European Cinema in Motion: Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe

European Cinema in Motion Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe

Daniela Berghahn Claudia Sternberg

European Cinema in Motion

Also by Daniela Berghahn GERMAN STUDIES IN TRANSITION (co-authored with Eva Kolinsky and Thomas Scharf ) HOLLYWOOD BEHIND THE WALL: The Cinema of East Germany MILLENNIAL ESSAYS ON FILM AND OTHER GERMAN STUDIES (co-edited with Alan Bance) UNITY AND DIVERSITY IN THE NEW EUROPE (co-edited with Barrie Axford and Nick Hewlett)

Also by Claudia Sternberg BIDDING FOR THE MAINSTREAM? Black and Asian British Film since the 1990s (with Barbara Korte) WRITTEN FOR THE SCREEN: The American Motion-Picture Screenplay As Text

European Cinema in Motion Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe

Edited by

Daniela Berghahn and

Claudia Sternberg

Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg 2010 Individual chapters © Contributors 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–27898–1 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents List of Illustrations

vii

Acknowledgements

x

Notes on Contributors

xii

Introduction Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg 1

Locating Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg

1

12

2

Migration and Cinematic Process in Post-Cold War Europe Dina Iordanova

3

State and Other Funding for Migrant, Diasporic and World Cinemas in Europe Anne Jäckel

76

Nostalgic Journeys in Post-Soviet Cinema: Towards a Lost Home? Birgit Beumers

96

4

5

6

7

8

9

Transculturation in German and Spanish Migrant and Diasporic Cinema: On Constrained Spaces and Minor Intimacies in Princesses and A Little Bit of Freedom Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez

50

114

The Dark Side of Hybridity: Contemporary Black and Asian British Cinema Sarita Malik

132

Body Matters: Immigrants in Recent Spanish, Italian and Greek Cinemas Isabel Santaolalla

152

Gendering Diaspora: The Work of Diasporic Women Film-Makers in Western Europe Carrie Tarr

175

Queering the Diaspora James S. Williams

196 v

vi

10

Contents

Sound Bridges: Transnational Mobility as Ironic Melodrama Deniz Göktürk

215

11 Coming of Age in ‘the Hood’: The Diasporic Youth Film and Questions of Genre Daniela Berghahn

235

12

256

Migration, Diaspora and Metacinematic Reflection Claudia Sternberg

Future Imperfect: Some Onward Perspectives on Migrant and Diasporic Film Practice Gareth Jones

275

Filmography

293

Index

301

Illustrations Title image Courtesy of Doublemoon Records From the Album Cover of Baba Zula Photo by Gökben Sikrak Art Director Baba Zula 4.1 Merging the past and the present in Nostalgia (1983) 4.2 The Wedding Chest (2006) – Aidar (Bolot Tentimyshov) and Isabelle (Natacha Régnier). Courtesy of the film’s producer, Evgeniya Tirdatova 4.3 Steppe Express (2005) – Sauliye (Aizhan Aitenova) and Etienne (François Labbé). Courtesy of Eurasia Film Festival and Amanzhol Aituarov 5.1 Speaking and listening – Caye (Candela Peña) and Zulema (Micaela Nevárez) in Princesses (2005). Photo courtesy of Fernando Léon de Arenoa 5.2 Zulema and Caye in Princesses (2005). Photo courtesy of Fernando Léon de Arenoa 5.3 Baran (Cagda Bozkurt) and his camera in Hamburg’s St Pauli (A Little Bit of Freedom 2003). Courtesy of Peter Stockhaus Filmproduktion 5.4 Baran, Chernor (Leroy Delmar) and the ‘Käptn’ (Thomas Ebermann) in A Little Bit of Freedom. Courtesy of Peter Stockhaus Filmproduktion 6.1 For the global market – William Darcy (Martin Henderson) and Lalita Bakshi (Ashwarya Rai) in Bride and Prejudice (2004) 6.2 East is East (1999) – The Khan children, as British as their Salford neighbours. Courtesy of Film 4 6.3 ‘Keeping it real’ – the cast of Kidulthood (2006). Courtesy of Hanway Films Limited 7.1 Flowers from Another World (1999) – The reverse ‘colonisation’ of Spain by the Cuban Milady (Marilyn Torres). With permission from Producciones La iguana s.l. 7.2 Bwana (1996) – The desirable, sacrificial body of the black African male (Emilio Buale). With permission from Video Mercury Films, S.A. vii

101

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7.3

7.4

7.5

8.1

8.2

8.3

8.4

9.1

9.2

9.3

9.4 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5

Illustrations

From the Edge of the City (1998) – The eroticised spectacle of Pontian masculinity (Stathis Papadopoulous as Sasha). Courtesy of Peccadillo Pictures Discovering the Orientalist realm of the senses – Francesco (Alessandro Gassman) and Mehmet (Mehmet Günsür) in Hamam (1997) Lamerica (1994) – Undifferentiated bodies: the Italian Gino (Enrico Lo Verso) among his ‘undesirable’ Albanian travel companions. Permission from Arena Films Tensions within the diasporic Jewish family in Little Jerusalem (2004). Courtesy of Karin Albou and Gloria Films Ruža and Ana (right) in the mountains near Zurich in Das Fräulein (2005). Courtesy of Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion The family home as the site of migrant mother Zouina’s silent rebellion in Inch’Allah Sunday (2001). Permission from Yamina Benguigui and Bandits Productions Nina, Bobbi and Lisa’s queer sexuality leads to the celebration of difference in Nina’s Heavenly Delights (2006). Courtesy of Pratibha Parmar and Kali Films Reading his girlfriend’s farewell letter, dreaming of his new man – Karim (Karim Tarek) in The Road to Love (2002). Courtesy of Rémi Lange Listening and translating (Yasmine Belmadi, Edouard Nikitine, Stéphanie Michelini) – new ways of being in Wild Side (2004) The heterosexual imperative – Bilidikid (Erdal Yildiz) seducing Lola (Gandi Mukli) in Lola + Bilidikid (1998). Courtesy of zero fiction film Fernanda (Ingrid de Souza) working the streets of Milan on her own terms in Princesa (2002) Musical interludes in Head-On (2004). © Wüste/Corazon Wedding in Hamburg: Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) and Cahit (Birol Ünel). © Wüste/Corazon Brief reunion in Istanbul: Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) and Cahit (Birol Ünel). © Wüste/Corazon Film poster Cholera Street (1997) Film poster Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (2005). Courtesy of Doublemoon Records, from the Album Cover of Baba Zula, photo by Gökben Sikrak, art director Baba Zula

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206 209 218 220 220 225

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Boyz ’n the Hood (USA 1991) – On the wrong track. © 1991, 1992 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures 11.2 Bullet Boy (UK 2004) – Ricky (Ashley Walters) about to be shot dead. Courtesy of Verve Pictures 11.3 Samia (France 2000) – Outside is France, in here is Algeria! Courtesy of Philippe Faucon 11.4 Bend It Like Beckham (2002) – Jess (Parminder Nagra), citizen of plural worlds 11.5 East Is East (1999) – Nazir (Ian Aspinall) masquerading in traditional Pakistani wedding attire. Courtesy of Film 4 12.1 Shared visual pleasure – The Bollywood ‘effect’ in Anam (2001). © Wüste/Bavaria 12.2 The apparatus as silent witness – amateur autoethnography in A Little Bit of Freedom (2004). Courtesy of Peter Stockhaus Filmproduktion 12.3 ‘Life will have to end, just like a film’ – metacinematic closure in Short Sharp Shock (1998). © Wüste/Bavaria

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242 242 244 247 248 260

266 271

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain permission for the use of copyright material. The editors and publisher apologise for any omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any additions that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

Acknowledgements The present volume was made possible by and grew out of the international Research Network Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Britain (AHRC) from 2006 to 2008. The Network was part of the AHRC’s strategic initiative Diasporas, Migration and Identities (DMI), and we wish to thank the AHRC and particularly Kim Knott, the director of the DMI programme, for providing not only the Network’s budget, but also an inspiring intellectual infrastructure during and beyond the funding period. The Network held two international conferences at Lincoln College, Oxford, in 2006, and at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, London, in 2007. We gratefully acknowledge the generous additional funding Margaret Forrest provided for these conferences and accompanying film screenings. We also wish to extend our thanks to John Akomfrah, Abdelkrim Bahloul, Pawel Pawlikowski, Ayşe Polat, Eve Gabereau, Thierry Lenouvel, Ralph Schwingel and Parminder Vir, OBE, for sharing their expertise and experience at these events and thus ensuring a productive dialogue between practitioners, audiences and researchers. We are equally indebted to our conference speakers and delegates, whose input informed and shaped the contributions to this volume. Our warmest thanks go to the Network members themselves – Asu Aksoy, Birgit Beumers, Dina Iordanova, Gareth Jones, Sarita Malik, Dominique Nasta, Isabel Santaolalla and Carrie Tarr. Working together over the course of several years and being able to draw, again and again, on each other’s complementary expertise, ranging from the analytical and theoretical to the cultural and linguistic, has provided an unusually sustained platform for discussion and critique. It has also been great fun and allowed us to forge bonds for future collaboration. Included in our thanks are also those contributors who were not members of the Network but who, through their additional vantage points, made the present volume much more complete. We are most grateful to Christabel Scaife, our commissioning editor at Palgrave, for embracing this book project so enthusiastically and for her extremely efficient support throughout. Further thanks go to the copy editor and the production team, Catherine Mitchell at Palgrave, James Bober and Anna Johnson, and those who supported the Network in other capacities: Chris Jennings of PageToScreen for developing and maintaining the project website (www.migrantcinema.net); Jackie Marty for her competent administrative support of the project; and Emma Morris and Rosemary Lambeth for helping with the organisation of the Network’s two conferences. Thanks also go to Royal Holloway (University of London), the University of Leeds, x

Acknowledgements

xi

Oxford Brookes University, the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies (University of London) and the University of Manchester, as well as the Phoenix Picture House in Oxford and the Ciné Lumière in London for providing additional resources and hosting workshops and film screenings. And finally, we would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to our respective partners, Chris and Brenda, for their patience, encouragement and feedback, and to our children Hannah, Zoë and Monroe for sparing us the time needed to complete this book.

Contributors Daniela Berghahn is Reader in Film Studies in the Media Arts Department at Royal Holloway, University of London. From 2006 to 2008 she was Project Leader of the international Research Network Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her monograph, Hollywood behind the Wall: The Cinema of East Germany (Manchester UP, 2005), is the first representative history of East German film culture from 1946 to the present. She edited Turkish German Dialogues on Screen, a special issue of New Cinemas (2009), and coedited Millennial Essays on Film and Other German Studies (2002) and Unity and Diversity in the New Europe (2000). She is currently researching a book on the representation of the diasporic family in cinema. Birgit Beumers is Reader in Russian at the University of Bristol. She completed her DPhil at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and specialises in contemporary Russian culture, especially cinema and theatre. Her recent publications include Nikita Mikhalkov: Between Nostalgia and Nationalism (2005), PopCulture: Russia! (2005) and A History of Russian Cinema (2009); she also edited 24 Frames: Russia and the Soviet Union (2007). She is editor of the online journal KinoKultura and of Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema. She is currently working on post-Soviet cinema and on the history of Russian animation. Deniz Göktürk is Associate Professor of German and Film Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her publications include a book on literary and cinematic imaginations of America in early twentieth-century German culture as well as numerous articles on migration, culture and cinema. She is co-editor of The German Cinema Book (BFI 2002), Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration 1955–2005 (University of California Press 2007) and Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Capital of Europe? (Routledge 2010). She is a co-founder of the electronic journal TRANSIT and leader of the Multicultural Germany/ Transnational Europe Project at the University of California, Berkeley. Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez is Senior Lecturer in Transcultural Studies in the School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester. She is co-director of the Migration and Diaspora Cultural Studies Network at the University of Manchester. She is author of Intellektuelle Migrantinnen (1999) and Migration, Domestic Work and Affect (2010) and co-author and editor of Decolonizing European Sociology (2010, with M. Boatcă and S. Costa), Borders, Homes, Migration (2004, with Caixeta, Tate and Vega), Spricht die Subalterne deutsch? Migration und postkoloniale Kritik (2003, with H. Steyerl) and Gouvernementalität (2003, with M. Pieper). She co-edited the special issue on Method after Foucault in the on-line journal Forum: Qualitative Social Research (2007). xii

