Books by David Martin-Jones
Contemporary Screen Ethics focuses on the intertwining of the ethical with the socio-political, c... more Contemporary Screen Ethics focuses on the intertwining of the ethical with the socio-political, considering such topics as: care, decolonial feminism, ecology, histories of political violence, intersectionality, neoliberalism, race, and sexual and gendered violence.
The collection advocates looking anew at the global complexity and diversity of such ethical issues across various screen media: from Netflix movies to VR, from Chinese romcoms to Brazilian pornochanchadas, from documentaries to drone warfare, from Jordan Peele movies to Google Earth. The analysis exposes the ethical tension between the inclusions and exclusions of global structural inequality (the identities of the haves, the absences of the have nots), alongside the need to understand our collective belonging to the planet demanded by the climate crisis. Informing the analysis, established thinkers like Deleuze, Irigaray, Jameson and Rancière are joined by an array of different voices – Ferreira da Silva, Gill, Lugones, Milroy, Muñoz, Sheshadri-Crooks, Vergès – to unlock contemporary screen ethics.
Includes such diverse examples as: intersectional feminist ethics (from the housemaid in Brazilian “Big House” dramas to Carol Morley documentaries); the human/nature dichotomy in John Akomfrah’s art installations and Bong Joon-ho’s “superpig” thriller Okja; race in Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us and Luisa Omielan’s stand-up comedy on BBC television; the memory of traumatic Cold War pasts in The Look of Silence (Indonesia) and Though I am Gone (China); Nina Wu’s exploration of rape culture in the film industry; and the digital visuality of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s virtual reality experience Carne y arena.
Contributes to the decolonizing of thinking by including scholars from various continents discussing screen media from around the world, analysed through engagement with thinkers not typically thought of when considering screen ethics (e.g. María Lugones, Françoise Vergès, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Kalpana Sheshadri-Crooks, José Esteban Muñoz).
Columbo is fifty years old. A global smash in the 1970s, it is now a cult TV favourite. What is t... more Columbo is fifty years old. A global smash in the 1970s, it is now a cult TV favourite. What is the reason for this enduring popularity? In this fascinating exploration of a television classic, David Martin-Jones argues that Columbo reveals how our current globalized world – of 24/7 capital, invasive surveillance and online labour – emerged in the late 20th century. Exploring everything from the influences on Falk’s iconic acting style to the show’s depiction of Los Angeles, Martin-Jones illuminates how our attention is channelled, via technologies like television and computers, to influence how we perform, learn, police and locate ourselves in today’s world. Columbo emerged alongside shows like Kojak and The Rockford Files, but re-viewing the series today reveals how contemporary television hits – from Elementary to The Purge – continue to shape how and why we pay attention 24/7.
When is it OK to lie about the past? If history is a story, then everyone knows that the 'officia... more When is it OK to lie about the past? If history is a story, then everyone knows that the 'official story' is told by the winners. No matter what we may know about how the past really happened, history is as it is recorded: this is what George Orwell called doublethink. But what happens to all the lost, forgotten, censored, and disappeared pasts of world history? Cinema Against Doublethink uncovers how a world of cinemas acts as a giant archive of these lost pasts, a vast virtual store of the world’s memories. The most enchanting and disturbing films of recent years – Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives, Nostalgia for the Light, Even the Rain, The Act of Killing, Carancho, Lady Vengeance – create ethical encounters with these lost pasts, covering vast swathes of the planet and crossing huge eras of time. Analysed using the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze (the time-image) and Enrique Dussel (transmodern ethics), the multitudinous cinemas of the world are shown to speak out against doublethink, countering this biggest lie of all with their myriad 'false' versions of world history. Cinema, acting against doublethink, remains a powerful agent for reclaiming the truth of history for the 'post-truth' era.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE ON SCRIBD.
Deleuze’s Cinema books continue to cause controversy. Althou... more THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE ON SCRIBD.
