Whether committed to “clear the ruins” of a traumatic and guilty past or
simply in an outburst of youthful energy determined to do away with “le
cinéma du papa,” new waves embody a paradox: they want to break away from
an exhausted filmic language which has colonized the “old” national
cinema and give voice to an aesthetically and politically new, local
language which would, nevertheless, reintegrate them within a global
community. From European New Waves, the new cinemas of post-1989 Eastern
and Central Europe and the movements in Asia and Latin America, film has
been used as a visual, self-reflexive mechanism by means of which
relatively reduced groups of young cineastes have managed, usually with
little money and state support, to revert to local cultural practices in
order to redefine both the global image of their respective nations and
the global cinematic language. What is the contribution of each new
national cinema to the multicultural language of cinema? What is the
relevance of the local political, economic, and social context to the
globally acknowledged new visual bursts of energy? How new are the new
national cinemas? How is the familial melodrama of each nation
reinscribed within the larger international context by means of
a “revolution” in filmic language? This seminar welcomes papers which
explore the interplay between new cinemas, their respective national
context, and the global cinematic tradition which they want to subvert,
transform, and mark with their own footprints.

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Received on Wed Oct 01 2008 - 22:25:57 EDT