Contributors xiii

Dina Iordanova is Professor of Film Studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. Formerly Head of Film Studies, Director of the Centre for Film Studies, she currently serves as a Provost. She has written extensively on non-Western cinematic traditions, Eastern European film, and cinema at the periphery; she explores cinema on a meta-national level and focuses on the dynamics of transnationalism. Monographs include Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and the Media (2001), Emir Kusturica (2002) and Cinema of the Other Europe (2003). More recently, she has been directing the Leverhulme Trust-sponsored project Dynamics of World Cinema on alternative channels of transnational film distribution. New work includes the edited collections The Festival Circuit (2009), Film Festivals and Imagined Communities (2010), Cinema at the Periphery (2010) and the co-written volume Moving People, Moving Images: Cinema and Trafficking in the New Europe (2010). Anne Jäckel is Visiting Research Fellow at the Faculty of Languages and European Studies, University of the West of England, Bristol. Her recent publications include numerous book chapters and journal articles on cinematographic co-productions, European cinemas and film policy. She is author of the pioneering study European Film Industries (2003). Gareth Jones is a television and film director/writer/producer, focusing particularly on multicultural and Holocaust concerns with The Trial of Klaus Barbie (1987), Shalom Salaam (1989), the documentary on Christianity and Judaism Au Nom du Même Père (1991) and the feature film Bonhoeffer: Die letzte Stufe (2000). His feature film Desire (2009) takes as its theme the cultural and emotional collision between two characters on either side of the migratory debate. He is a film consultant working in four languages for institutes across Europe and with his own production company Scenario Films Ltd. He teaches regularly at the DFFB in Berlin, Sarajevo Film Festival, Marubi Film School in Tirana, Euromed, and is Director of Studies for Scenario’s migrant and diasporic film development programme Babylon. He sits regularly on festival juries, most recently FADS at Amiens Film Festival and the Moroccan National Film Festival. He is a part-time PhD student in Holocaust Film in Germany and the Balkans at Cambridge University. Sarita Malik lectures in Media and Communications at Brunel University, London. Her research and writing has focused on issues of representation and identity within the context of media, cinema and the creative industries, and she has published widely on black and Asian British cinema. Publications include Representing Black Britain: Black and Asian Images on Television (Sage 2002) and numerous articles on racial and cultural identities – in relation to both media representation and social change in the UK. She is the guest editor of a special issue of the journal of South Asian Popular Culture on South Asian cinema (2009). Isabel Santaolalla is Professor of Spanish and Film Studies at Roehampton University, London. She has published on post-colonial literature, cultural

xiv Contributors

studies and film, with special emphasis on the representation of ethnicity and gender, in both Anglophone and Hispanic cultures. Her publications on cinema include works on John Ford’s The Quiet Man, Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever, Gurinder Chadha’s Bhaji on the Beach, Julio Medem’s Vacas and Imanol Uribe’s Bwana. She co-edited Luis Buñuel: New Readings (2004) and The Transnational in Iberian and Latin American Cinemas (2007), and authored Los ‘Otros’: Etnicidad y ‘raza’ en el cine español contemporáneo (2005). She has recently completed a book on Iciar Bollaín for Manchester University Press. Claudia Sternberg is Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. She was the co-coordinator of the international Research Network Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe (2006–8), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her research and publications have focused on screenwriting, black, Asian and Jewish British literature, film and television and media representations of the First World War since 1919. She is the co-author (with Barbara Korte) of Bidding for the Mainstream? Black and Asian British Film since the 1990s (2004) and guestedited Jewish Cultures, a special issue of the Journal for the Study of British Cultures (2009). Carrie Tarr is Professor of Film at Kingston University. Her publications include Diane Kurys (1999), Women, Immigration and Identity in France (as coeditor, 2000), Cinema and the Second Sex: Women’s Filmmaking in France in the 1980s and 1990s (with Brigitte Rollet, 2001), Reframing Difference: Beur and banlieue Cinema in France (2005) and A ‘Belle Epoque’? Women in French Society and Culture 1890–1914 (as co-editor, 2006). She also co-edited Focalising the Body in Contemporary Women’s Writing and Filmmaking, a special issue of Nottingham French Studies (2006), and Beur is Beautiful: Maghrebi-French Filmmaking, a supplement to Cineaste (2007), and guest edited French Cinema: Transnational Cinema?, a special issue of Modern & Contemporary France (2007). James S. Williams is Professor of Modern French Literature and Film at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of The Erotics of Passage: Pleasure, Politics, and Form in the Later Work of Marguerite Duras (1997), Camus’s La Peste (2000), The Cinema of Jean Cocteau (2006) and Jean Cocteau (2008) (part of Reaktion’s ‘Critical Lives’ series). He is also (co)editor of Gay Signatures: Gay and Lesbian Theory, Fiction and Film in France, 1945– 1995 (1998), Revisioning Duras: Film, Race, Sex (2000), and Gender and French Cinema (2001), as well as of a number of volumes on Jean-Luc Godard, including The Cinema Alone (2000), For Ever Godard (2004) and Jean-Luc Godard: Documents (2006) (catalogue of the Godard exhibition ‘Voyages(s) en Utopie’, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2006). He is currently completing a monograph, Space and Being in Contemporary French Cinema, and co-editing a volume entitled Rethinking May ’68.

Introduction Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg

Transnational mobility and migration belong to ‘the key forces of social transformation in the contemporary world’ (Castles 2002: 1144). Population movements during the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century have resulted in the formation of new diasporas (van Hear 1998, Cohen 2008), different in a number of ways from those of earlier decades and centuries, typically associated with forced displacement, persecution and enslavement. While migration, dispersal and resettlement are still charged with anxiety for migrating as well as receiving communities, the concept of diaspora has been significantly revalorised over recent decades. This is partly due to an almost inflationary use of the term, which is frequently loosely applied to expatriates, political refugees, alien residents and ethnic minorities (Cohen 2008: 1), and partly to technological advances in communications and transport, which have made exchanges between enduring transnational networks considerably faster and easier. Today’s diasporic communities are celebrated as ‘paragons of the transnational moment’ (Braziel and Mannur 2003: 6) and a diasporic subject position has become an asset rather than a liability, as can be seen with US President Barack Obama and other public figures who openly acknowledge and promote their ethnic ‘roots/routes’ or ‘dual heritage’. The significant impact migrant and diasporic communities have had on the social and cultural fabric of societies across the world has resulted in increased scholarly attention in the social sciences and the humanities. In British academia, research in this particular field has been supported by strategic initiatives of two major research councils, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The present volume grew out of an international Research Network that explored Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe (www.migrantcinema.net) and was funded, from 2006 to 2008, by the AHRC under the Diasporas, Migration and Identities programme (www. diasporas.ac.uk). The Network brought together ten researchers who, in consultation with film-makers, producers, distributors, policymakers and 1

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Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg

festival organisers, set out to study the developments in the field over the past thirty years. The findings of this collaboration, alongside a number of contributions from experts outside the Network, are collected in European Cinema in Motion. The research project and this collection of essays are based on the premise that migrant and diasporic film must be seen – alongside music – as the most significant and influential popular and artistic practice with regard to the (self-)representation of migrant and diasporic groups and their experiences and concerns. Migrant and diasporic cinema addresses questions of identity formation, challenges national and ethnocentric myths, and revisits and revises traditional historical narratives. Over the past thirty years European cinema has been transformed as a result of the increased visibility of film-makers with a migratory background and a growing interest in the facets and dynamics of postmodern multiculturalism. Representations of migrant and diasporic experiences and cross-cultural encounters have assumed a prominent position in cinematic narratives. Coupled with an eclectic mix of ‘marginal’, non-Western or non-European aesthetic paradigms and generic templates, these new influences have changed and revitalised European cinema. Recent examples of Maghrebi French, Turkish German and black and Asian British cinema, as well as films made by transnationally mobile film-makers from the Balkans and countries formerly contained in the Soviet Union, have won considerable critical acclaim, and a few have even captured international audiences. The book seeks to examine how films of migrant and diasporic film-makers have redefined our understanding of European identity as constructed and narrated in European national cinemas. By adopting a comparative perspective in the search for the commonalities and differences between migrant and diasporic cinemas across Europe, the contributions in this volume transcend the limitations of an analytical framework that privileges discrete national cinemas. We contend that the still prevalent critical paradigm that examines cinemas in terms of their national specificity does not adequately address the shift from the national to the transnational that has occurred in European and other cinemas across the world in recent decades. Although ‘transnational’ denotes first and foremost a particular critical approach, the shift from a national to a transnational perspective is not simply a choice of method in the context of European film studies. This shift has been fuelled by the long legacy of colonialism, the ongoing process of European integration, the geopolitical repercussions of the collapse of communism, continuing intra-European mobility and the influx of migrants and refugees from across the world. As a consequence of these proliferating migrations, European cultures and societies have witnessed a hitherto inconceivable diversification, fragmentation and hybridisation. This is reflected in a growing number of films made by migrant and diasporic filmmakers, which challenge a traditional understanding of national identity

Introduction 3

and what it means to be European. Their interventions and the refashioning of European nation states as ‘multicultural’ have been instrumental in shifting the cultural spaces occupied by migrant and diasporic communities from the margins to the centre. Europe and European cinema are well and truly in motion, but, in light of the second part of the title of the present volume, it is necessary to briefly delineate some of the limitations that qualify its scope and underlying principle. The complexity of migrant and diasporic experiences in Europe, as well as the manifold and reciprocal relationships of respective communities with the – still existing and signifying – nation states, national languages and majority cultures, cannot be fully accommodated here. This collection is concerned with cinematic representations, and it is important not to conflate filmic narratives with social reality, despite the frequent use of specific references to this reality and a stylistic preference for social realism. The volume brings together the work of researchers with diverse disciplinary, cultural and linguistic backgrounds and discusses a significant number of well and lesser-known productions. It purposely cuts across the East–West divide that is so deeply ingrained in most approaches to European cinema, even in the 2000s. It does not, however, offer a representative survey of migrant and diasporic cinema in all of Europe, neglecting, for instance, a number of ‘smaller’ cinemas such as those of the Netherlands and the Baltic countries. Despite the multilinguality of the contributors, it has not been possible to fully incorporate conceptualisations in languages other than English, French and German. While many migrant and diasporic films, including earlier and ‘foreign language’ productions, have become available in recent years, it remains a desideratum to acknowledge scholarship outside the Anglo-American spectrum and to make those intellectual interventions available in English translation. The transnational without the translingual cannot escape the pitfalls of implicit hierarchisation. On a temporal rather than spatial and linguistic plane, our focus on feature films made in Europe since the 1980s leads to glossing over the importance of migrant and diasporic practitioners in earlier periods of film history across Europe, America and the world. More significantly, we exclude, to a certain extent, the pioneering work of the 1960s and 1970s by minority film-makers in Europe who, often independently and without chances of establishing themselves in the industry, opened up the market for the first time to self-representation. The time period selected here, however, is not entirely arbitrary: the majority of films considered have evolved from and reflect the movements from Europe’s former colonies to imperial ‘mother countries’ and other labour migrations since the 1950s. Also included are films that originate from the migrant flows following the collapse of communism since the early 1990s or from the political and economic inequities that continue to motivate journeys of hope from across the world to the prosperous and politically stable Europe. In other words, while the migratory

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Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg

histories narrated in the films under consideration here reflect an important historical caesura, dating back to the post-war period, migrant and diasporic cinema as we conceptualise it did not really come into existence as an identifiable critical mass of films until second-generation diasporic film-makers gained access to film production roughly simultaneously in Britain, France and Germany in the 1980s. Unlike the relatively isolated earlier attempts of film-makers with a migratory background to capture their personal experiences or those of their ethnic constituencies on screen, those films made by writers and directors who have come to the fore since the mid-1980s are feature films, rather than shorts, documentaries and TV dramas. The feature film format has enhanced the mainstream and cross-over appeal of migrant and diasporic cinema, a phenomenon that can also be observed in certain youth and music cultures such as hip hop or bhangra, Bollywood musicals and fashion. By using ‘migrant and diasporic cinema’ we remain intentionally ambiguous with regard to the referent of the adjectives. A focus on migrant and diasporic film-makers might imply an essentialist notion of identity, ascribing particular representational strategies simply (and exclusively) to a film-maker’s origin and biography. Admittedly, we propose that migrant and diasporic film-makers occupy a specific subject position, inscribed in their films through a ‘diasporic optic’ (Moorti 2003), and distinguish their work from that of non-migrant and non-diasporic screenwriters and directors. However, as explained further in Chapter 1, we also include films of the latter and contend that their subject position derives from a different access to the, nevertheless, shared history and memory of migration and diaspora. Most contributors to this volume, however, privilege the artistic practices, viewpoints and aesthetic strategies of those film-makers who were, by and large, relegated to the margins of European film studies until the late 1990s. The title of this collection might suggest that we are proposing a migration and diaspora-focused approach without entirely abandoning a vantage point that posits Europe as a socio-political and cultural ‘centre’ – a position that it occupied, albeit problematically, in Enlightenment philosophy, the varied discourses of imperialism, colonisation and First World hegemony. We might thus give the impression that we are perpetuating the Eurocentric perspective critiqued by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam in their seminal study Unthinking Eurocentrism (1994), and which we, too, are eager to overcome. In contrast to studies on specific diasporic cinemas such as those on black film (Martin 1995, Petty 2008) or South Asian productions (Desai 2004), we set out to trace how the ‘periphery’ has impacted upon the ‘centre’ and, thereby, endeavour to further destabilise the opposition of ‘the West vs. the rest’. In keeping with Shohat’s and Stam’s dictum that multicultural media studies constitute a critique of Eurocentrism, we take a decentred approach and argue that migrant and diasporic film-makers have not only enriched

