The Cinema of Small Nations

THE Within cinema studies there has emerged a significant body of scholarship CINEMA OF SMALL NATIONS on the idea of ‘National Cinema’ but there has been a tendency to focus on the major national cinemas. Less developed within this field is the analysis of what we might term minor or small national cinemas, despite the increasing significance of these small entities with the international domain of moving image production, distribution and consumption. The Cinema of Small Nations is the first major analysis of small national cinemas, comprising twelve case studies of small national – and sub national – cinemas from around the world, including Ireland, Denmark, Iceland, Scotland, Bulgaria, Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Cuba, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and New Zealand. Written by an array of distinguished and emerging scholars, each of the case studies provides a detailed analysis of the particular cinema in question, with an emphasis on the last decade, considering both institutional and textual issues relevant to the national dimension of each cinema. While each chapter contains an in-depth analysis of the particular cinema in question, the book as a whole provides the basis for a broader and more properly comparative understanding of small or minor national cinemas, particularly with regard to structural constraints and possibilities, the impact of globalisation and internationalisation, and the role played by economic and cultural factors in small-nation contexts. Key features: • the first major study of a range of small national cinemas • detailed and informative studies of particular small national cinemas from around the globe • an implicit comparative element that reveals major similarities and differences across the case studies EDITED • a strong line up of international contributors including a number & DUNCAN PETRIE of major internationally recognised experts in the field BY METTE HJORT BY METTE HJORT THE CINEMA OF • written in an accessible style to appeal to students, academics and the general reader alike. SMALL NATIONS Mette Hjort is Professor and Progam Director of Visual Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Duncan Petrie is Professor of Film at the University of Auckland. EDITED BY METTE HJORT & DUNCAN PETRIE Cover design: River Design, Edinburgh Cover image: Noi Albinoi [UNITED KING FILMS / THE KOBAL COLLECTION] Edinb Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF ur www.eup.ed.ac.uk gh ISBN 978 0 7486 2537 6 ‘A fabulous read – finding out about these cinemas was almost like reading detective fiction – unveiling, as the book does, the enigmatic nature of small nations’ cinemas and giving the reader insights and knowledges heretofore squirreled away.’ Professor Susan Hayward, University of Exeter ‘It’s astonishing that we have had to wait until now to get our hands on this timely, informative, and lively volume. The Cinema of Small Nations offers us a rich overview of what this very important but underappreciated phenomenon might mean. How do films get produced and, under the sign of various national cultures, attached to states that are on the small side, geographically, demo- graphically, and politically? How do these works then circulate on local turf and across the globe? These questions are addressed via rich and theoretically informed case studies from leading scholars in each area. After reading this book, it is impossible to speak of world cinema, national cultures, or global- ization in easy platitudes.’ Professor Faye Ginsburg, New York University THE CINEMA OF SMALL NATIONS Edited by Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS For Anicë, Siri and Erik © in this edition Edinburgh University Press, 2007 © in the individual contributions is retained by the authors Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 10/12.5 Adobe Sabon by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wilts A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 2536 9 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 2537 6 (paperback) The right of the contributors to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. CONTENTS Introduction 1 Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie PART ONE: EUROPE 1. Denmark 23 Mette Hjort 2. Iceland 43 Björn Nor«fjör« 3. Ireland 60 Martin McLoone 4. Scotland 76 Jonathan Murray 5. Bulgaria 93 Dina Iordanova PART TWO: ASIA AND OCEANIA 6. Hong Kong 113 Ackbar Abbas 7. Singapore 127 See Kam Tan and Jeremy Fernando THE CINEMA OF SMALL NATIONS 8. Taiwan 144 James Udden 9. New Zealand 160 Duncan Petrie PART THREE: THE AMERICAS AND AFRICA 10. Cuba 179 Ana M. López 11. Burkina Faso 198 Eva Jørholt 12. Tunisia 213 Florence Martin Notes on Contributors 229 Index 233 vi INTRODUCTION Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie The Cinema of Small Nations In a recent article entitled ‘An Atlas of World Cinema’, Dudley Andrew con- cludes his discussion in the following way: Let me not be coy. We still parse the