Deleuze’s Cinema books continue to cause controversy. Although they offer radical new ways of understanding cinema, his conclusions often seem strikingly Eurocentric. Deleuze and World Cinemas explores what happens when Deleuze’s ideas are brought into contact with the films he did not discuss, those from Europe and the USA (from Georges Méliès to Michael Mann) and a range of world cinemas – including Bollywood blockbusters, Hong Kong action movies, Argentine melodramas and South Korean science fiction movies. These emergent encounters demonstrate the need for the constant adaptation and reinterpretation of Deleuze’s findings if they are to have continued relevance, especially for cinema’s contemporary engagement with the aftermath of the Cold War and the global dominance of neoliberal globalization.
What is your favourite fantasy Scotland? Perhaps you enjoyed Whisky Galore! or Brigadoon, or mayb... more What is your favourite fantasy Scotland? Perhaps you enjoyed Whisky Galore! or Brigadoon, or maybe The Wicker Man is to your taste, Local Hero or Highlander? Yet have you also considered Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Rob Roy, Dog Soldiers, Danny the Dog, Festival, The Water Horse, Carla’s Song, Trainspotting and Red Road? Scotland: Global Cinema is the first book to focus exclusively on the unprecedented explosion of filmmaking in Scotland in the 1990s and 2000s. It explores the various cinematic fantasies of Scotland created by contemporary filmmakers from all over the world (including Scotland, England, France, the US and India), who braved the weather to shoot in Scotland.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE ON SCRIBD.
Deleuze disdains easy answers. Yet easy answers to Deleuze ... more THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE ON SCRIBD.
Deleuze disdains easy answers. Yet easy answers to Deleuze are what students need. Without reducing Deleuze’s complex body of thought to simplistic solutions, this very contemporary guide leads the reader into the world of Deleuze’s spiralling thought through concrete examples from art, film, TV and even computer games. From Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Cell to Pac Man and Doom, and from the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, Coco Fusco and Rachel Whiteread to Lost and Doctor Who, this easily digestible introduction looks at the key ideas promoted by Deleuze, both in his own work and in his notoriously difficult collaborations with Felix Guattari, to make them both fresh and relevant to the visual arts today.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE ON SCRIBD.
Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity challenges the tradit... more THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE ON SCRIBD.
Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity challenges the traditional use of Deleuze’s philosophy to examine European art cinema. It explores how Deleuze can be used to analyse national identity across a range of different cinemas. Focusing on narrative time it combines a Deleuzean approach with a vast range of non-traditional material. The films discussed are contemporary and popular (either financial or cult successes), and include, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Terminator 3, Memento, Saving Private Ryan, Run Lola Run, Sliding Doors, Chaos, and Peppermint Candy. Each film is examined in light of a major historical event – including 9/11, German reunification, and the Asian economic crisis – and the impact it has had on individual nations.
Free to access for 60 days from 23/08/18: https://rdcu.be/4ft1
This edited collection, includin... more Free to access for 60 days from 23/08/18: https://rdcu.be/4ft1
This edited collection, including contributors from the disciplines of art history, film studies, cultural geography and cultural anthropology, explores ways in which islands in the north of England and Scotland have provided space for a variety of visual-cultural practices and forms of creative expression which have informed our understanding of the world. Simultaneously, the chapters reflect upon the importance of these islands as a space in which, and with which, to contemplate the pressures and the possibilities within contemporary society. This book makes a timely and original contribution to the developing field of island studies, and will be of interest to scholars studying issues of place, community and the peripheries.
Deleuze and Film explores how different films from around the world 'think' about topics like his... more Deleuze and Film explores how different films from around the world 'think' about topics like history, national identity, geopolitics, ethics, gender, genre, affect, religion, surveillance culture, digital aesthetics and the body. Mapping the global diversity of this cinematic thinking, this book greatly expands upon the range of films discussed in Deleuze's Cinema books.