Introduction 5

and revitalised European cinema but also brought about what we conceptualise as the World Cinema turn in European cinema. Without completely abandoning the convenience of previously established parameters that still structure the film industry, individual and group identity and academic thinking, we move away from the national to the regional and from models of centre and periphery to a more democratic world of cinemas. The present volume is thus intended as a critical intervention at the interface of European and World Cinema with a special focus on migrant and diasporic cinema in Europe. The first three chapters map the field of investigation and examine migrant and diasporic cinema in relation to the major coordinates outlined above. In Chapter 1, ‘Locating Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe’, Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg establish an overarching framework that underpins the more specific issues addressed in the book’s subsequent sections. ‘Migrant and diasporic cinema’ is defined by demarcating its boundaries in relation to overlapping concepts and terminologies such as ‘accented cinema’, ‘intercultural cinema’, ‘transnational cinema’, ‘hyphenated identity cinema’, ‘cinéma beur’, ‘Kino der doppelten Kulturen’ and others, used in a rapidly expanding corpus of critical writing in the area. Berghahn and Sternberg examine these terminologies by drawing attention to their respective socio-political subtexts: the racial or ethno-national implications of ‘cinéma du metissage’ and ‘Black British film’; the tropes of space and mobility invoked in ‘banlieue films’ and ‘cinema of displacement’ as well as in related concepts such as ‘contact zone’ (Pratt 1992) and ‘Black Atlantic’ (Gilroy 1993); and the socio-political associations of ‘Third Cinema’, ‘Third World Cinema’ and the ever more encompassing concept of ‘World Cinema’. Moreover, drawing on discourses of generation and memory as well as Avtar Brah’s concept of ‘diaspora space’, Berghahn and Sternberg remind us of the importance of authorship and subject position inscribed in films when distinguishing, on the one hand, between ‘migrant’ and ‘diasporic’ cinema and, on the other, between films made by film-makers with and those without a migrant or diasporic background. And finally, in tracing current debates on national and transnational cinema, the editors set the agenda for the present volume: it is intended to challenge the critical boundaries of film studies by adopting a comparative, transnational and dialogic perspective, which recognises the culturally diverse traditions of film cultures within Europe. In Chapter 2, ‘Migration and Cinematic Process in Post-Cold War Europe’, Dina Iordanova identifies a series of structural and historical homologies between post-coloniality and post-communism and, in doing so, develops the volume’s second framework, which allows us to consider the cinemas that have evolved in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Empire and the decolonisation of its constituent states after 1989. Iordanova argues that the post-Cold War migratory flows have consolidated the status of the

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post-colonial diasporas in Europe that arrived and settled several decades earlier. Considering the impact of these changed migratory patterns from the point of view of the cinematic process, she examines how contemporary film narratives construct new hierarchies of belonging in their depiction of post-colonial and post-communist subjects. She suggests that, in order to do justice to the cinema of the transnational moment, ‘watching across borders’ is the only viable position of reception – a position that has underpinned the work of the AHRC Research Network and that lies at the heart of this publication. Following the recent career trajectories of some East European film-makers who migrate on a project-by-project basis to wherever the best funding and production opportunities arise, Iordanova suggests that this new type of ‘transnationally mobile film-maker’ of the post-Cold War period is fundamentally different from those exiled during the communist regime, who sought refuge from censorship and artistic freedom in the West. In the third chapter, ‘State and Other Funding for Migrant, Diasporic and World Cinema in Europe’, Anne Jäckel looks at a broad range of film funding initiatives and policies supportive of or designed to promote film production, distribution and exhibition of migrant and diasporic cinema in Europe. As France continues to be the European country with the most comprehensive system of public funding in the film sector, it is used as a point of comparison in this overview of developments that affect migrant and diasporic film cultures across Europe. Jäckel examines the extent to which long-established co-production systems and pan-European institutions such as Eurimages, Euromed and Arte benefit migrant, diasporic and exiled filmmakers. At the same time, she shows how European initiatives offer support and strengthen certain spheres of influence in the post-colonial age, for example by promoting the French language in Africa. Jäckel also considers the proliferation of film festivals as a particularly significant outlet and platform to garner prizes and critical acclaim and secure funding. Moreover, she reminds us that, from an industrial perspective, ‘migrant and diasporic cinema’ is not necessarily a category recognised by media professionals and that all film-makers compete with each other for national and international funding. Chapters 4 to 12 combine close readings of high-profile as well as lesserknown feature films with a critical appraisal of those discourses particularly pertinent to contemporary migrant and diasporic cinema in Europe. These relate to issues of space, place and displacement, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, the hybridisation of musical, stylistic and genre templates, and media reflexivity. Birgit Beumers’s chapter ‘Nostalgic Journeys in Post-Soviet Cinema: Towards a Lost Home?’ explores migrations along the East–West axis, which have traditionally been dominated not so much by an urge for economic improvement (as tends to be the case for South–North migration) as by political repression and/or a desire for a freer lifestyle in the (capitalist)

Introduction 7

democracies of the West. Stressing that the Soviet Union built its empire at a time when Western European countries began to lose their imperial control, Beumers investigates how post-communist Russian and Central Asian films respond to the belated collapse of Europe’s last ‘colonial power’ by creating migratory characters who negotiate conflicting systems of signification with regard to national and ethnic identity and the implications of their newly won freedom of movement. As Beumers shows, in post-Soviet cinema migration is depicted as an emotionally ambiguous experience, frequently overshadowed by a longing for a ‘homeland of the past’. Working with the categories of ironic (distanced) and utopian (nation-building) nostalgia developed by Svetlana Boym (2001), the chapter explores the disjunctures between past and present and home and abroad in films centring on the motif of the nostalgic journey. Contemporary cinematic narratives have given visibility not only to recently enfranchised Eastern Europeans, but also to so-called undocumented (‘illegal’) migrants. These are individuals or groups from non-European countries who lack the means and authorisation to ‘migrate’ officially, but who have managed to cross the closed borders of what is, in this context, frequently referred to as ‘Fortress Europe’. Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez’s chapter ‘Transculturation in German and Spanish Migrant and Diasporic Cinema’ discusses Fernando Ortiz’s anthropological concept of transculturation in relation to two films, Kleine Freiheit/A Little Bit of Freedom (Germany 2003) and Princesas/Princesses (Spain 2005), which belong to a new European cinema portraying the lives of undocumented migrants in Western Europe. Both films engage with the ambivalence and limits of transculturation through the representation of intimate relationships between members of disenfranchised groups, including undocumented migrants, non-migrant prostitutes and homeless people. While depicting the protagonists’ living and working conditions as adversely affected by migration policies, the films also show how the characters deploy creative strategies to challenge and invent new ways of transgressing boundaries. The films illustrate Ortiz’s notion of transculturation, situated in the divide between cohabitation and domination, and the simultaneous possibility and impossibility of cultural and social transformation. In Chapter 6, Sarita Malik turns to the long-established diasporas of Britain, which have probably received the most extensive coverage in contemporary migration studies and diaspora criticism, last but not least because of their cinematic representations. In ‘The Dark Side of Hybridity: Contemporary Black and Asian British Cinema’, Malik considers a range of contemporary films in the context of recent social, political and cultural developments in the United Kingdom. She describes how what was once regarded as a unified ‘black British cinema’ has, since the late 1990s, become fragmented. The most apparent shift has been between South Asian and African/African Caribbean (‘black’) British cinema, which have become critically separate

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from each other. While British Asian cinema is perceived as a successful, independent, transnational cinema, black British cinema is largely constrained and locally rooted. Malik discusses how these cinemas intervene in different but overlapping discourses around ‘race’, ‘Asianness’ and ‘blackness’. She concludes that black and Asian British cinema are engaged in struggles to produce a range of alternative representations of diaspora in Britain, continuing their legacy as significant benchmarks for migrant and diasporic cinema in contemporary Europe. With an emphasis on yet another facet of European migration history – the transformation of Southern European countries from sending to receiving countries – Isabel Santaolalla draws our attention to a sizeable body of ‘immigrant films’ that has emerged in Spanish, Italian and Greek cinema since the 1990s. In the chapter entitled ‘Body Matters: Immigrants in Recent Spanish, Italian and Greek Cinemas’, she suggests that the increased visibility of migrant groups and individuals in these national cinemas can be explained by comparable factors in the migratory histories of the three countries, which have shaped the surrounding ideological and cultural discourses and are, in turn, reflected in their respective film cultures. One remarkable commonality between recent Spanish, Italian and Greek films about migrants is the over-signified corporeality of the immigrant figure: the foreign, ethnically marked body is used as a visual and narrative stratagem to foreground questions of cultural, gender and sexual identity. The insertion of an ‘other’ in the cinematic narratives acts as a catalyst for change through crisis and suffering, both within the diegesis and for the audience. Audiences are invited to partake in the plight of migrant characters – an experience complicated by the masochistic/sadistic dynamics of pleasure in the contemplation of the simultaneously sexualised and suffering body of the ‘foreigner’ – and thereby undergo a form of catharsis. In ‘Gendering Diaspora: The Work of Diasporic Women Film-Makers in Western Europe’, Carrie Tarr assesses the contributions of diasporic women film-makers to post-colonial, post-communist Western European cinema since 2000, comparing and contrasting films made in France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Her chapter focuses on films that explore the complex identities of migrant or diasporic women in Europe of different origins and different generations, and analyses the extent to which they emphasise female subjectivity and agency. Tarr suggests that, despite differences due to the specificity of their historic and geographical contexts, these films offer what Sujata Moorti describes as a ‘feminine mode’ (2003: 356) of imagining diaspora. That is, they privilege the ways in which migrant and diasporic women negotiate between multiple cultural affiliations in domestic, intimate spaces, underlining the ways in which ‘processes of dislocation, affiliation and displacement’ (2003: 357) are gendered and creating visions of transnational, multicultural communities forged through homosocial affective ties.

Introduction 9

James S. Williams makes ‘Queering the Diaspora’ – an issue already touched upon by Tarr in her discussion of cross-cultural lesbian relationships – his main concern in Chapter 9. Focusing in particular on the significant number of Maghrebi French (beur) films engaging with queer identities, he also considers German Turkish, Italian Brazilian and black and Asian British films. Rather than simply searching for ‘positive’ gay images to counter prevailing stereotypes, his principal aim is to assess how different European gay film traditions and genres extend and inflect the notion of a ‘queer diaspora’, in particular concerning the representation of sexuality, immigration and citizenship. Williams concludes that queer diasporic cinema across different Western European film cultures is characterised by a set of recurring themes, notably the conflict between gender and nationhood and the quest for self-affirmation in the face of racism and homophobia. Moreover, the narratives of queer diasporic cinema encapsulate the migrant’s precarious state of being perpetually ‘in trans’, characteristic of the migrant experience as such but reinforced in the multiple fluid identities of transgender and transsexual diasporic subjects. The pleasures and challenges of migrant and diasporic cinema relate to its diversity of influences and multiple encodings. Music is an important element in nearly all films discussed in this volume and particularly suited to carry complex meaning and at the same time reach audiences on an affective level. Based on a discussion of the orchestral interludes in Fatih Akın’s Gegen die Wand/Head-On (Germany 2004) and their connections to his subsequent musical documentary about Istanbul, Crossing the Bridge (Germany 2005), Deniz Göktürk’s chapter ‘Sound Bridges: Transnational Mobility as Ironic Melodrama’ investigates how the representation of transnational mobility is underscored by ironic strategies of interruption and distancing. Akın’s musical interludes draw on a range of aesthetic templates, including music videos and Brechtian distantiation techniques as well as the aesthetic of inserts and switches, which Gopalan (2002) has termed with reference to Indian films a ‘cinema of interruptions’. In Head-On, music is used in a similar way, creating a fusion of distancing and emotional underscoring and thus providing the counterpoint to the film’s melodramatic plot. Tracing the film’s multilayered intertextual references to Romani music and to a range of films celebrating Gypsy musical traditions and their culture of mobility, Göktürk concludes that the convergence of intertwined musical traditions and the ‘celebration of sonic hybridity’ challenges any nationbased understanding of music, film and culture more generally. Generational relations as well as youth culture feature prominently in migrant and diasporic cinema. Daniela Berghahn’s chapter ‘Coming of Age in ‘the Hood’: The Diasporic Youth Film and Questions of Genre’ examines contemporary Turkish German, Maghrebi French and British Asian films depicting the identity struggles of children and adolescents from ethnic minority backgrounds. Applying a quintessentially American

10 Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg

critical paradigm, genre criticism, to European diasporic coming-of-age films, Berghahn asks to what extent these films conform to the generic conventions of the youth film (including African American ‘hood films’ of the 1990s) and how they contribute to the extension, renewal and hybridisation of the youth film genre. In contrast to Hollywood coming-of-age films, in which the protagonist’s maturation often coincides with an existential experience or a rite of passage, the adolescent’s maturation in the diasporic coming-of-age film is equated with the dominant cultural affiliation she or he makes. Hybrid identity formation is performed through the adolescents’ switching between languages and culturally specific dress codes, while the soundtracks underscore the multi-ethnic milieu and enhance the films’ crossover appeal. In Chapter 12, ‘Migration, Diaspora and Metacinematic Reflection’, Claudia Sternberg refers to historical relationships between migration and the motion picture and reminds us that as early as the first half of the twentieth century film-makers of various diasporas were instrumental in introducing new discourses and styles and (re)defining genres. Drawing on this continuous history rather than the notion of a ‘new’ and ‘emerging’ cinema, she investigates the many instances in contemporary migrant and diasporic films in which intertextual allusions to other films and scenes about cinema-going, discussing or making films are incorporated in the narrative. With reference to Western European films from Britain, France, Germany and Spain, Sternberg argues that metacinematic elements are indicative of postmodern pastiche and media reflexivity, but also attest to the importance of film culture within the discourses of migration and diaspora. Metacinematic references, she says, enable film-makers to reflect critically on migrant and diasporic subjects not only as objects of (clichéd) representation, but also as consumers, critics and producers of film, and serve as a tool for a revisionist take on film history. The conclusion to this volume, Gareth Jones’s ‘Future Imperfect: Some Onward Perspectives on Migrant and Diasporic Film’, combines a flashback to the preceding chapters and a flash-forward to the future of migrant and diasporic cinema. Written from the point of view of an industry insider, the final chapter complements the critical, academic perspective of the previous ones. Jones is a producer, writer and director and also the founder of Babylon, a cultural forum and film development programme designed to support the creative ambitions of diasporic and migrant film-makers from Europe’s varied minorities. He considers a number of Babylon-supported film projects still in development that deserve to be made but will find it hard to raise the necessary finance and distribution. Jones suggests that the experience of reaching the mythical Babylon of fabulous wealth and unremitting exile, a metropolis of competing languages, interests and traditions, is repeated across Europe today, since European nation states tend to treat their minorities proprietorially as ‘their own’, depriving them firstly

Introduction 11

of access to Europe and secondly of the chance to speak to each other. Notwithstanding this assessment of the difficult context in which creative artists of ‘double culture’ are operating, Jones optimistically forecasts that in years to come migrant and diasporic cinema is bound to gain momentum and significance: transnational migration has transformed European societies and may well prove to revolutionise the way we all see ourselves. Migrant and diasporic cinema functions as a sensitive indicator of this societal shift and has a vital part to play in this process.

