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- Volume 3, Issue 2, 2005
New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2005
Volume 3, Issue 2, 2005
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Ong-Bak: New Thai Cinema, Hong Kong and the cult of the ‘real’
By Leon HuntThe article examines the Thai martial arts film Ong-Bak (2003), a commercial success in South East Asia and a growing cult hit in the West. The author looks at the film in three contexts. First, it is placed in the context of ‘New Thai Cinema’, a category associated with both nationalist and transnational characteristics. Second, the film is seen at the intersection of the relationship between Thai and Hong Kong cinema, with Ong-Bak reworking Hong Kong's tradition of ‘authentic’ stunt work. Finally, the notion of ‘authenticity’ is considered as a ‘return of the real’ in an age of digital action cinema. This is argued to be double-edged, as an alternative to the virtual action of ‘First Cinema’ (and the Matrix sequels in particular), but also complicit in casting Thailand as a ‘primitive’ cinema.
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Brazilian cinema: its fall, rise, and renewal (1990–2003)
More LessAfter President Fernando Collor de Mello dismantled the state public enterprise - EMBRAFILME - in 1990, Brazilian cinema virtually ceased to exist. Five years later Brazilian cinema made its phoenix-like rebirth, rising on the heels of new tax incentive laws, and it has since matured and solidified into a ‘new’ national cinema with a freedom of expression and level of artistry of which it had previously only dreamed. This article offers a concrete glimpse of both how legislation for audio-visual investment played a crucial role in the revival of national film production in the 1990s and what subsequent steps were taken by the state to strengthen and protect the sector. This article shows that public policy toward the Brazilian film industry has been important but limited, and that chronic structural problems remained in the 1995–2003 period. It contends that Brazilian cinema is still overshadowed by the dominance of foreign films on national screens, not least because Brazil does not have effective control of its film industry.
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Stairway to heaven: Ferzan Özpetek and the revision of Italy
By Derek DuncanFerzan Özpetek has been criticized for producing work that is old-fashioned and middlebrow and whose apparent hybridity results from international casting rather than any sustained attempt to investigate new forms of subjectivity. The aim of this article is to look at Özpetek's Le fate ignoranti (2001) as a film that explores multiple levels of difference and cohabitation between formations of sexuality and national or ethnic identity. The article suggests that there are ways of looking at Le fate ignoranti and of understanding the reception of Özpetek's work in Italy that show him to be revising familiar cinematic forms and identity formations rather than reiterating them.
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‘Seeing or believing’: Harmony Korine and the cinema of self-destruction
By Duncan WhiteThe films of writer and director, Harmony Korine (Gummo (1997) and Julien Donkey-Boy (1999)), are considered in terms of the cultural positioning of American ‘independent film making’. The article is critical of overemphasized associations with the work of Larry Clark and offers an in-depth account of Korine's Eurocentric and highly stylized response to avant-garde film-making processes. The article develops a critical account of Korine's various techniques identified as a new form of realism that challenges the traditional notions of political and cultural identities inherent to considerations of American ‘place’. Artaudian surrealism, still-life painting and Dogme 95 inform the treatment of Korine's endeavour to unearth hidden and imaginary landscapes resistant to generalized themes of location and orientation in American film-making.
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Book Reviews
Authors: Pierre Sorlin, John Orr, Gerd Bayer and Rogério FerrarazL'occhio e la pietra: Il cinema, una cultura urbana (The Eye and the Stone: Cinema, An Urban Culture), Marco Bertozzi (2003) Turin: Lindau, 201 pp., ISBN 88-207-3490-7 (hbk), € 19
Abbas Kiarostami, Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum (2003) Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 151 pp., ISBN 0-252-07111-5 (pbk), £12.95
Faking It: Mock-Documentary and the Subversion of Factuality, Jane Roscoe and Craig Hight (2001) Manchester: Manchester University Press, ix + 222 pp., ISBN 0-7190-5640-3 (hbk), $69.95; ISBN 0-7190-5641-1 (pbk), $24.95
The New Brazilian Cinema, Lúcia Nagib (ed.), (2003) London and New York: I.B. Tauris (in association with The Centre for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford), 296 pp., ISBN 1-86064-928-9 (pbk), £14.95; ISBN 1-86064-878-9 (hbk), £42.00
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Volumes & issues
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Volume 20 (2022)
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Volume 19 (2021)
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Volume 18 (2020)
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Volume 17 (2020)
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Volume 16 (2018)
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Volume 15 (2017)
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Volume 14 (2016)
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Volume 13 (2015)
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Volume 12 (2014)
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Volume 11 (2013)
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Volume 10 (2012)
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Volume 9 (2011 - 2012)
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Volume 8 (2010 - 2011)
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Volume 7 (2009)
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Volume 6 (2008 - 2009)
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Volume 5 (2007)
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Volume 4 (2006 - 2007)
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Volume 3 (2005)
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Volume 2 (2004)
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Volume 1 (2002 - 2003)