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Hi Epiphanie, Yeah, I’ve head all about how great Sydney is! I loved Vancouver, although I prefer warmer places. However, I’m surprised that you’re surprised that China is so…Sinocentric. The Nigerio-Bollywood connection sounds interesting, and I would suppose it’s about how well Bombay integrates those wonderful dances into the text. So, okay, I’m a closet Bollywood fan, too; and one who’s constantly forced to reconcile this with my love of Ray and Sen. Bollywood also seems to be about how a hyper-traditional culture can loosen up a bit. For example, we all know that arranged marriages in India are by far the dominant mode, but the incidence of ‘love matches’ is increasing. Bolly, then, stands as an exploration of personal sentiments within what appears to be a rigid cultural matrix. As for a specific Nigerian parallel, I haven’t a clue. Solinka and Achebe describe urban environments in which relationships are more or less free on a personal level, the problems being elsewhere. Bollywood would seem to accommodate the emotional needs of developing nations by proximity in an ‘Indians r us’ sort of scenario. All of these nations have developed a gentrified urban class of young professionals and preppie wannabes, and this is their collective story. Bollywood is a universal, idealized narrative of how to navigate modernity. What’s important for me is how a director can demonstrate how diverse an alleged monolithic culture really is. In other words, we write our anthropology from the fat middle, trying to discover an essence of sorts. OTH, filmic genius is all about the cracks and fissures, the marginalia. On of my faves in this respect is Olivier Assayas. I’m likewise happy for you—and to hear in general—that Angloworld is not just a larger representation of Amerika. This, of course, is yet another argument as to why the wrong guys won in 1776, but I suppose the development of this particular counterfactual can wait for another time and place. Or perhaps I can hope for reincarnation as an Aussie! In sum, the de-centering of which you speak is a process that we’re all for. You seem to be living it, which is great, too. But there’s still the persistency of numbers: Sydney affords you the opportunity to explore diversity in art, but still, how prevalent is Hollywood on a baseline consumerist level? There's always a schitz between the personal and the political. There’s a counterforce alive in The Zone, but will it succeed? BH Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2010 22:50:07 +1000 From: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Crazy about HE To: [log in to unmask] If Paris is the Buenos Aires (I'd love to go there someday soon) of Europe, then Sydney (where I'm currently based) is the Vancouver of Australia! :o) Speaking of China, I spent a month hanging out with a friend in Shanghai and was surprised to learn that the country's news was extremely Cino-centric. And it's not like they were talking about cats stuck in trees either; China's furious urban development means that there's always some big economic venture being made in one of its dozens of big cities... but you wouldn't hear about the grand majority of these important events unless you were in the country, or paying close attention online. And just when I thought they had exhausted all the business/economy news for the day, along came the special 'Economy' segment, lol. Now that I don't think about it, the inward-looking nature of the media isn't that different to that of the USA. Perhaps more relevant to Film-Philosophy, Nigeria is a major consumer of Bollywood films, due to their emphasis on traditional values (something the Islamic and Hindu cultures have in common), colourful clothes and a few more factors I can't recall at present. So there we have an example of developing countries looking to each other for inspiration, breaking from the [Europe looks to Africa and the Middle East, USA looks to Latin America, Australia, Canada & NZ look to Asia and the Pacific] pattern. I love films that have an international cast and are shot in two or more continents... such a text provides such tantalising opportunities for creative cultural fusion. The last movie I saw like that was Inception, both incredibly encouraging and rather disappointing (innovative for an action movie, but unimaginative for a movie based on dream imagery; fleshing out the interior life of its characters more than the usual blockbuster, yet not as deeply as an involving drama). Living in an interconnected world means that we have a huge amount of choice of where in the world we direct our attention. In Sydney there seems to be a new film festival opening each year - the most recent one I noticed was the Scandinavian. Then there's the Israeli, Latin American and many different European ones. I don't think there's an Indian festival but you can catch Bollywood films any time of the year due to a number of indie cinemas which screen them. America's influence is undeniable, but the world is vast and has many creative, economic and influential hotspots, which communicate with each other as much as it (perhaps more so, depending on the region), so I agree with Michael that we live in a de-centred world, and the more curious we become about cultures that may not seem immediately accessible, the more rewarding our exploration of the world often gets. :o) Epiphanie On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 5:52 PM, Michael Chanan <[log in to unmask]> wrote: Bill wrote: ‘Well it's not for nothing that Paris is called "The Buenos Aires of Europe...And let's not forget all of that great wine from Mendoza! Indeed life can be better on the rim--rather than in the center---of Empire.’ To go beyond the banter and get serious for a moment, if I may be allowed, this is a particularly interesting response, because it no longer corresponds to the non-virtual reality. First, ‘Empire’ has no single centre. It’s a network of metropolitan centres. Which they are depend on what sector is referred to. For example, the centres of finance capital include New York, London and Frankfurt, while the cultural centres include New York, London, Paris, Berlin, etc., with subcentres for individual sectors like Los Angeles and Paris for cinema. Second, notice that these are all ‘world cities’. But there are also a good many world cities beyond the metropolitan countries, in what you call ‘the rim’. In Latin America, for example, the principal world cities are Mexico City, São Paulo and Buenos Aires. It is not an accident that these three cities are also the centres of the three major film industries in Latin America (with Rio de Janeiro as a subcentre in Brazil). It is also symptomatic that you wouldn’t know this from following Film-Philosophy, which for various reasons remains fixated on the cinema of empire, with very occasional forays into other territories. I haven’t seen much recent Mexican cinema, but I’m very impressed with both Brazilian and Argentine cinema, both of which produce more (I believe) than the UK, which for the most part remains a mere appendage of Hollywood. Third, the truth is is that it’s become misleading to think of those countries and cities as ‘the rim’. When I’m in Mexico City, I often think of the remark of Octavio Paz that Mexico’s problem is being too far from god and too close to the USA, but this sensation is very reduced when I’m in São Paulo or Buenos Aires. I grant that this is subjective, but there’s something else, which has become clearer since the crash of 2008: there has been a highly significant shift in the configuration of the world economy, which is not only apparent in the rise of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) but also this, that the domination of empire is reducing. In the case of Latin America, a whole number of countries have escaped the effects of the financial crash and their economies are growing at a much faster rate than the countries of empire, even without the effects of the recession. They include Brazil, Argentina, Chile, even Peru (not Venezuela, largely because it’s plagued by its dependency on oil). It is possible that the driving force for this shift is the growth of Chinese investment in these countries, but on different terms from the unequal terms of trade which dominated previously, when the dominant economic power in Latin America was the USA, or previously, the UK. And in any case, Brazil is emerging as a major economic force in Latin America itself, but again on different and more equal terms from previous economic imperialists. Each of the Latin American countries I refer to has its own complexities, economically, politically and culturally, but one thing that particularly impressed me on my recent visit to Buenos Aires (and not for the first time) was how different the configuration of the contemporary world appears from there, as if the world was turned upside down. Just a few thoughts for rumination… Michael * * Film-Philosophy After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask] Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html For technical help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon * Film-Philosophy online: http://www.film-philosophy.com Contact: [log in to unmask] ** -- Reality is the Wildest Fantasy * * Film-Philosophy Email Discussion Salon After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask] Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html For technical help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon * Film-Philosophy online: http://www.film-philosophy.com Contact: [log in to unmask] ** * * Film-Philosophy After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask] Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html For technical help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon * Film-Philosophy online: http://www.film-philosophy.com Contact: [log in to unmask] **