Key Features
Analyses several Asian films, including Japan's most famous monster movie Godzilla, the colourful Thai western Tears of the Black Tiger, the South Korean road movie Traces of Love and the Iranian comedy The Lizard
Discusses American film noir, recent European art films such as Red Road and The Lives of Others and Hollywood CGI Blockbusters including Hellboy and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Includes a dedicated chapter on the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir
Studies host of different directors from Rainer Werner Fassbinder to Baz Luhrmann
"http://wsupress.wayne.edu/books/detail/cinema-periphery
"
Book Series: Thinking Cinema by David Martin-Jones
"Thinking Cinema" Book Series (Bloomsbury)
The Bloomsbury Thinking Cinema series publishes original, innovative monographs that explore enco... more The Bloomsbury Thinking Cinema series publishes original, innovative monographs that explore encounters between film, philosophy, and theory. The series aims to promote research at the intersection of film and philosophical or theoretical ideas. Books in the series are distinguishable by their enhancement of knowledge by thinking with, about, or through cinema. Typically one of two approaches is taken:
• explorations of prevalent themes and concerns surrounding cinema that can be addressed theoretically or philosophically
• theoretical or philosophical issues that can be examined through analysis of films
A broad and diverse range of topics is appropriate to the series. Possible themes, concerns or issues include, but are not limited to, aesthetics, history, politics/geopolitics, ethics, identities and their construction, authorship, perception, cognition, society, religion, war, mind, time, affect and embodiment. Books in the series derive their thinking from continental or analytical philosophy, critical and cultural theory, film theory, or other relevant frameworks. Typically such analysis will be grounded contextually, for example through a focus on an identifiable body of films, filmmaker or filmmakers, genre/mode, national or transnational cinema, film industry, or distribution network.
Series Editors: David Martin-Jones (University of Glasgow), Sarah Cooper (King’s College, University of London).
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/thinking-cinema
Online webpage for the launch of the Bloomsbury "Thinking Cinema" Book Series. It was held in Jul... more Online webpage for the launch of the Bloomsbury "Thinking Cinema" Book Series. It was held in July 2014, at Film-Philosophy VII.
Includes audio of launch event, and DV interview with author of volume one, "Deleuze, Japanese Cinema and the Atomic Bomb", Dr David Deamer.
Online Audio Files by David Martin-Jones
Online Resource by David Martin-Jones
A guide to the locations which have featured in films, from throughout Scotland.
I am not the a... more A guide to the locations which have featured in films, from throughout Scotland.
I am not the author of this, Visit Scotland is the author, I did some research and wrote the foreword.
Deleuzecinema.com facilitates international networking and collaboration amongst people intereste... more Deleuzecinema.com facilitates international networking and collaboration amongst people interested in Gilles Deleuze and cinema. The site contains a database of people and resources related to Deleuze and cinema (including TV, new media and visual culture). It enables discussion of topics of interest to its members, and disseminates announcements and news items.
The site is open access and its content available to everyone. Registered users can contribute content, build a profile for themselves, enter discussion, or post news items. We welcome participation from people all over the world in any language.
Editors: David Martin-Jones and Matthew Holtmeier
Papers by David Martin-Jones
Formas de Contar: Estudios sobre ficción en el cine y el audiovisual uruguayos, eds Cecilia Lacruz; Georgina Torello; Pablo Alvira , 2024
Contemporary Screen Ethics, 2023
Studies in Spanish & Latin-American Cinemas, 2019
This article includes interviews with three contemporary Uruguayan film directors, Guillermo Casa... more This article includes interviews with three contemporary Uruguayan film directors, Guillermo Casanova, Federico Veiroj and Silvana Camors. They answer questions about the state of cinema in contemporary Uruguay, offering varying perspectives on different aspects of Uruguayan film culture, from issues surrounding funding and distribution to the role of digital technology and the importance of maintaining film archives. Although the filmmakers identify numerous difficulties for Uruguayan filmmakers, especially at the level of institutional and financial support, they nonetheless remain grimly optimistic that Uruguayan cinema has a future.
Film-Philosophy, 2010
... and the worldwide spread of "world cinemas", what role does theory or philo... more ... and the worldwide spread of "world cinemas", what role does theory or philosophy play in helping us understand cinema, and indeed, what role can cinema play in transforming ... In 2008 he was a keynote speaker at the inaugural Film and Philosophy conference at UWE, Bristol. ...
Studies in Spanish & Latin-American Cinemas, 2019
This introduction to the special issue on Uruguayan cinema outlines the unifying thematic (of exp... more This introduction to the special issue on Uruguayan cinema outlines the unifying thematic (of exploring contemporary Uruguayan cinemas) and the manner of exploration (from outside the country looking in, and, from inside looking out – a ‘hermeneutic circle’). It also situates the issue with respect to the field of scholarly work on Uruguayan cinema (exploring reasons behind the relative lack of scholarly interest in Uruguayan filmmaking), and Latin American cinema more broadly, before briefly discussing the articles in turn.
