. "llctcrogcneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity: MnkingAsianAmerican Dil'forouc6,sDiaspora '1., no. I:24*44.

Martin, Michaol. 1995. Cinemas of the Black Diaspora: Diuersity, Dependence, and Opytatltlan,ality. D et r oit : Wayne State University Press.

Mercer, Kobena. 1994a. "Diaspora Culture and the Dialogic Imagination: The Aesthetlea ufBlack Independent Film in Britain." In Welcome to the Jungle: New Positions in Black Cubtural Studies, 53-68. London: Routledge.

1994b. Welcome to the lungle: New Positions in Black Cultural Studies. LoncluniRoutledge.

1988. "Recoding Narratives of Race and Nation." ICA Documents, rlo.7i +-t+. [Spocl0lissue on black film, British cinema.l

Modarressi, Taghi. 1992. "Writing with an Accent." Chanteh 1, no. 1:7-9.Naflcy, Hamid. 1996. "Phobic Spaces and Liminal Panics: Independent Transnational Fllm

Genre." ht Golballlocal: Cultural Productions and the Tfansnational Imaginary, edited byRob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake, ll9-44. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

1993. The Making of Exile Cultures: Iranian Teleuision in Los Angeles. MinneapollttUniversity of Minnesota Press.

O'Grady, Gerald. 1973. "Our Space in Our Time: The New American Cinema ." ln The Amofl.can Cinema, edited by Donald E. Staples, 228-44. Washington, D.C.: U.S. InformatlonAgency.

Peters, Iohn. 1999. "Exile, Nomadism, and Diaspora: The Stakes of Mobility in the WestornCanon." ln Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place, edited by HamldNaficy, 17-41. NewYork: Routledge.

Pick, Zuzana M. 1993. "Exile and Displacement." In The New Latin American Cinema: AContl.nental Project, 157-85. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Reid, MarkA. 1993. RedefiningBlackFilms. Berkeley: Universityof CaliforniaPress.1991. 'African and Black Diaspora Film/Video." Iump Cut, no.36: 43-46.

Rushdie, Salman. 1991. Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991. London: Granta.

Safran, William. 1991. "Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return."Diaspora I no. 1:83-99.

Sollors, Werner. 1986. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. New York:Oxford University Press.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravotry. l9BB. "Can the Subaltern Speak?" ln Marxism and the Interpreta-tion ofCulture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271-313. Urbana: Univer-sity oflllinois Press.

Tllyan, Khachig. 1996. "Rethinking Diaspora(s): Stateless Power in the Transnational Mo-ment." Diaspora5, no. l:3-36.

Ukadike, Nwachukwu Frank. 1994. Black African Cinema. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress.

Willemen, Paul. 1989. "The Third Cinema Question: Notes and Reflections." ln Questions ofThird Cinema, edited by Iim Pines and Paul Willemen, 1-29. London: British FilmInstitute.

Williams, Raymond. 1977. "Structure of Feeling." In Marxism and Literature, l2B-35. London:Oxford University Press.

DUDLEY ANDREW

An Atlas of World Cinema

n expert in French cinema and culture and a keystone figure in film studies in the Unltot

5ttes, Dudley Andrew (b.rS+S) trained many of the country's influential theorists durlnl

ltis long tenure at the University of lowa. Since zooo, Andrew has been R. Selden RoSt

l,rofessor of Film and Comparative Literature at Yale University. His books The Major Flln

Iheories(rgZ6) and Concepts in Film Theory (rg8+) synthesized continental film theory fo

Lnglish-speaking readers, and his 1978 study of Andr6 Bazin retains definitive status. Hr

is also well known for his work on adaptation, aesthetics, and world cinema, with severa

books on French cinema and works on Japanese, lrish, and West African film'

While film festivals and university curricula still foreground national cinemas anr

auteurs, an understanding of the compllcated ecology of world cinema can link filr

practices and help displace the notion of Hollywood as the center of image culture' At

juncture when Korean horror clnema attracts fan sites all over the world and lranian au

teurs rank alongside the ltalian neorealists and Japan's postwar masterS' a more cosmC

politan approach is required. Andrew's own expertise in the cinema of France, a forme

colonial power and an important source of film financing in francophone Africa, inform

his study of the latter region's film production. lf we must increasingly think of nationi

cinema in transnational terms, what concepts of world cinema are most relevant?

ln "An Atlas of World Cinema," originally published in zoo4, Andrew interrogate

longstanding "connoisseur" approaches to "foreign film" fostered by the elite postw

film festivals and "survey" models of course design. He recommends putting these ap

proaches alongside a number of different models, invoking the analogy of an atlas thi

allows different features to come forward depending on the "mapplng" criteria. For el

ample, "demographic" maps show that a nation's cinema culture is defined as much b

film reception-what people watch, which may be domestic films, Hollywood blockbus

ers, or something else-as it is by the country's production. "Topographical" maps sho'

the "depth" or cultural rootedness of certain film practices as well as the formations thi

cross national boundaries. Andrew's erudite and conceptually supple essay matches tfexciting changes in the twenty-first-century globalization of cinema with an equally cha

lenging advance in the responsibility of film studies.

READING CUES & KEY CONCEPTS

i&{11l How does Andrew position commercial Hollywood production in his "atlas of wor

cinema"? Does the term "world cinema" apply to Hollywood?

ffil Look at a contemporary film festival program. How would the "political" map of wor

cinema look according to its programming?

ffIillli Andrew writes that "every film implies a geopolitical orientation." Think of a film th

illuminates his argument.