world by nations. Film festivals identify entries by country, college courses are labelled ‘Japanese Cinema’, ‘French Film’, and textbooks are coming off the presses with titles such as Screening Ireland, Screening China, Italian National Cinema, and so on. But a wider conception of national image culture is around the corner, prophesied by phrases like ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ and ‘critical region- alism’. (Andrew 2006: 26) Andrew’s concluding remarks reference the recent emergence in film studies of a new critical vocabulary – ‘world cinema’, ‘transnational cinema’, ‘regional cinema’ – while his discussion of world cinema more generally responds to, and thus reflects, the need for fully developed conceptual models that will lend analytic precision to the terms in question. Particularly relevant in the present context is the way in which Andrew’s reference to nations and to their inevitable persistence in film culture also acknowledges, at least implicitly, that innovative ways of understanding national elements must be part of the critical shift that is currently occurring in film studies. There can be little doubt that film studies today requires models that go well beyond conceptions of the nation as a monadic entity involved at most, 1 THE CINEMA OF SMALL NATIONS perhaps, in an unfortunate relationship with a single dominant other, Hollywood (Morris et al. 2005; Nagib 2006). A guiding premise motivating The Cinema of Small Nations is that careful analysis of a range of small national cinemas, with a focus for the most part on the last few decades, will suggest a number of conceptual models for understanding the persistence of nation in various transnational constellations. Small nations or states, it is widely recognised in the specialised literature, are necessarily a relational phenomenon: ‘A state is only small in relation to a greater one. Belgium may be a small state in relation to France, and France a small state in relation to the USA . ... small state should be therefore considered shorthand for a state in its relationship with greater states’ (emphasis added, Erling Bjöl, cited in Chan Yul Yoo 1990: 12). Some small nations or states are marked by a history of colonial rule and thus by an important relational complexity that emphases on American cultural and economic imperialism tend to obscure. And many small filmmaking nations have sought alliances in recent times with nations that are similarly perceived to be grappling with the inequities that size, under some def- inition of that term, generates. As an analytic tool in the context of film studies, the concept of small nation promises to shed light on at least some of the ways in which subnational, national, international, transnational, regional and global forces dovetail and compete in the sphere of the cinema. Conceived as a collaborative and collectivist project, The Cinema of Small Nations encompasses twelve case studies by authoritative scholars with specialised knowledge of a particular small nation and its cinema. Contributors were asked, where relevant, to provide information about the institutional para- meters governing cinematic production in their context, to identify some of the persistent challenges faced by filmmakers in that context, and to discuss and assess the impact of any solutions that might have been explored over the years. In addition, the hope was that the various essays would help to draw attention to some of the key cinematic texts or tendencies associated with the cinemas in question, as well as to any features that these films might share by virtue of their production by film practitioners operating within the constraints and opportu- nities that a given small nation affords. The overall result of this collectivist project is, we believe, a set of reliable data that can be, and indeed should be, mobilised for comparative purposes. An influential view in the field of small states studies has it that ‘small states are not simply scaled-down versions of larger states but instead have an ecology of their own’ (Bray and Packer 1993: xix). At the same time, ‘[i]t is not always easy to discern which features of individual small states are reflections of small size and thus can be generalised, and which features merely reflect the specific cultural, economic or other features of the particular states in question’ (xxiii). The comparative picture that The Cinema of Small Nations presents allows film scholars to begin to determine which features of particular small filmmaking nations are generalisable and why. 2 INTRODUCTION What soon becomes apparent, if the comparativist invitation that lies at the heart of this project is taken up, is that the possibility of full generalisability across all cases is rare. However, small filmmaking nations clearly do tend to confront certain types of problem and to have recourse to certain types of solu- tion, depending on the particular form of small nationhood in question.

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