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Books by David Martin-Jones
The collection advocates looking anew at the global complexity and diversity of such ethical issues across various screen media: from Netflix movies to VR, from Chinese romcoms to Brazilian pornochanchadas, from documentaries to drone warfare, from Jordan Peele movies to Google Earth. The analysis exposes the ethical tension between the inclusions and exclusions of global structural inequality (the identities of the haves, the absences of the have nots), alongside the need to understand our collective belonging to the planet demanded by the climate crisis. Informing the analysis, established thinkers like Deleuze, Irigaray, Jameson and Rancière are joined by an array of different voices – Ferreira da Silva, Gill, Lugones, Milroy, Muñoz, Sheshadri-Crooks, Vergès – to unlock contemporary screen ethics.
Includes such diverse examples as: intersectional feminist ethics (from the housemaid in Brazilian “Big House” dramas to Carol Morley documentaries); the human/nature dichotomy in John Akomfrah’s art installations and Bong Joon-ho’s “superpig” thriller Okja; race in Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us and Luisa Omielan’s stand-up comedy on BBC television; the memory of traumatic Cold War pasts in The Look of Silence (Indonesia) and Though I am Gone (China); Nina Wu’s exploration of rape culture in the film industry; and the digital visuality of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s virtual reality experience Carne y arena.
Contributes to the decolonizing of thinking by including scholars from various continents discussing screen media from around the world, analysed through engagement with thinkers not typically thought of when considering screen ethics (e.g. María Lugones, Françoise Vergès, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Kalpana Sheshadri-Crooks, José Esteban Muñoz).
Deleuze’s Cinema books continue to cause controversy. Although they offer radical new ways of understanding cinema, his conclusions often seem strikingly Eurocentric. Deleuze and World Cinemas explores what happens when Deleuze’s ideas are brought into contact with the films he did not discuss, those from Europe and the USA (from Georges Méliès to Michael Mann) and a range of world cinemas – including Bollywood blockbusters, Hong Kong action movies, Argentine melodramas and South Korean science fiction movies. These emergent encounters demonstrate the need for the constant adaptation and reinterpretation of Deleuze’s findings if they are to have continued relevance, especially for cinema’s contemporary engagement with the aftermath of the Cold War and the global dominance of neoliberal globalization.
Deleuze disdains easy answers. Yet easy answers to Deleuze are what students need. Without reducing Deleuze’s complex body of thought to simplistic solutions, this very contemporary guide leads the reader into the world of Deleuze’s spiralling thought through concrete examples from art, film, TV and even computer games. From Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Cell to Pac Man and Doom, and from the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, Coco Fusco and Rachel Whiteread to Lost and Doctor Who, this easily digestible introduction looks at the key ideas promoted by Deleuze, both in his own work and in his notoriously difficult collaborations with Felix Guattari, to make them both fresh and relevant to the visual arts today.
Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity challenges the traditional use of Deleuze’s philosophy to examine European art cinema. It explores how Deleuze can be used to analyse national identity across a range of different cinemas. Focusing on narrative time it combines a Deleuzean approach with a vast range of non-traditional material. The films discussed are contemporary and popular (either financial or cult successes), and include, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Terminator 3, Memento, Saving Private Ryan, Run Lola Run, Sliding Doors, Chaos, and Peppermint Candy. Each film is examined in light of a major historical event – including 9/11, German reunification, and the Asian economic crisis – and the impact it has had on individual nations.
This edited collection, including contributors from the disciplines of art history, film studies, cultural geography and cultural anthropology, explores ways in which islands in the north of England and Scotland have provided space for a variety of visual-cultural practices and forms of creative expression which have informed our understanding of the world. Simultaneously, the chapters reflect upon the importance of these islands as a space in which, and with which, to contemplate the pressures and the possibilities within contemporary society. This book makes a timely and original contribution to the developing field of island studies, and will be of interest to scholars studying issues of place, community and the peripheries.
