An Accented Cinema 15:39:00

Hamid Naficy

11/11/2008

Time to Love Moshen Makhmalbaf Best known new director from Iran since the rev. of 1979 Released in Turkey with Turkish language (French subs.) Banned in Iran for theme of mnage a trois.

1. Situating Accented Cinema Accented Filmmakers: o The Exilic and Diasporic filmmakers here are situated but universal figures who work in the interstices (or middle) of social formations and cinematic practices. o From Third World and post-colonial countries who have had to relocate since the 60s. o Share: liminal (barely perceptible) subjectivity and interstitial location in society and the film industry. o Operate independently outside studio guidelines. o Express a state of tension between their original homes and present locations. o Moved to the West in to groupings: Displaced or lured from 50s to 70s (3rd World decolonization, wars of national liberation, USSR invasion of Poland&Czech, Westernization, and internal decolonization IN the West various civil rights, counterculture, and antiwar movements. 80s and 90s as a result of the failure of nationalism, socialism, and communism; (rise of militant forms of Islam, return of religious/ethic wars, changes in Euro, Austrailian, and American immigration policies encouraging non-Western immigration, and technological developments/consolidation in computers and media.) Exilic Filmmakers o Internal Exiles: dont leave their country of internal banishment because here through interrogations, predjudices, and prison there is proof they are heard.

If they move out into external exile, where they have political freedom to speak, they might not be heard because of the cacophony of voices competeing for attention. o External Exiles Leave or forced to leave their homelands. Intense desire to return is embedded in their filmmaking because it is real to them. Creativity is spawned because they need a voice. deterritorialized = slip zone of anxiety and imperfection where life hovers between the heights of ecstasy and confidence and the depths of despondency and doubt. These filmmakers are capable of producing ambiguity and doubt about the taken-for-granted values of their home and host societies. They can transform themselves to produce hybridized, virtual identities. o Diasporic Those forced to leave their homelands due to war, political change, religion, invasion, hateect. Like Exile, Diaspora begins with trauma/conflict/or trade($). BUT diasporic is often collective, exile may not. A homebase is constitutive. Either their old home or the one to come. People in Diaspora, moreover, maintain a long term sense of ethnic consciousness and distinctiveness, which is consolidated by the periodic hostility of either their original home or the host societies towards them. Plurality, multiplicity, and hybridity are structured in dominance among the diasporas. o Postcolonial Ethnic and Identity These filmmakers differ from post-studio American ethnics, ie: Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola.

Focus on their ethnic and racial identity within the host country. The different emphasis on the relationship to place creates differently accented films. The central drama of American culture emerges between the conflict of descent relations, emphasizing bloodline and ethnicity..in other words, while the former is concerned with being, the latter is concerned with becoming; while the former is conciliatory, the latter is contestatory. Although similar to exile/diasporic films, the narrative of ethnic and identity is cenetered on hostland while E/D is somewhere else.

Exilic cinema is dominated by its focus on there and then in the homeland, diasporic cinema by its vertical relationship to the homeland and by its lateral relationship to the Diaspora communities and experiences, and post colonial ethnic and identity cinema by the exigencies of life here and now in the country in which the filmmakers reside. Feature and Experimental films. o Accented feature films are generally narrative, fictional, feature-length, polished, and designed for commercial distribution and theatrical exhibition. More exilic, made by older migr filmmakers. o Accented experimental films, are usually shot on lower-gauge film stock (16mm or Super 8) or on video, making a virtue of their low-tech, low velocity almost homemade quality. They are often non fictional, and designed for nontheatrical distribution and exhibition. More diasporic and done by younger generation.

11/11/2008 15:39:00

11/11/2008 15:39:00