Works cited Boym, S. (2001) The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Brah, A. (1996) Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London, New York: Routledge. Braziel, J. E. and A. Mannur (2003) ‘Nation, Migration, Globalization: Points of Contention in Diaspora Studies’, in Braziel, J. E. and A. Mannur (eds) Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader. London, New York: Routledge, 1–22. Castles, S. (2002) ‘Migration and Community Formation under Conditions of Globalization’, International Migration Review 36(4): 1143–68. Cohen, R. (2008) Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London, New York: Routledge. Desai, J. (2004) Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film. London, New York: Routledge. Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso. Gopalan, L. (2002) Cinema of Interruptions: Action Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema. London: British Film Institute. Martin, M. T. (ed.) (1995) Cinemas of the Black Diaspora: Diversity, Dependence and Oppositionality. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Moorti, S. (2003) ‘Desperately Seeking an Identity: Diasporic Cinema and the Articulation of Transnational Kinship’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 6(3): 355–76. Naficy, H. (2001) An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press. Petty, S. J. (2008) Contact Zones: Memory, Origin, and Discourses in Black Diasporic Cinema. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Pratt, M. L. (1992) Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London, New York: Routledge. Shohat, E. and R. Stam (1994) Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London, New York: Routledge. Van Hear, N. (1998) New Diasporas: The Mass Exodus, Dispersal and Regrouping of Migrant Communities. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

1 Locating Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe Daniela Berghahn and Claudia Sternberg

Migrant and diasporic cinema in contemporary Europe is situated at the interface of the discursive fields of European cinema and World Cinema. The films discussed in this volume play a crucial role in the gradual conflation of these two critical paradigms and are indicative of the World Cinema turn which film studies has witnessed since the late 1980s.1 In this chapter we attempt to demarcate some of the conceptual boundaries of migrant and diasporic cinema in relation to overlapping terminologies and frameworks to be found in a growing corpus of related critical writing. We examine their heuristic value and socio-political implications by drawing attention to the inflections and subtexts of social categorisation (Migrantenkino), racial or ethno-national emphases (cinéma du métissage, black and Asian British film, French beur cinema), linguistic or spatial concepts (accented cinema, banlieue films, cinema of double occupancy) and transnational approaches (Third Cinema, black film, cinema of the South Asian diaspora). Representational strategies and aesthetic choices as well as questions of authorship and ownership lie at the heart of our exploration of the ways in which this new type of European cinema has been understood and named.

Migration and diaspora While this is not the place to survey the large body of literature on migration and diaspora, it is nonetheless necessary to consider these concepts briefly, given their centrality in the context of this study. ‘Migration’ (from Latin migrare: ‘to change one’s residence or position, to move from place to place’) is generally used to refer to population movements either within nation states or across borders. In this volume, we are first and foremost concerned with movements to and across Europe during the second half of the twentieth and the first decade of the twenty-first century and their impact on cultural formations, notably film, in European societies. While the histories of these movements differ considerably, two principal phases are generally distinguished during this period. The first took off in the 1950s 12

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and ‘was generally characterised by migrations of colonial and postcolonial populations to the imperial “mother countries” – for example, migrations from West Africa and the Maghreb into France, from Indonesia into the Netherlands, or from the Caribbean and South Asia into Britain’ (Robins 2007: 153). These colonial and post-colonial migrations affected a limited number of European countries and by and large resulted in permanent settlement in the metropolitan centres. At the same time, labour migration not based on (post-)colonial linkages also occurred elsewhere in Northern and Western Europe. Between 1955 and 1973, for example, almost four million migrants from Italy, Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia and Turkey came to Germany as Gastarbeiter (‘guest workers’); these labour migrants were eventually joined by their families and enduring diasporic communities developed. In what has been regarded as the second (and ongoing) phase of migration, starting in the 1990s, the fall of the Iron Curtain led to an increase of westward-moving Eastern Europeans as well as to migrations within the former Eastern bloc and the reunited Germany, reconfiguring the previously separate spheres of ‘East’ and ‘West’ in Europe. The former South European emigration countries – Italy, Spain and Greece – joined their Northern counterparts as receiving countries for Eastern Europeans as well as refugees, asylum seekers and (undocumented) non-European labour migrants (Castles and Miller 2003). Recent migratory movements from outside Europe follow a ‘more random logic’ (Robins 2007: 153) and involve economic and forced migrants from diverse parts of the world (Africa, the Middle and Far East, the Caribbean and South America) who make Europe their destination. These ‘new migrations of globalization’ are indicative of profound changes in the dynamics of mobility and have ‘dramatically changed the social and cultural composition of European societies’ in the twenty-first century (Robins 2007: 152). Migration refers to collective mobility and can be temporary (limited, for example, by work permits) or result in long-term settlement (whether planned, incidental or due to the impossibility to return or move on). Migration therefore constitutes the precondition for the formation of a diaspora, defined as a recognisable and minoritarian social group that preserves its ‘ethnic, or ethnic-religious identity and communal solidarity’ (Sheffer 1986: 9). Migration always precedes diaspora and, as Marienstras notes, ‘time has to pass’ before one can establish with certainty whether a community that has migrated ‘is really a diaspora’ (1989: 125). ‘Diaspora’ shares a number of features with ‘exile’, and in everyday usage as well as scholarly discourse some semantic slippage between the two terms can be observed.2 Exile refers to ‘a painful or punitive banishment from one’s homeland’ (Peters 1999: 19) and the trauma associated with this experience. Diaspora, too, ‘invokes the imagery of traumas of separation and dislocation [...]. But diasporas are also potentially the sites of home and new beginnings’ (Brah 1996: 193) and, therefore, entail the positive affective component of hope.3 While ‘exile’ implies solitariness, both migration and

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diaspora are by definition collective. Exile connotes banishment from what is considered home and precludes return (at least as long as the exile lasts), whereas contemporary diasporic subjects, in particular, tend to travel back. They are linked through multiple transnational networks and connections with their culture and/or place of origin, with each other in various locations and the societies in which diasporic groups permanently reside. Etymologically, the term ‘diaspora’ is derived from the Greek verb ‘speiro’ (to sow or scatter seeds) and ‘dia-’ (over, across) (see Cohen 2008: ix, Peters 1999: 23). The term was ‘first used in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures explicitly intended for the Hellenic Jewish communities in Alexandria (circa third century BCE) to describe the Jews living in exile from the homeland of Palestine’ (Braziel and Mannur 2003: 1). The Jewish diaspora is still perceived to be the ‘ideal type’ (Safran 1991: 84), though James Clifford and others have argued that it should not be regarded as the definitive model but merely as a ‘nonnormative starting point for a discourse that is travelling or hybridizing in new global conditions’ (1994: 306). While not necessarily foregrounded in the present volume, the Jewish and African diasporas remain paradigmatic points of reference on account of their long histories and the traumas of enslavement, displacement, persecution and genocide and because they are, in conjunction with the much less discursively acknowledged case of the Roma and Sinti, inextricably linked to European history. In recent years, however, diaspora has become so widely appropriated that theorists are struggling to achieve a consensus about its distinctive attributes and boundaries. In an attempt to contain the inflationary use of the term, Robin Cohen builds on William Safran’s definition of diaspora (1991) and proposes nine features constitutive of the classical notion of diaspora. These include ‘dispersal from an original homeland [...] to two or more foreign regions [... and] a collective memory and myth about the homeland’ (Cohen 2008: 17), which often manifests itself in a nostalgic longing to return. Diasporic communities are further characterised by ‘a strong ethnic group consciousness [...] based on a sense of distinctiveness, a common history and the belief in a common fate’ and they tend to have ‘a sense of empathy and solidarity with co-ethnic members in other countries of settlement’ (Cohen 2008: 17). While their relationship with societies of settlement may be challenging in a number of ways, diasporas also ‘enrich life in host countries’, contributing not just to the economy but also to creative and cultural pluralism and diversity (Cohen 2008: 17). Helpful as such a list of constitutive features may be, Cohen and others concede that it would be unreasonable to expect ‘the working list of diasporic features’ to apply ‘on all counts, throughout history’ to any society or diasporic community (Clifford 1994: 306). Contributors to this volume are primarily concerned with relatively recent migrations and diasporas which form ‘exemplary communities of

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the transnational moment’ (Tölölyan 1991: 5) and have been theorised by Stuart Hall (2003[1990], 1991a,b), Khachig Tölölyan (1991), Paul Gilroy (1993), Avtar Brah (1996), Ulf Hannerz (1996), Nicholas van Hear (1998) and others. These migrant and diasporic communities call into question traditional ideas of national identity and ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 2006 [1983]) as being bounded by a particular cultural–national heritage. They defy, as Kevin Robins amongst others argues, notions of national belonging and identity, constructing instead alternative socialities, based around transnational networks and connections (2007: 156; see also Martin 1995: 8, Hannerz 1996). As Eva Rueschmann notes in the introduction to Moving Pictures, Migrating Identities (2003), most contemporary discussions about diasporic cultures rely on postmodernist theory, which has ‘by and large, stressed a nonessentialist, decentered conception of cultural identity, critiquing the notion of a fixed, unified self’ (2003: xiv). In his essay ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, Stuart Hall juxtaposes such a view of diasporic identity with a more traditional, essentialist understanding that upholds the belief in a collective true self, based on a shared origin and history. Hall, too, rejects an essentialist notion of diasporic identity, perceived as bound to a literal scattering of the ‘tribes whose identity can only be secured in relation to some sacred homeland to which they must at all costs return’ (2003 [1990]: 244). Instead, he suggests extending the concept of diaspora beyond ‘the old, the imperializing, the hegemonizing, form of “ethnicity” ’: The diaspora experience as I intend it here, is defined not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of ‘identity’ which lives with and through, not despite, difference, by hybridity. Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew, through transformation and difference. (Hall 2003 [1990]: 244)4 Consistent with this rejection of fixity, Hall contends that cultural identity is created in the act of representation itself and that ‘the most profound cultural revolution has come about as a consequence of the margins coming into representation’ (1991a: 34). It is precisely this ‘de-centred cultural empowerment of the marginal’ (Hall 1991a: 34) that is central to diasporic identity construction, and the cinema has been a crucial site for it. Since identity is constituted not outside but within representation [...], cinema [is not ...] a second-order mirror held up to reflect what already exists but [... a] form of representation which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects, and thereby enable us to discover places from which to speak. (Hall 2003 [1990]: 245)

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Whose history, whose memory? Filmmaking in diaspora space This present volume builds on the assumption that cinema is a prime site not just for the negotiation of migrant and diasporic identities, but also for the (self-)articulation of the collective histories of Europe’s respective communities. These histories have previously been marginalised or presented from non-diasporic points of view. Contributors to this book argue that the experience or memory of migration has had a profound impact on the imagination and aesthetic sensibilities of migrant and diasporic filmmakers in Europe. We distinguish between ‘migrant’ and ‘diasporic’ filmmakers. ‘Migrant’ (‘first-generation’) film-makers have themselves been part of a migratory movement and departed from a place of birth or residence in search of better economic conditions or a more secure and stable sociopolitical environment.5 ‘Diasporic’ film-makers are typically of the second, third or a later generation. They were born or raised in a diasporic setting and have no, or only a very remote, first-hand experience of migration. They are, however, connected to their family’s migration and history of relocation or dispersal through kinship networks, family narratives, cultural practice, language, artefacts, etc. Marianne Hirsch describes this connection as ‘postmemory’; it is ‘mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation. [...] Postmemory characterizes the experience of those who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth’ (1997: 22–3).6 It is ‘distinguished from memory by generational distance and from history by deep personal connection’ (Hirsch 1997: 22). The concept of generational difference, however, is more complicated than it may seem. According to sociologist Karl Mannheim, who himself migrated from Hungary to Germany and then to Britain (1964: 542), a generation is defined not just by belonging to the same age group but, more importantly, by sharing the same experiences and destiny. Furthermore, a particular cohort of individuals may be united by the collective experience of a traumatic event. Migration is arguably a life-changing event, whose causes, circumstances and consequences can be traumatic, and which may well be more decisive for constituting a sense of generational belonging than being of the same age. Starting a new life in another country would represent a kind of birth or rebirth, making it conceivable that a ‘generation’ of migrants could consist of different age groups.7 By distinguishing between migrant and diasporic, we mark two conditions and posit implicitly that the difference between first- and further-generation film-makers has a bearing on their approaches to the representation of migratory or diasporic experiences. But, just as filmmakers with a migrant and diasporic background do not necessarily engage with migration and diaspora in their work, a considerable number of nonmigrant and non-diasporic screenwriters and directors have produced films that are centrally concerned with questions of migratory and diasporic