Key Features
Analyses several Asian films, including Japan's most famous monster movie Godzilla, the colourful Thai western Tears of the Black Tiger, the South Korean road movie Traces of Love and the Iranian comedy The Lizard
Discusses American film noir, recent European art films such as Red Road and The Lives of Others and Hollywood CGI Blockbusters including Hellboy and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Includes a dedicated chapter on the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir
Studies host of different directors from Rainer Werner Fassbinder to Baz Luhrmann
Book Series: Thinking Cinema by David Martin-Jones
• explorations of prevalent themes and concerns surrounding cinema that can be addressed theoretically or philosophically
• theoretical or philosophical issues that can be examined through analysis of films
A broad and diverse range of topics is appropriate to the series. Possible themes, concerns or issues include, but are not limited to, aesthetics, history, politics/geopolitics, ethics, identities and their construction, authorship, perception, cognition, society, religion, war, mind, time, affect and embodiment. Books in the series derive their thinking from continental or analytical philosophy, critical and cultural theory, film theory, or other relevant frameworks. Typically such analysis will be grounded contextually, for example through a focus on an identifiable body of films, filmmaker or filmmakers, genre/mode, national or transnational cinema, film industry, or distribution network.
Series Editors: David Martin-Jones (University of Glasgow), Sarah Cooper (King’s College, University of London).
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/thinking-cinema
Includes audio of launch event, and DV interview with author of volume one, "Deleuze, Japanese Cinema and the Atomic Bomb", Dr David Deamer.
Online Audio Files by David Martin-Jones
http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/cca/research/theatrefilmandtelevision/dmjchinakeynote/
Online Resource by David Martin-Jones
I am not the author of this, Visit Scotland is the author, I did some research and wrote the foreword.
The site is open access and its content available to everyone. Registered users can contribute content, build a profile for themselves, enter discussion, or post news items. We welcome participation from people all over the world in any language.
Editors: David Martin-Jones and Matthew Holtmeier
Papers by David Martin-Jones
The collection advocates looking anew at the global complexity and diversity of such ethical issues across various screen media: from Netflix movies to VR, from Chinese romcoms to Brazilian pornochanchadas, from documentaries to drone warfare, from Jordan Peele movies to Google Earth. The analysis exposes the ethical tension between the inclusions and exclusions of global structural inequality (the identities of the haves, the absences of the have nots), alongside the need to understand our collective belonging to the planet demanded by the climate crisis. Informing the analysis, established thinkers like Deleuze, Irigaray, Jameson and Rancière are joined by an array of different voices – Ferreira da Silva, Gill, Lugones, Milroy, Muñoz, Sheshadri-Crooks, Vergès – to unlock contemporary screen ethics.
Includes such diverse examples as: intersectional feminist ethics (from the housemaid in Brazilian “Big House” dramas to Carol Morley documentaries); the human/nature dichotomy in John Akomfrah’s art installations and Bong Joon-ho’s “superpig” thriller Okja; race in Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us and Luisa Omielan’s stand-up comedy on BBC television; the memory of traumatic Cold War pasts in The Look of Silence (Indonesia) and Though I am Gone (China); Nina Wu’s exploration of rape culture in the film industry; and the digital visuality of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s virtual reality experience Carne y arena.
Contributes to the decolonizing of thinking by including scholars from various continents discussing screen media from around the world, analysed through engagement with thinkers not typically thought of when considering screen ethics (e.g. María Lugones, Françoise Vergès, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Kalpana Sheshadri-Crooks, José Esteban Muñoz).
Deleuze’s Cinema books continue to cause controversy. Although they offer radical new ways of understanding cinema, his conclusions often seem strikingly Eurocentric. Deleuze and World Cinemas explores what happens when Deleuze’s ideas are brought into contact with the films he did not discuss, those from Europe and the USA (from Georges Méliès to Michael Mann) and a range of world cinemas – including Bollywood blockbusters, Hong Kong action movies, Argentine melodramas and South Korean science fiction movies. These emergent encounters demonstrate the need for the constant adaptation and reinterpretation of Deleuze’s findings if they are to have continued relevance, especially for cinema’s contemporary engagement with the aftermath of the Cold War and the global dominance of neoliberal globalization.
