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Theorising National Cinema. Ed. Valentina Vitali & Paul Willemen. London: BFI Publishing, 2006. x + 326 pp. £60.00 (hardback); £16.99 (paperback). ISBN 1–844–57119–X/57120–3, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 44, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 100–101, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqm113
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Extract
This new anthology of essays is a welcome volume that explores one of the oldest approaches to studying cinema: that concerned with the national dimension of its culture, politics, economics and history. As with other early frameworks, such as auteur theory, it has recently been going through a period of transformation, if not crisis. Vitali and Willemen have reflected this by selecting essays that are critically aware of the “complex dialectic between national identity and globalisation” (p. 182), which has undermined the notion of national cultures in recent times. In order to survey this condition thoroughly, the book has been divided into three parts, Theories, Histories and Crossroads, thus enabling us to engage with the subject from various angles. By choosing studies that focus on transnational cinemas, the editors emphasise the national as a concept in crisis, and yet it is notable that they still use specific national cinemas as case studies (Britain and Ireland included) to introduce many of the essays. The two contributions on Japanese cinema are probably the most successful in demonstrating how the concept of the national falls short, while at the same time remaining an indispensable tool for the study of cinema as an industry and culture.