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existence.8 By including such films in the overall corpus of this volume under the rubric migrant and diasporic cinema, we wish to circumvent the biographical fallacy and contend that it is not the film-maker’s nationality or ethnicity which determines the classification of a production as migrant and diasporic. Such inclusion is not meant to diminish the role migrant and diasporic film-makers have played in challenging invisibility and misrepresentation by introducing specific themes, characters, points of view and styles to European cinema, nor should it gloss over the many struggles that preceded and accompanied such ‘coming into representation’. We consider it important, however, to acknowledge that migration, diaspora and cultural diversity are so central to the European imaginary of the present moment that they occupy a prominent position in the work of film-makers of very different backgrounds. Consequently, this volume considers migrant and diasporic cinema as being demarcated by subject matter in the broadest sense rather than by a combination of biographical and representational factors. A useful framework that accommodates the approach taken here is Avtar Brah’s notion of ‘diaspora space’: [D]iaspora space as a conceptual category is ‘inhabited’, not only by those who have migrated and their descendants, but equally by those who are constructed and represented as indigenous. In other words, the concept of diaspora space (as opposed to that of diaspora) includes the entanglement, the intertwining of genealogies of dispersion with those of ‘staying put’. The diaspora space is the site where the native is as much a diasporian as the diasporian is a native. (1996: 209) The concept of the ‘diaspora space’ as a site of transformation, intersection and intermingling, where syncretic formations take shape, ‘seriously problematises the subject position of the “native” [...] as well as the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and otherness, of “us” and “them” ’ (Brah 1996: 208–9). Within the diaspora space, all film-makers can potentially articulate a memory in which the diasporic memory of minorities and the ‘traditional memorial culture of the “host nation” ’ (Huyssen 2003: 153) converge. The two are not identical, however, and authorship remains important when considering migrant and diasporic cinema. Migrant and diasporic film-makers can activate memorial or postmemorial connections to the migratory past, whereas non-migrant and non-diasporic directors and writers draw on what Alison Landsberg has called ‘prosthetic memory’. In contrast to those forms of collective memory, which are circumscribed by a particular community or group [...] and which serve to reinforce and naturalise a group’s identity, prosthetic memories are not the property of a single group. Rather they open up the possibility

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for collective horizons of experience and pave the way for unexpected political alliances. (Landsberg 2003: 149)9 Mediated through film and other mass media, prosthetic memory is a commodified type, a form of ‘mass cultural representation’ which is useful (as a prosthesis is in replacing a limb) in that it ‘generates empathy’ and a ‘sensuous engagement’ with a past distinct from one’s own (Landsberg 2003: 149). It allows non-diasporic film-makers to see through the eyes of the ‘other’ and ‘to make possible alliances across racial, class and other chasms of difference’ (Landsberg 2003: 156). Prosthetic memory thus ‘becomes the basis for mediated collective identification and for the production of potentially counter hegemonic public spheres’ (Landsberg 2003: 150). It may also, however, draw on clichés and stereotypes and thus reinstate images and narratives that others have struggled to deconstruct. Migrant and diasporic film-makers have often rejected labels such as ‘Turkish German’, ‘beur’ or ‘black’ because these set them apart from ‘unmarked’ practitioners and, explicitly or implicitly, identify them as (albeit authentic) voices who can and must speak (only) about and for their communities.10 One could argue that speaking of migrant and diasporic film-making – current only in academic discourse – is equally suspect and needs to be seen as analytically productive only within the contexts of its own parameters (e.g. post-coloniality, diaspora criticism). From the marketcentred point of view of distributors, exhibitors, festival organisers and retailers, the films under discussion here are broadly positioned as World Cinema – on account of the themes they address, their tie-ins with World Music markets, and, in many cases, the use of languages other than English. A further reason is that, in more general terms, European cinema is gradually being subsumed under World Cinema – in response to the ‘instability of the national’ (Higson 2000b: 35) which has been theorised within film studies since the 1990s.

From national to transnational Over the past thirty years, European national cinemas have increasingly been occupied with multicultural and multi-ethnic presences and themes. Critical paradigms that examine these cinemas in terms of their national specificity do not adequately attend to the shift from the national to the trans- and/or post-national which has been fuelled by the dislocating effects of globalisation, the ongoing process of European integration, the geopolitical changes following the collapse of communism and the arrival of labour migrants, refugees and asylum seekers desiring access to what they perceive as the politically and economically stable heartland of Europe. These wider socio-political processes have meant that the concept of national and even European identity is becoming ever more contested and fluid, and a growing

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number of films challenge the traditional understanding of national cinema and national identity. The notion of a homogeneous ‘imagined community’, whose affinity and ‘deep, horizontal comradeship’ (Anderson 2006 [1983]: 7) is discursively constructed by the act of reading the same texts, has been productively appropriated by film and media studies and has gained wide currency in virtually all debates on national cinema. Concepts of a national cinema are based on the assumption that film fulfils the same role as the print media, on which Anderson’s hypothesis rests (for a critique see Elsaesser 2005: 65–6). In attempting to define the national–cultural specificity of a given cinema in Europe, most literature on the subject has, on the one hand, taken an inward-looking perspective, examining the nation-building properties of the cinema in question, while, on the other hand, demarcating the boundaries of a particular cinema against Hollywood and other (European) national cinemas. These boundaries and demarcations, however, have increasingly become permeable and contested. The ‘growing lack of congruence between nations and states’ and the crisis of the nation state itself, which is struggling to retain ‘the congruence of polity, culture, and economy which characterised nation states before [1945]’ (Crofts 1998: 386), make the idea of national cinemas highly problematic. To underscore this disjuncture, Stephen Crofts proposes to replace the term ‘national cinema’ by ‘nation state cinema’ (1998: 386), while Arjun Appadurai in more general terms takes issue with Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’ and suggests that today’s imagined communities are supranational rather than national: Benedict Anderson did us a service in identifying the way in which certain forms of mass mediation, notably those involving newspapers, novels, and other print media, played a key role in imagining the nation and facilitating the spread of this form to the colonial world in Asia and elsewhere. My general argument is that there is a similar link to be found between the work of the imagination and the emergence of a postnational political world. [...] as mass mediation becomes increasingly dominated by electronic media [...], and as such media increasingly link producers and audiences across national boundaries, and as these audiences themselves start new conversations between those who move and those who stay, we find a growing number of diasporic public spheres. (2005 [1996]: 21–2) When mass migration, ‘hardly a new feature of human history’, is juxtaposed with the rapid flow of mass-mediated images, scripts, and sensations, we have a new order of instability in the production of modern subjectivities. As Turkish guest workers in Germany watch Turkish films in their German flats, Koreans in Philadelphia watch the 1988 Olympics

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in Seoul through satellite feeds from Korea, and as Pakistani cabdrivers in Chicago listen to cassettes of sermons recorded in mosques in Pakistan or Iran, we see moving images meet deterritorialized viewers. These create diasporic public spheres, phenomena that confound theories that depend on the continued salience of the nation state as the key arbiter of important social change. (Appadurai 2005 [1996]: 4) The sense of national identity and belonging is being replaced by other senses of belonging that ‘articulate themselves above or below, or next to the nation state’ (Elsaesser 2005: 116). The formation of social groupings with dual or multiple allegiances results in what Thomas Elsaesser calls ‘hyphenated nationals at supra- and at sub-nation level’ (2005: 116). At the supra-state level, one finds the ‘cosmopolitan elites’, consisting of intellectuals, business people, entrepreneurs, politicians and professionals who move freely between the world’s urban centres and who contribute to the ‘crisis’ of the nation state through the impact of the deals they make and the policies they devise. At the sub-nation level one finds migrants, refugees or asylum seekers who live within their own diasporic communities and closed family or faith circles, cut off from the social fabric at large through lack of familiarity with either language or culture or both. Also sub-nation in their allegiance are sections of the second-generation diaspora who, while sharing the language and possessing the skills to navigate their society, none the less do not feel they have a stake in maintaining the social fabric, sensing themselves to be excluded or knowing themselves to be discriminated against, while also having become estranged from the nation of their parents. In the best of cases, where they have found the spaces that allow them to negotiate difference, they are what might be called hyphenated members of the nation, or hyphenated nationals, meaning that their identity can come from a double occupancy which here functions as a divided allegiance: the nation state into which they were born, and to the homeland from which (one or both of) their parents came. (Elsaesser 2005: 118) It is mainly, but not exclusively, the conflicting allegiances of ‘double occupancy’ experienced by hyphenated nationals at sub-nation level that have given rise to what we call migrant and diasporic cinema. Elsaesser describes it as a New European Cinema, a cinema of double occupancy, suggesting – as Stuart Hall had done more than a decade earlier – that ‘cinema seems to have become the most prominent medium of self-representation and symbolic action that the hyphenated citizens of Europe’s nation states have made their own’ (Elsaesser 2005: 119). According to Crofts (1998) and Elsaesser (2005), migrant and diasporic film-makers belong to communities located at ‘sub-state’ level; it is debatable,

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however, where the film-makers themselves need to be situated: at sub-state or at supra-state level? Many of the practitioners considered in this volume occupy a privileged position, frequently enjoying greater geographical and social mobility and perhaps a higher social status than the majority of their migrant and diasporic ‘compatriots’. In other words, the more successful they become, the more elevated they are to what Elsaesser terms the cosmopolitan elites at supra-state level and what Hannerz discusses under the categories of ‘cosmopolitans’ and ‘transnational intellectuals’ (1996: 102–11). The latter may also encompass film-makers with a non-migrant and nondiasporic background who operate transnationally and turn to migrant and diasporic themes through an engagement with sub-state communities. Elsaesser’s ‘cinema of double occupancy’, Crofts’s conceptually related ‘sub-state cinema’, which is defined ‘in terms of suppressed, indigenous, diasporic, or other populations asserting their civil rights and giving expression to a distinctive religion, language or regional culture’ (1998: 390), and our migrant and diasporic cinema can all be subsumed under the broad notion of post-national cinema. They bear witness to the growing cultural empowerment of ethnic minorities within the nation state and challenge Eurocentric assumptions about national identity and national cinema. A further concept of some currency within the post-national debates is that of ‘transnational cinema’;11 it refers to a much more mixed bag, and it is useful to briefly consider the relationship between transnationalism and diaspora. Jana Evans Braziel and Anita Mannur make the following distinction: Transnationalism may be defined as the flow of people, ideas, goods and capital across national territories in a way that undermines nationality and nationalism as discrete categories of identification, economic organization, and political constitution. We differentiate diaspora from transnationalism, however, in that diaspora refers specifically to the movement – forced or voluntary – of people from one or more nation states to another. [...] While diaspora may be regarded as concomitant with transnationalism, or even in some cases consequent of transnationalist forces, it may not be reduced to such macroeconomic and technological flows. It remains, above all, a human phenomenon – lived and experienced. (2003: 8)12 Transnational relations between national film cultures are almost as old as cinema itself,13 yet the ascription itself has only been in circulation for the past fifteen years and is indicative of a paradigmatic shift and ‘the recognition of the decline of national sovereignty as a regulatory force in global coexistence’ (Ezra and Rowden 2006: 1).14 Transnational cinema does not denote the demise of national cinema, but instead assumes a new perspective, placing emphasis on ‘the global networks of production, distribution

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and exhibition with which national cinemas function’ (Higbee 2007b: 82). In their introduction to Transnational Cinema (2006), Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden assert that the ‘transnational comprises both globalization – in cinematic terms, Hollywood’s domination of world film markets – and the counter-hegemonic responses of filmmakers from former colonial and Third World countries’ (2006: 1).15 The essays excerpted in Ezra and Rowden’s anthology reflect the inclusiveness – or diffuseness – of the concept of transnational cinema, as they cover the instantaneous worldwide release of Hollywood blockbusters, the role of the Internet in the formation of global fandom, English-language Indian cinema as well as post-ThirdWorldist feminist film-making, ‘accented’ and ‘beur’ cinema. According to some scholars, the designation ‘transnational’ implies processes of standardisation and mass production. Transnational cinema is seen as part and parcel of a US–American ‘McDonaldisation’ of culture and, to a somewhat lesser extent, of Western European homogenisation. If we consider the examples Andrew Higson discusses in ‘The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema’ (2000a), a transnational film is simply a film whose national and cultural provenance is no longer discernible because its creation is shaped by the confluence of many different cultural identities. He asks: When a British director teams up with an American producer, a multinational cast and crew, and American capital, to adapt a novel about the contingency of identity by a Sri Lankan-born Canadian resident (The English Patient, 1996), can [the film’s] identity be called anything other than transnational? (Higson 2000a: 68) The so-called ‘Euro-Puddings’, European co-productions funded with the assistance of Eurimages, Media and other subsidies, are another example. Their sometimes bland transnational aesthetics and submerged national– cultural identity are programmatic,16 since they are expected to traverse European borders and capture audiences across Europe and elsewhere. Other authors use ‘transnational cinema’ in a different fashion and interchangeably with what we term migrant and diasporic cinema (see Naficy 1994, Göktürk 2000, Elsaesser 2005, Iordanova 2007), whereas we argue that transnational cinema is a more generic category that comprises different aspects of film production, distribution and consumption which transcend national film cultures. While ‘Euro-Puddings’ and certain international co-productions downplay issues of national, ethnic and cultural identity in an attempt to capitalise on (a perhaps synthetic) Europeanness, migrant and diasporic cinema resists homogenising tendencies and focuses on issues of identity and identity politics, making the experience of minority social groups and individuals its prime concern. The standardised variety of transnational cinema (i.e. films such as The English Patient) is conceived at

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supra-national level by representatives of media corporations who emulate the universal appeal of global Hollywood. By contrast, the creative base of migrant and diasporic cinema can be located at sub-state level and its audiences are likely to be far more specific. Will Higbee (2007b) has also taken issue with the amorphous concept of transnational cinema because it does not adequately reflect the specificities of diasporic and post-colonial films. He proposes an alternative category, ‘cinema of transvergence’, to cover a terrain very similar to that of our migrant and diasporic cinema, with the principal difference that he focuses on post-colonial and diasporic Francophone cinemas. Borrowing the notion of ‘transvergence’, as used by Marcos Novak (2002) to capture the ‘liquid architecture’ of contemporary digital design, and combining it with Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the rhizome, Higbee’s ‘cinema of transvergence’ draws attention to the inversion of relations between the centre and the margin. Not only does this particular kind of transnational cinema deconstruct the relationship between centre and margin by foregrounding ‘marginal experiences’, it also ‘reflects postcolonial theory’s desire to re-frame marginality as a point of resistance’ by challenging hegemonic modes of thought and binary oppositions such as ‘inside/outside, centre/margin and self/other’ (Higbee 2007b: 86). Whereas national cinemas tend to follow the dynamics of convergence in so far as they are informed by a ‘nationalist ideology [which] attempt[s] to paper over the cracks of difference’, the cinema of transvergence ‘aims to expose and foreground (celebrate even) such differences’ (Higbee 2007b: 85). Before returning to the relationship between transnational, World and European cinemas, we take a look at a selection of existing terminologies that have had a bearing on our understanding of migrant and diasporic cinema. Terminological choices are determined by ideological and professional positionalities and conceptual priorities; they reflect historical and social developments as well as the productions available for analysis at a given time. The following sections do not review the entire nomenclature of the field, but rather read the various approaches as informing the current debates and underpinning the contributions in this volume.

