The 4 th International Conference of the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU) 2009 Amsterdam/Delft The New Urban Question – Urbanism beyond Neo-Liberalism IMAG(IN)ING THE GLOBAL CITY. POSTNATIONAL FILMMAKING IN BRUSSELS AND AMSTERDAM Arne Saeys* * Kadir Has University/University of Amsterdam, Istanbul/Amsterdam, Turkey/Netherlands,
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[email protected] ABSTRACT: Beyond predominant discourses on the integration of immigrants, this research aims to establish a view on how immigrant filmmakers in global cities erode the idea of national cinemas. Contrary to the demands of assimilation in the regular labor market, the commodification of cultural diversity has become an important segment of the creative economy in global cities (Scott 2000, Zukin 1995). In European film industries, for example, the demand for cultural diversity creates opportunities for immigrant filmmakers. Discourses on cultural diversity, however, lead to an a priori categorization of immigrant filmmakers as ethnic. Against the ethnicization of immigrant filmmakers, I start from the interactionist framework of immigrant entrepreneurship (Waldinger et al. 1990, Rath & Kloosterman 2000). I argue that the ‘ethnicity’ of filmmakers serves as a brand to market their films as authentic in the global cultural economy. In this paper, I compare immigrant filmmakers based in Brussels, the multilingual capital of Europe, and in Amsterdam, the cultural hotspot of the Netherlands in order to illustrate different developments of postnational filmmaking. KEYWORDS: globalization, migration, cultural industries, film industry 1. GLOBAL CREATIVE CITIES World cities have always been at the heart of cultural production and innovation (Hall 1998, Scott 2000). In the age of globalization, discourses on creative cities (Landry & Bianchini 1995) have put creative industries and talent migration on the agenda of urban policymakers.