Deleuze disdains easy answers. Yet easy answers to Deleuze are what students need. Without reducing Deleuze’s complex body of thought to simplistic solutions, this very contemporary guide leads the reader into the world of Deleuze’s spiralling thought through concrete examples from art, film, TV and even computer games. From Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Cell to Pac Man and Doom, and from the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, Coco Fusco and Rachel Whiteread to Lost and Doctor Who, this easily digestible introduction looks at the key ideas promoted by Deleuze, both in his own work and in his notoriously difficult collaborations with Felix Guattari, to make them both fresh and relevant to the visual arts today.
Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity challenges the traditional use of Deleuze’s philosophy to examine European art cinema. It explores how Deleuze can be used to analyse national identity across a range of different cinemas. Focusing on narrative time it combines a Deleuzean approach with a vast range of non-traditional material. The films discussed are contemporary and popular (either financial or cult successes), and include, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Terminator 3, Memento, Saving Private Ryan, Run Lola Run, Sliding Doors, Chaos, and Peppermint Candy. Each film is examined in light of a major historical event – including 9/11, German reunification, and the Asian economic crisis – and the impact it has had on individual nations.
This edited collection, including contributors from the disciplines of art history, film studies, cultural geography and cultural anthropology, explores ways in which islands in the north of England and Scotland have provided space for a variety of visual-cultural practices and forms of creative expression which have informed our understanding of the world. Simultaneously, the chapters reflect upon the importance of these islands as a space in which, and with which, to contemplate the pressures and the possibilities within contemporary society. This book makes a timely and original contribution to the developing field of island studies, and will be of interest to scholars studying issues of place, community and the peripheries.
Key Features
Analyses several Asian films, including Japan's most famous monster movie Godzilla, the colourful Thai western Tears of the Black Tiger, the South Korean road movie Traces of Love and the Iranian comedy The Lizard
Discusses American film noir, recent European art films such as Red Road and The Lives of Others and Hollywood CGI Blockbusters including Hellboy and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Includes a dedicated chapter on the animated documentary Waltz with Bashir
Studies host of different directors from Rainer Werner Fassbinder to Baz Luhrmann
• explorations of prevalent themes and concerns surrounding cinema that can be addressed theoretically or philosophically
• theoretical or philosophical issues that can be examined through analysis of films
A broad and diverse range of topics is appropriate to the series. Possible themes, concerns or issues include, but are not limited to, aesthetics, history, politics/geopolitics, ethics, identities and their construction, authorship, perception, cognition, society, religion, war, mind, time, affect and embodiment. Books in the series derive their thinking from continental or analytical philosophy, critical and cultural theory, film theory, or other relevant frameworks. Typically such analysis will be grounded contextually, for example through a focus on an identifiable body of films, filmmaker or filmmakers, genre/mode, national or transnational cinema, film industry, or distribution network.
Series Editors: David Martin-Jones (University of Glasgow), Sarah Cooper (King’s College, University of London).
http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/series/thinking-cinema
Includes audio of launch event, and DV interview with author of volume one, "Deleuze, Japanese Cinema and the Atomic Bomb", Dr David Deamer.
http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/cca/research/theatrefilmandtelevision/dmjchinakeynote/
I am not the author of this, Visit Scotland is the author, I did some research and wrote the foreword.
The site is open access and its content available to everyone. Registered users can contribute content, build a profile for themselves, enter discussion, or post news items. We welcome participation from people all over the world in any language.
Editors: David Martin-Jones and Matthew Holtmeier
(Alasdair Maclean, 1998), but by way of Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle (Simon Miller, 2007), and Siubhlachan/The Traveller (Uisdean Murray, 2009) – inspired by the painter William McTaggart’s depictions of children and philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s notion of time in cinema – demonstrates how these films explore the link between time and landscape using child protagonists. This is not to suggest that the Gàidhealtachd is somehow ‘lost in time’, in the manner of a ‘Brigadoon’. Rather, in these films this temporal exploration negotiates a pull between two possible cultures, and two possible futures. One potentially invigorates the Gàidhealtachd, maintaining the link between its people, its history and its landscape. The other is related to the dangers of an exodus from the Gàidhealtachd, specifically the islands, to lowland Scottish cities like Glasgow. These contrary pulls on the region are rendered all the more tangible due to the central presence of the child, a figure representing the continuation of Gaelic culture. In the process, the geographical position of the Gàidhealtachd is reconsidered, not as a region situated in the north of Scotland or Britain necessarily, but at a frontier or cultural border zone (a feature emphasized by the physical separation of the islands from the mainland) onto an uncertain future, which is depicted as being, in this sense, equitable with the American (Wild) West of the nineteenth century.