Migratory and diasporic aesthetics and ‘double consciousness’17 Discourses on cultural formations in diasporic contexts frequently suggest or imply that the experience of displacement and resettlement, be it through forced or voluntary migration, manifests itself in a distinctive aesthetic response which reflects the ‘double consciousness’ of its creators. Extending W. E. B. DuBois’s late nineteenth-century concept of a ‘double consciousness’ for African Americans to contemporary European diasporas and the experience of ethnic minorities more generally, it has been argued that, on account of their societal position, migrant and diasporic artists, writers

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and film-makers are better placed to interrogate and deconstruct dominant discourses of nation and identity and to take issue with ideological monoliths such as Eurocentrism and its filmic equivalent, ‘Hollywoodcentrism’ (Shohat and Stam 1994: 29). In relation to cinema, ‘double consciousness’ and migrant and diasporic subjectivity have been theorised through recourse to various analytical models and metaphors. In his influential study An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001), Hamid Naficy defines ‘accented cinema’ as an aesthetic response to the experience of displacement through exile, migration and diaspora, which results in the film-makers’ ‘liminal subjectivity and interstitial location in society and the film industry’ (2001: 10). Accented cinema comprises different types of cinema made by exilic, diasporic and ‘postcolonial ethnic and identity filmmakers’ (Naficy 2001: 15) who live and work in countries other than their country of origin. The distinction between the subcategories of exilic, diasporic and post-colonial ethnic and identity films is ‘based chiefly on the varied relationship of the films and their makers to existing or imagined homeplaces’ (Naficy 2001: 21): exilic cinema is dominated by the focus on the there and then in the homeland, diasporic cinema by its vertical relationship to the homeland and by its lateral relationship to the diaspora communities and experiences, and postcolonial ethnic and identity cinema by the exigencies of life here and now in the country in which the filmmakers reside. As a result [...] they tend to deal with [...] the conflict between descent relations, emphasising bloodline and ethnicity, and consent relations, stressing self-made, contractual affiliations. (Naficy 2001: 15) Migrant and diasporic cinema as understood here incorporates Naficy’s tripartite distinction, but places, as outlined above, less emphasis on the filmmakers’ biography. With reference to Henry Louis Gates Jr’s The Signifying Monkey (1988: xxiii), Naficy uses the linguistic trope of accent to describe a filmic practice that differs from a society’s dominant or mainstream cinema, which he sees typified in Hollywood, with its industrial mode of production and emphasis on entertainment rather than political engagement. In relation to this somewhat vaguely sketched dominant cinema, which ‘is considered universal’ (Naficy 2001: 4), all alternative cinemas are accented, but each is accented in specific ways. Accented cinema derives its accent from its artisanal and collective production modes and from the filmmakers’ and audiences’ deterritorialized locations. Consequently, not all accented films are exilic and diasporic, but all exilic and diasporic films are accented. If in linguistics accent pertains only to pronunciation, leaving grammar and vocabulary intact, exilic

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and diasporic accent permeates the film’s deep structure: its narrative, visual style, characters, subject matter, theme, and plot. In that sense, the accented style in film functions as both accent and dialect in linguistics. (Naficy 2001: 23) Covering a large and heterogeneous corpus of films from different regional, national and cultural contexts, Naficy suggests that accented films ‘are interstitial because they are created astride and in the interstices of social formations and cinematic practices. Consequently, they are simultaneously local and global’ and ‘in dialogue with the [film-makers’] home and host societies’, their national cinemas and audiences (2001: 4, 6). Accented cinema does not shy away from imperfection (a feature it shares with Third Cinema) and probes mainstream aesthetics with alternative stylistic paradigms. Often faced with limited budgets, film-makers may opt for experimental shorts, documentaries and essay films instead of full-length feature films, although the latter are also included in Naficy’s range of examples. The film-makers’ interstitial position in society and the media industry may prove advantageous as well as disadvantageous for the production process: on the one hand, the film-maker may be conversant with film funding mechanisms in more than one culture and can tap into various resources; on the other hand, access to funding may be particularly difficult for the kind of oppositional, engaged films many accented film-makers have tried to make. In terms of exhibition, much of accented cinema still occupies – with a few exceptions – a niche position, being restricted to the international festival circuit, art-house cinemas, the specialised public of an academic market, or television channels and programmes devoted to the promotion of independent and alternative cinema (Naficy 2001: 60–2). Even more confined to a niche market is the body of films Laura Marks discusses in The Skin of Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (2000). She predominantly discusses experimental shorts shot on video, which have a small target audience and in all likelihood will not even reach dedicated cinephiles. Like Naficy’s accented cinema, Marks’s intercultural cinema contains the notion of resistance, which is connected with the hybrid cultural identity of the film-makers. Marks chooses ‘intercultural cinema’ as an alternative to competing concepts such as ‘hybrid’, ‘postcolonial’, ‘marginal’, ‘antiracist’, ‘interstitial’ or ‘Third Cinema’ in order to draw attention to the fact that films are conceived of as sites of ‘encounter between different cultural organizations of knowledge’ (Marks 2000: 6–7). She places emphasis on ‘culture’ rather than ‘nation’, because commonly the exchange is between cultures (e.g. Euro-American culture and black, Asian or Latino culture) that coexist and mingle in one nation state. Moreover, ‘ “culture” is something that travelers bring with them more consistently than “nation”; it is the stuff that passes through national borders and transforms nations from within’ (Marks 2000: 9). Marks proposes a theory of ‘haptic visuality’

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(2000: xi) which centres on the hypothesis that the experience of diaspora, exile, migration and displacement has a profound effect on the film-makers’ entire sensory apparatus, not just their vision but their olfactory and haptic perception, enabling them to decipher the auratic nature of objects in a way less commonly found in the work of non-diasporic artists. While hegemonic Western cinema privileges vision, intercultural cinema invokes the filmand video-makers’ individual as well as the displaced audience’s cultural memory by engaging viewers bodily, stimulating their sense of touch, smell and taste. Taking Indo-Canadian cinema as a representative example of the diasporic visual imaginary, Sujata Moorti contends that diasporic cinema is characterised by a distinctive ‘diasporic optic’. Through transnational flows of visual media, particularly in the late twentieth century, diasporic communities have been able to tap into a ‘warehouse of cultural images that western and Indian popular culture have on offer’ and to organise the signs retrieved there in accordance with a ‘visual grammar that seeks to capture the dislocation, disruption and ambivalence’ of the diasporic experience (Moorti 2003: 359). Thus, diasporic cinema captures a particular ‘way of seeing that underscores the interstice, the spaces that are and fall between the cracks of the national and the transnational as well as other social formations’ (Moorti 2003: 359).18 What makes Naficy’s, Marks’s and Moorti’s interventions relevant in the context of this volume is the shared assumption that the diasporic experience calls for a distinctive aesthetic response. Concepts such as ‘accent’, ‘haptic visuality’, ‘diasporic optic’ and ‘dialogic imagination’ (Mercer 1994) suggest that an aesthetics of double consciousness can be identified as a further distinctive feature of migrant and diasporic cinema. However, the notion of a diasporic aesthetic throws up the problem of whether films about the migrant and diasporic experience by film-makers who are not situated in the flux between two cultures are characterised by a similar aesthetic approach or in what respects they might differ.

Ethno-national perspectives Given that the cinema under consideration here frequently engages with the histories and subjectivities of ‘racial’ and ethnic minorities, it is not surprising that several terminologies in circulation invoke discourses of ‘race’ and ethnicity, often within a national framework. One need only think of categories such as black and Asian British cinema, German Turkish cinema and Maghrebi French cinema, but also black cinema or cinéma du métissage. ‘Black cinema’, used largely synonymously with ‘cinema of the Black diaspora’ (Martin 1995), refers to a cinema emanating from black diasporic communities (as opposed to films merely depicting black people), where ‘black’ has been used originally to denote people of sub-Saharan African or

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African Caribbean descent. While, in the context of British cinema, black representation dates back to the 1920s, it was not until the 1960s that black film-makers gained access to film production and thus to opportunities for self-representation on the screen. Following on from documentaries and shorts and the first black British feature film in 1975, the 1980s witnessed an increase in black film-making activity. A small number of low-budget, but critically or commercially successful, narrative films as well as productions from newly founded, grant-aided film collectives made film an important arena of cultural contestation – in both political and aesthetic terms. While originally black British cinema referred to films made by film-makers of African and African Caribbean descent, it was embraced by people from different backgrounds, notably from India and Pakistan, who all identified themselves as ‘Black’. In the words of Stuart Hall: Black is not a question of pigmentation. The Black I’m talking about is a historical category, a political category, a cultural category. In our language, at certain historical moments, we have to use the signifier. We have to create an equivalence between how people look and what their histories are. (Hall 1991b: 53) Such an extension of meaning is an interesting semantic development that highlights solidarity between ethnic groups who share experiences of social marginalisation and oppression. At the same time, it draws attention to the social and cultural constructedness of ‘race’, colour and ethnicity. As the numbers of film-makers and productions increased and the struggle for representation was, at least rhetorically, assimilated into multiculturalist policies in 1990s Britain, ‘Blackness’ was given up as an umbrella term and more emphasis has since been placed on questions of difference among migrant and diasporic groups. In the twenty-first century, different collective ascriptions such as ‘Muslim’ have created new alliances as well as undesired homogenisations. In the Francophone context, cinéma du métissage or cinéma métis have been used to describe a cinema of and by migrant and diasporic subjects. Like the Spanish ‘mestizo’ and the Portuguese ‘mestiço’, the French ‘métis’ refers to people of dual heritage and is underpinned by tenets of (colonial) race thinking, for instance, that humans can be divided into distinct ‘races’ and that ‘miscegenation’ leads to ‘racial impurity’. While biologist racialism has played a minor role since the second half of the twentieth century, its social counterpart – xenophobia – has remained a central factor in European discourses of migration and national demographics as well as in politics, education and debates around a Leitkultur (dominant culture). At the same time, however, the empowerment of minority groups, the diversification of European societies through policy and legislation, globalising forces in the economy and in communications, and post-colonial criticism

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have reconfigured the understanding of métissage. The notion has begun to prevail that ‘the interchange between different cultural diasporas ha[s] produced new and powerful synergistic cultural forms, and that these cultural and racial exchanges might be the place where the most energized aspects of new cultures reside’ (Ashcroft et al. 2006: 136–7).19 Notwithstanding the positive revalorisation of ‘mestizo’, it is still a highly ambivalent label, as British film-maker John Akomfrah points out: ‘if I continue to say I will be this mestizo filmmaker then you are effectively confining yourself to years of not working [...]. Those are the real, concrete, constraining features of being defined in this way or defining yourself in this way’ (2007). Overall in French critical debates, cinéma du métissage has been less commonly used than phrases such as ‘le cinéma de l’émigration’ or ‘le cinéma de l’immigration’. The latter gained currency during the 1970s, but cinematic debate eventually moved on to ‘le cinéma d’immigrés de la deuxième génération’ (immigrant cinema of the second generation) during the 1980s, when the expression ‘cinéma beur’ was first introduced.20 Cinéma du métissage, however, was popularised in German film criticism in an often-cited article by Georg Seeßlen (2000), using le cinéma du métissage synonymously with ‘the Cinema of Inbetween’ and ‘das Kino der doppelten Kulturen’ (the cinema of dual cultures). He sees the cinéma du métissage embodied in French beur and in German Turkish films made by second- or third-generation film-makers. According to Seeßlen, le cinéma du métissage replaces an earlier tradition of representing migrants, which he calls ‘Kino der Fremdheit’ (cinema of alterity). In the Kino der Fremdheit, migrant characters were still a novelty, and the experience of alterity – being ‘foreign’ in and to a host society – was a topic in its own right. While the cinema of alterity produced wellintentioned depictions of the difficulties faced by guest workers and other migrants, le cinéma du métissage, by contrast, no longer perceives migrant and diasporic characters as foreigners and takes their presence for granted. It focuses on the everyday experiences of migrant and diasporic protagonists, intra- cultural tensions within migrant families and the (irreversible) hybridisation of cultures. What was once regarded as exceptional by the dominant culture has been normalised. Cinéma beur was first used in a special issue of Cinématographe in July 1985 to refer to a set of independently released films by beurs, that is, second- or third-generation film-makers of Maghrebi origin. As Carrie Tarr explains, beur (and its later variant rebeu) ‘is a neologism derived from Parisian backslang (verlan) by young second-generation immigrants of Maghrebi descent in the early 1980s’: [I]ts playful inversion and truncation of the syllables of the word for ‘Arab’ originally denoted both an awareness of the negative meanings of ‘Arab’ in the French imaginary, and a refusal to be trapped in those meanings. However, since its incorporation into majority French discourses, many

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of those it refers to have rejected the term, fearing that it has become simply another way of trapping them in a ghetto. (2005: 3)21 Since the 1990s, the sons and daughters of Arab and Berber migrants from France’s former colonies in North Africa tend to refer to themselves as French ‘d’origine maghrébine’ (of Maghrebi origin) or ‘d’origine algérienne, marocaine, tunisienne’ (of Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian origin), thus making their biculturality more specific. One could argue that beur in France served a similar purpose as Black in Britain in an era of identity politics and concerted attempts to come into representation. Bound to a particular moment, these collective terms become contestably generic as they begin to lose their original function. In France, cinéma beur has been largely replaced by Maghrebi French cinema – with film-makers designated as being ‘of Maghrebi descent’. ‘Beur cinema’, however, still enjoys a certain popularity in non-French criticism (see Ruhe 2006, Tarr and Porton 2007). Since the 1990s, however, a certain slippage has occurred between beur/French Maghrebi cinema and a related, but by no means identical, type of cinema, the cinéma de banlieue. Cinéma de banlieue gained popularity in France during the mid-1990s, partly owing to the success of La Haine/Hate (1995, dir. Mathieu Kassovitz), a film about a multi-ethnic trio of black–blanc–beur youths living on the outskirts of Paris. Banlieue refers to the location of independently produced French films set in the cités, ‘the run-down, multi-ethnic working-class estates [...] on the periphery of France’s major cities’ (Tarr 2005: 2).22 As Will Higbee notes, ‘critics debated the significance of a “new” category of film that, for the first time since the Western, was primarily defined by its geographical location’ (2007a: 38). However, Carrie Tarr reminds us that unlike the Western, which tends to legitimate the majority population’s appropriation of spaces occupied by its perceived ‘others’, banlieue films seek to resist and contest the majority population’s perception and control of the spaces in question. Their foregrounding of the voices of the disadvantaged suggests they have something in common with the hood movies of the early 1990s black independent cinema [...]. Crucially, though [... banlieue] films avoid the construction of mono-ethnic ghettos, emphasizing instead the multi-ethnic nature of the French banlieue (and the inner city). (2005: 18)

Tropes of space and mobility In colonial and post-colonial studies, we can observe a proliferation of tropes of space and mobility. Difference or otherness is commonly translated into the spatial analogy of ‘de margin and de centre’, to use the title of Isaac Julien’s and Kobena Mercer’s essay of 1988, whereby the centre is

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variously identified as Western culture, metropolitan Europe or whiteness, and the periphery as the Third World, Europe’s former colonies, people of colour or the subaltern. Similarly, spatial tropes are used to theorise the intersections between centre and periphery. The most prominent concepts include Homi Bhabha’s ‘Third Space’, a cultural space where hybrid cultural practices are negotiated and reconciled (1994: 218), Mary Louise Pratt’s ‘contact zones’ and Paul Gilroy’s ‘Black Atlantic’. In her study Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, Pratt defines contact zones as ‘social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination – like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived across the globe today’ (1992: 4). Even though the transculturation which occurs in the contact zone refers originally to the encounter between the coloniser and the colonised, the concept extends to the deterritorialised diasporas which developed in the wake of decolonisation.23 The exchanges occurring in the contact zone, Pratt asserts, are two- or multi-directional. The ‘imperial metropolis’ is mistaken when it understands itself ‘as determining the periphery’ and ‘habitually blinds itself to the ways in which the periphery determines the metropolis’ (Pratt 1992: 6). Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic refers to a particular cultural contact zone that connects Europe, Africa and the Americas, originally through the slave ships across the Middle Passage of the Atlantic Ocean. In The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993), Gilroy challenges an essentialist understanding of race, ethnicity and nation and proposes the Black Atlantic, traversed in untidy journeys and crossings by the chronotope of a ship as a transnational space of cultural exchange. Gilroy’s spatial trope of the Black Atlantic marks a significant intervention in discourses of diasporic identity. He rejects the notion of ‘roots’ as an absolutist principle which merely reinforces colonialist, nationalist and racist discourses, advocating instead the concept of transnational ‘routes’ to challenge the erroneous idea of the ‘integrity and purity of cultures’ (Gilroy 1993: 7). Cultures are not sealed off hermetically, never the property of just one particular nation state, since cultural practices of different groups of black people living in various locations circulate in the Black Atlantic, resulting in a blending, intermixture and continual transformation of cultural forms. Generally, discourses of race and colour coalesce with spatial tropes, as is also the case in Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of ‘borderlands’ and its cinematic counterpart, the ‘Bronze Screen’ (Fregoso 1993). Only in its most literal sense does ‘borderlands’ refer to the geographical border between Mexico and Texas, being primarily concerned with the border consciousness of mestiza identity. As Anzaldúa evocatively illustrates in her multilingual, poetic and polemical manifesto Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1987), ‘borderlands’ encapsulates mixed-race identities and multiple encounters on shared territories which manifest themselves in a specific border

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subjectivity with a tolerance for contradiction and ambiguity. Similarly, the Bronze Screen denotes a cinema devoted to the exploration of mestizo/a or Chicano/a identities. Rosa Linda Fregoso defines it as an alternative cinema that represents the ‘oppositional forms of knowledge about Chicanos’ by offering ‘Chicano countervisions of history, identity, social reality, resistance politics’ (1993: xv, xiv). Bishnopriya Ghosh and Bhaskar Sarkar’s concept of ‘cinema of displacement’ is also indebted to Anzaldúa’s psychic borderlands. Ghosh and Sarkar define the cinema of displacement as a cinema that centres on mobile populations – particularly of the Third World – and that understands displacement primarily as a ‘psychosocial condition with an economic and politico-juridical base’ (1995/6: 112). Thematically the cinema of displacement is concerned with ‘the act of self-construction in the slippery zone between home and host cultures’ (Ghosh and Sarkar 1995/6: 105) and typically employs three spatial tropes. The tropes of home and ‘double space’ are of particular significance ‘for the protagonist’s acts of self-location’ (Ghosh and Sarkar 1995/6: 105). The ‘double space’ is a particular location ‘in the mise-en-scene [... which simultaneously] evokes an “other” space’ (Ghosh and Sarkar 1995/6: 109). A further trope is the ‘heightened sense of spatial activity’ conveyed through the protagonists’ ‘remarkable amount of movement’ and their constant ‘traversing of space’ (Ghosh and Sarkar 1995/6: 111). This would explain why journeys of quest, ‘homebound’ journeys and the genre of the road movie occupy a privileged position in migrant and diasporic cinema. Spatial mobility as one of the distinctive features of the cinema under consideration here is also contained in ‘immigrant cinema’ (Bosséno 1992) and its various linguistic variants: cine de inmigración and cine de inmigrantes in Spanish (Santaolalla 2005, Castiello 2005), Migrantenkino and Migrationsfilm in German, and cinéma de l’émigration or cinéma de l’immigration in French. These tropes of space and mobility have their antecedents in ‘émigré cinema’ and ‘exilic cinema’, which have a long history, in particular in relation to Hollywood. As Hamid Naficy and others have noted, ‘indeed, “foreigners and émigrés” have dominated the pinnacles [... ] of American cinema, which from the beginning was immigrant, transnational and American, all at the same time’ (2001: 7). In American cinema, the successive waves of immigration resulted in different strategies of cultural assimilation and resistance on the part of the film-makers. According to Thomas Elsaesser, ‘foreigners in Hollywood’ had the choice between ‘disavowing their own homeland and heritage’ and ‘assimilate and become 110 per cent American or be European and exotic, but also 110 per cent!’ (1999: 99). The majority of European émigré directors who played important roles in the studio system downplayed their Europeanness and ethnic origins. In order to succeed, they promoted core American values, while at the same time engaging in ‘various performative

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strategies of camouflage in their films and self-fashioning in their lives’ (Naficy 2001: 8; see also Elsaesser 1999). What is interesting in relation to the terminology is that labels such as ‘émigré director’ or ‘European exiles in Hollywood’, which bring to mind some of the most acclaimed directors, producers and actors within the American film industry, implicitly celebrate the unique and outstanding creative (generally middle-class) individual. By contrast, the label ‘migrant and diasporic film-maker’ draws attention to collectivity and implies belonging to a homogeneous, ethnically distinct group, typically positioned at a lower stratum of society (suggesting a background of poverty and labour needs, former colonial subjugation or refugeedom). It is thus not surprising that migrant and diasporic film-makers tend to reject this kind of ethnic pigeonholing, whereas more individualist and elitist designations such as ‘cosmopolitan’ or ‘transnationally mobile film-maker’ seem to be more acceptable.24 There is another difference between the so-called Hollywood emigrés and the film-makers under consideration here: while cultural assimilation was a key strategy of artistic survival for the former, a self-conscious and explicit engagement with difference has been embraced by a number of representatives of the latter. The more decentralised European film industries and recent cultural diversity agendas have facilitated this possibility of self-positioning and a new kind of cinema. As Graham Huggan argues in The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins, cultural and ethnic otherness has become part of a ‘booming “alterity industry” ’, making ‘marginality a valuable intellectual commodity’ (2001: vii–viii). Not unlike the celebrity post-colonial writers and critics referenced by Huggan, contemporary migrant and diasporic film-makers in Europe play an important role as cultural brokers, trading the minoritarian experience as a prized commodity. In fact, their recognised status within Western culture often rests on their being mediators of marginality and alterity.

Socio-political perspectives Literature concerned with migrant and diasporic cinema in Europe in the earlier decades of migratory movements (e.g. the 1970s and 1980s in France and Germany and the 1990s in Southern Europe) employs a terminology that stresses the socio-political imperative of this cinema. Angelica Fenner places ‘films of migration’ in the tradition of the West German Problemfilm (social problem film), which combines a feature film format ‘with a heavy dose of documentary realism to bring to public attention a variety of social concerns’ (2006: 23). The films referenced by Fenner are predominantly about ‘guest workers’ and victimised foreign women in West Germany and were directed by nonmigrant film-makers such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Angst essen Seele

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auf/Ali-Fear Eats the Soul, 1974), Helma Sanders-Brahms (Shirins Hochzeit/ Shirin’s Wedding, 1976) and Werner Schroeter (Palermo oder Wolfsburg/ Palermo or Wolfsburg, 1980); she also includes a more recent film about illegal Kurdish immigrants to Switzerland, Reise der Hoffnung/Journey of Hope (Switzerland 1990), directed by the Swiss Xavier Koller. The pessimistic narratives of these films about migrant identity, Fenner argues, are based on a set of predictable binary oppositions, such as ‘urban/rural, oriental/occidental, native/other, hegemonic/subaltern, oppressor/victim’ and seek to arouse the viewer’s ‘sense of moral indignation and compassion’ (2006: 24–5).25 The moral and narrative stance of these social problem films is similar to the one prevailing in what Rob Burns calls the ‘cinema of the affected’ (2006: 128, 148). In addition to the films listed by Fenner, he also includes the productions of first-generation Turkish German film-maker Tevfik Başer, 40m2 Deutschland/Forty Square Metres of Germany (1986) and Abschied vom falschen Paradies/Farewell to a False Paradise (1989). As Deniz Göktürk notes, these Turkish German examples of the cinema of the affected essentially replicate ‘the social worker approach’ to ethnic relations by German directors and are, likewise, inspired by a ‘well-meaning multiculturalism feeding on binary oppositions and integrationist desires’ (2000: 68). Fenner’s description of ‘films of migration’ in Germany and Switzerland also applies to some extent to the cinéma de l’immigration in France which became prominent in the 1970s. The turn towards a political cinema following the events of May 1968 was evident in the growing number of feature films addressing the difficult situation of migrants in France, made by nonmigrant French as well as migrant North and sub-Saharan African filmmakers, which caused immigrant cinema to be perceived as Manichean and ‘miserabilist’ (Bosséno 1983: 8). The first wave included both experimental and radical films such as Soleil O (1970) and Les bicots-nègres, vos voisins/ Arabs and Niggers, Your Neighbours (1973) by Mauritanian film-maker Med Hondo, which denounce the slave trade, racism and French neocolonialism, and more conventionally narrated films by Maghrebi film-makers such as Mektoub? (1970, dir. Ali Ghalem), Les Ambassadeurs/The Ambassadors (1976, dir. Naceur Ktari) and Ali au pays des mirages/Ali in Wonderland (1978, dir. Ahmed Rachedi), which foreground difficulties of the migrant experience. Films of the mid-1980s, including Le Thé à la menthe/Mint Tea (1985, dir. Abdelkrim Bahloul) and the first feature films by second-generation (beur) film-makers, Mehdi Charef’s Le Thé au harem d’Archimède/Tea in the Harem (1985) and Rachid Bouchareb’s Baton Rouge (1985), showed a move away from political themes and consciousness towards a more popular narrative cinema, opting generically for social realism or comedy and displaying ‘a determination to dedramatize’ (Bosséno 1992: 50), a trend subsequently demonstrated by other Maghrebi French film-makers. With reference to comparable trends in black and Asian British cinema, Sarita Malik appropriates the phrase ‘a cinema of duty’ by Cameron Bailey,