Guzmán dans le désert d’Atacama au Chili. Il entremêle deux récits.
L’un détaille les activités d’astronomes observant le ciel au-dessus du
paysage aride du désert, l’autre explore dans le paysage désertique les
traces de l’histoire perdue du Chili moderne aussi bien que de celle d’il
y a des milliers d’années. Le désert est donc présenté d’abord comme
un paysage aussi étranger que celui de la planète Mars, avant que le
documentaire se focalise sur l’histoire enfouie dans cette vaste solitude.
Dans les deux cas – regardant le ciel vers le haut et la terre vers
le bas – le documentaire médite sur le sens de la recherche du passé.
Cinematic understandings of Scotland suggest that many may understand the position of Scotland within the State of Britain to provide one necessary or at least desirable, gateway to the wider world. This is not to say it is the only one, but nevertheless, it is one, and has been since the failed Darien project demonstrated the possibilities of the Union for Scotland’s ability to reach out into the world and make the most of the opportunities it offers to a small nation (Watt, 2007). The recent musical, Sunshine on Leith (2013) in particular, positions the Union as one of several such gateways, for Scots (and others) to enter and exit through, which have both economic benefit and long established historical and cultural resonances. This is also not to say, of course, that I do not consider Scotland a nation, but rather a gate. This would be ludicrous. To be clear, then, I mean that the kind of identities which cinema imagines Scotland to have corresponds to those – sometimes discussed in terms of transnational identities – of a nation which exists in connection to others.
broadly identifiable philosophical or cosmological conception of time (from the Aristotelian emphasis of Hollywood’s continuity editing to the dharmic cycles of Bollywood’s distinctive episodic cinema of spectacles), the focus here is on how modernity is considered, temporally, in films from different parts of the
world. This process begins with a brief introduction to the most important and widely-used concept of cinematic time, that of Gilles Deleuze’s time-image.
From the range of different examples that can be offered to outline a varied range of cinematic temporalities of modernity, the Brazilian film directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, ‘Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês/How Tasty was my Little Frenchman’ (1971) is singled out for focused analysis. This rare but wonderful film, known for its postcolonial importance (along with
the engaging viewing pleasures it offers, of black humour, full frontal nudity, human sacrifice and cannibalism), provides an opportunity to reconsider the specific meaning of the time-image in relation to world history. When seen in light of the conclusions of philosophers writing in the wake of Immanuel
Wallerstein’s world systems analysis, like Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri and Aníbal Quijano, the time-image can be said to express a five-hundred-year history of modernity that commences with the discovery of the Americas. This is not solely to provide a different angle from which to consider the concept
of the time-image. Rather, as is noted in the conclusion, it is an attempt to shed new light on the varied cinematic temporalities of modernity evident in contemporary world cinemas, and is therefore a first step towards a non-Eurocentric film-philosophy.
To understand how cinema can function as the ethical barometer for transnational encounters, interactions that will only increase in number and frequency during the twenty-first century, it is first necessary to briefly establish the parameters of the field of enquiry – both in terms of world cinemas, and film-philosophy. Once this is done, Dussel’s work will be brought into contact with a European film of the 1990s: La promesse/The Promise (1996) by the Belgian filmmaking brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. This film demonstrates the emphasis on intercultural interactions which has been gathering pace in various world cinemas since the close of the twentieth century. Analysis of the pivotal moments of face to face interaction in La Promesse demonstrates how Dussel’s historically and politically-informed ethics can illuminate the meditation on cultural and economic relations between globalization’s decentred centres and ubiquitous peripheries that takes place in character interaction. "