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who defined it as a social issue-based cinema with a documentary–realist aesthetics which ‘positions its subjects in direct relation to social crisis, and attempts to articulate “problems” and “solutions to problems” within a framework of centre and margin, white and non-white communities’ (Bailey, cited in Malik 1996: 203–4). Though similar to the cinema of the affected in many respects, cinema of duty films such as Pressure (1975, dir. Horace Ové) and Step Forward Youth (1977, dir. Menelik Shabazz) differ from the former in as much as they refrain from ethnic or racial stereotyping. Instead they were ‘important for the way in which they “answered back” to what Jim Pines has called the “official race relations narrative” [...] by offering an alternative view of the diasporic experience’ (Malik 1996: 204). Black and Asian British film-makers challenged stereotypes which dominated the media and, from the mid-1980s onwards, aimed to re-articulate black British identities, addressing both inter- and intra-communal issues, using realist as well as non-realist aesthetics. It was not until the 1990s, however, that an increase in black and Asian British productions enabled film-makers to relish ‘the pleasures of hybridity’ (Malik 1996) and to debate and claim mainstream structures (Korte and Sternberg 2004: 5–47). Young Soul Rebels (1990, dir. Isaac Julien) and Bhaji on the Beach (1993, dir. Gurinder Chadha), as well as the groundbreaking earlier My Beautiful Laundrette (1985, dir. Stephen Frears), are among the first films establishing this trend. Contemporary migrant and diasporic cinema in Europe continues to follow the two main traditions sketched by Malik: on the one hand, it is still a cinema of duty that presents social dramas of disadvantaged individuals and/or communities, articulating a perspective from within migrant and diasporic culture and providing a critique of hegemonic structures and dominant ideologies. It thereby aligns itself with the traditions of Third Cinema as well as the cinéma engagé associated with some of the left-wing auteurs of the European New Wave cinemas, but equally prominent in many Third World cinemas. On the other hand, in as much as it celebrates the pleasures of hybridity it capitalises on the mainstream appeal of the exotic, which accounts for the steadily growing demand for World Cinema – a new popular brand of World Cinema, which by and large disavows its multiple connections with Third Cinema.

Marking the World Cinema turn of European cinema In Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (1994), Ella Shohat and Robert Stam place what we call migrant and diasporic cinema in the context of ‘Third World cinema’, thus drawing attention to its affinity with ‘Third Cinema’, but carefully distinguishing between the two. The term ‘Third Cinema’ was coined in the late 1960s by the Argentine film-makers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, and refers in the first instance to the counter-hegemonic film practice of Latin America. It denotes a guerrilla

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cinema, intended to serve as a weapon in the ideological conflict between First World domination and Third World liberation and emancipation. In their manifesto ‘Towards a Third Cinema’ (1969), Solanas and Getino characterise it as counter-cinema in both political and aesthetic terms. They contrast it with First Cinema, that is, the productions of capitalist film industries, in particular Hollywood, and Second Cinema, that is, auteur cinema in Europe as well as neocolonialist film practices in Argentina and elsewhere in the Third World.26 However, not all Third World cinemas share the ideological and aesthetic programme of Third Cinema, which was further expressed in essays by the Brazilian director Glauber Rocha, who coined the phrase ‘Aesthetic of Hunger’ (1965) with reference to the ‘sad, ugly films’ of Cinema Nuovo, and Julio Garcia Espinosa, who called ‘For an Imperfect Cinema’ (1969). Third World cinema, as the more encompassing term, denotes the cinematic production of the so-called Third World countries27 in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, and includes many varieties of commercial cinema with no oppositional or counter-hegemonic agenda. ‘ “Third World Cinema”, far from being a marginal appendage to First World cinema – Hollywood’s “poor relative” –, actually produces most of the world’s feature films’ (Stam 2007: 97). Conversely, some scholars, including Teshome Gabriel (1982), Paul Willemen (1987) and Shohat and Stam (1994), have proposed not to limit Third Cinema to films emanating from the Third World as such. They conceive of Third Cinema as a particular ideological project, a cinema of political and aesthetic resistance, which can also be located in the First World. This view has allowed the inclusion of, for example, black British cinema, as well as other diasporic and minoritarian productions made by filmmakers with a ‘Third World’ background, living and working in Europe. Kobena Mercer, for one, explicitly aligns black British independent film of the 1980s with Third Cinema and ‘imperfect cinema’ on account of its critical perspective and dialogic principles (2003 [1988]: 256). Shohat and Stam use ‘postcolonial hybrid films’ (1994: 42) alongside ‘diasporic hybrid films’ (1994: 28) and place this kind of minoritarian cinema within the First World next to Third Cinema and Third World cinema in their model of four circles: 1. A core circle of ‘Third Worldist’ films produced by and for Third World peoples (no matter where those people happen to be) and adhering to the principles of ‘Third Cinema’; 2. a wider circle of the cinematic productions of Third World peoples (retroactively defined as such), whether or not the films adhere to the principles of Third Cinema and irrespective of the period of their making; 3. another circle consisting of films made by First or Second World people in support of Third World peoples and adhering to the principles of Third Cinema; and

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4. a final circle, somewhat anomalous in status, at once ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, comprising recent diasporic [/post-colonial] hybrid films, for example, those of Mona Hatoum or Hanif Kureishi, which both build on and interrogate the conventions of ‘Third Cinema’ (1994: 28). Despite emphasising the Third Cinema heritage of diasporic hybrid films, Shohat and Stam also acknowledge that more recently a considerable diversification of aesthetic templates has occurred and that, in fact, there has been a notable shift away from a politics of resistance to a ‘politics of pleasure’ (1994: 29), reflected in the use of music, humour, sexuality and other stratagems of depoliticisation and mainstreaming. However, many Third Cinema scholars would argue that, once productions cross the borderline to mainstream commercial cinema, they betray the radical political and aesthetic agenda of Third Cinema and are no longer part of that tradition. Nevertheless, those diasporic hybrid films can still be recuperated under the concept of World Cinema. It is necessary to explore here how precisely Shohat and Stam’s postcolonial hybrid cinema maps on to our concept of migrant and diasporic cinema in Europe. Both, at least partially, refer to the films made by ‘postcolonial diasporas in the First World’ (Shohat and Stam 1994: 42). Yet we have avoided the use of ‘postcolonial’ for two reasons. First, as Shohat and Stam quite rightly note, ‘postcolonial’ is a highly ambiguous term, which obfuscates rather than clarifies the particular perspective adopted in the kinds of film in question: The term ‘postcolonial’ [...] blurs the assignment of perspectives. Given that the colonial experience is shared, albeit asymmetrically, by (ex-) colonizer and (ex-)colonized, does the ‘post’ indicate the perspective of the ex-colonized (Algerian, for example), the ex-colonizer (in this case French), the ex-colonial settler (pied noir), or the displaced immigrant in the metropole (Algerian in France)? Since most of the world is now living in the aftermath of colonialism, the ‘post’ neutralizes salient differences [...]. (1994: 39) Second, many migrant and diasporic subjects whose films we consider in this volume or who appear as central characters did not migrate to Europe from former colonies. For instance, the first wave of Turkish migrants to Germany were invited as ‘guest workers’ to further the economic boom of West Germany from the 1960s onwards, but no colonial prehistory connected Turkey with Germany.28 The same holds true for many Eastern European and post-Soviet migrant and diasporic film-makers now working in France and other countries in Western Europe. Migrant and diasporic communities are also developing in European nations such as Denmark, Sweden or Norway, but are not related to the histories of regional or

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small-scale overseas colonialism of the Nordic countries. Nevertheless, the experiences of displacement, social marginalisation and dual or multiple cultural attachments are to a greater or lesser degree shared by all contemporary migrant and diasporic subjects in Europe, irrespective of the nature of the historical links between ‘home’ and ‘host’ countries. In the case of refugees or undocumented migrants, migratory subjects may in fact exercise little or no control at all over destinations, finding themselves in cultures and linguistic environments totally alien to them. Moreover, as Dina Iordanova argues in her contribution to this volume, there are some significant correspondences between the post-colonial and the post-communist paradigms, which enable us to extend certain aspects of the post-colonial framework to most of the films considered in this book. While we acknowledge a significant overlap between Shohat and Stam’s post-colonial hybrid and our migrant and diasporic cinema, the different terminologies draw attention to different perspectives: Shohat and Stam adopt a temporal vantage point since they are interested in this cinema’s colonial prehistory. Our terminology, by contrast, foregrounds the experience of transnational mobility, dispersal and settlement as a principal creative impetus behind the films under consideration here. At the same time we do not deny that the spatial and temporal dimensions of diaspora are inextricably intertwined. Kobena Mercer expresses this idea evocatively when he describes ‘diaspora people [as those] blasted out of one history into another’ (1994: 63). At the outset we boldly suggested that migrant and diasporic cinema marks the World Cinema turn in European cinema. Although our exploration of Third and Third World cinema has helped shed some light on this complex relationship in as much as we were able to explain the presence of a ‘post-Third Worldist’ or ‘postcolonial’ cinema – two alternative terms Stam uses (2007: 97) – within Europe, we have yet to clarify how World Cinema relates to Third World cinema and migrant and diasporic cinema in Europe (and elsewhere). World Cinema and Third World cinema reflect shifting geopolitical constellations, changes in the production, distribution and circulation of films, and more general cultural trends. In the academic discipline of film studies, the trendy catch-all term ‘World Cinema’ has superseded Third World cinema and has resulted in new university courses, degree programmes and a flourish of publications in this new field (see Kuhn and Grant 2006: 1). This change in terminology has arisen over the past twenty years in response to a number of factors. The collapse of communism in the late 1980s rendered the Three Worlds paradigm, in which the countries of the Eastern bloc occupied the position of the Second World, obsolete. Moreover, since the late 1960s, ‘Third Worldist euphoria’ gradually disappeared as it became clear that those whom Frantz Fanon called ‘ “the wretched of the earth” were not unanimously revolutionary (nor necessarily allies to one

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another)’ and Third World was ‘seen as an inconvenient relic of a more militant period’ (Stam 2007: 99). At the same time, the label ‘Third World cinema’, which – notwithstanding scholarly efforts to distinguish between the two – still connotes the anti-colonial thrust of Third Cinema, has become an increasingly inappropriate descriptor in view of the diversity of film histories and cinematic productions made beyond Europe and the United States. Bollywood musicals, Hong Kong action films and the films of contemporary World Cinema auteurs such as Wong Kar Wai or Alejandro González Iñárritu, who have a considerable following in the West, cannot be productively framed as the inheritors of Third Cinema, but are products of a long century of national and transnational, industrial and artistic development and exchange. World Cinema is a contested concept and its boundaries are as yet unclear. Annette Kuhn and Catherine Grant sum up this ambiguity: Part of the attraction of the world cinema brand must lie in its twofold promise of inclusivity and distinctiveness. While the term can refer specifically to Third World cinemas which embody non-mainstream or alternative approaches to film content and/or style, it can equally well cover all non-Hollywood or all non-First World cinemas, from the most mainstream to the most experimental. (2006a: 1). From the industry’s point of view, World Cinema is largely synonymous with ‘foreign-language’ (i.e. non-English) films, which explains why much of European cinema is gradually being subsumed under this omnivorous category. Yet one can easily think of countless foreign-language films which are simply too monocultural to fit the bill. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s multi-award-winning film Das Leben der Anderen/The Lives of Others (Germany 2006) about the moral dilemmas of a Stasi officer in the now defunct East German dictatorship is one of them. Michael Haneke’s film Caché/Hidden (France/Austria/Germany/Italy 2005), however, is a prime example of the European variety of World Cinema: a French-language film made by an Austrian director with a record of films made in Germany, working in France (and more recently in the United States), addresses one of the lacunae of France’s post-colonial history, the Paris Massacre of 1961, its aftermath and suppressed memory. Yet both films were billeted as World Cinema at festivals and both were shortlisted for the BBC 4 World Cinema Awards in 2007 and 2008 respectively. Evidently, industrial and scholarly categorisations do not match. From an academic point of view, foreign language and foreign culture alone do not suffice to justify the classification of The Lives of Others as World Cinema. As Sohini Chaudhuri (2005), Thomas Elsaesser (2005) and Lucía Nagib (2006), amongst others, have pointed out, the concept of World Cinema implies transnational connections on the level of film production, financing, distribution and reception.

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Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim remind us of the Eurocentric perspective inherent in the concept. Like ‘World Music’ and ‘World Literature’, they argue, World Cinema is a category that refers to non-Western cultural products and practices ‘as viewed from the West’ (2006a: 1). Moreover, World Cinema, not unlike World Literature, a concept that goes back to Goethe’s Weltliteratur and denotes ‘obscure literatures [... that] offer the (Western) reader a window into foreign worlds’ (Dennison and Lim 2006a: 2), refers to the process of canon formation. A particular national cinema, therefore, can only be included in the World Cinema canon by virtue of its transnational circulation and being appropriated by hegemonic cultures. In this process, those films which are included in the canon of World Cinema become the locus of complex negotiations between the culture of origin and the appropriating Western culture, which has the power to bestow prestige and recognition upon a small section of foreign films, principally through screening them on the international festival circuit and awarding them prestigious prizes. As Thomas Elsaesser notes, international film festivals in Europe and the United States have created a number of special platforms for showcasing World Cinema and ‘have increasingly invested in upgrading the term “world cinema” into a quality label’ (2005: 504). Yet the discovery and skilful marketing of World Cinema is not without its own problems. Admittedly, Western audiences are invited to expand their horizons, but they are presented with films that have been subjected to a careful pre-selection process, resulting in a particular brand of World Cinema that privileges films that resonate with Western aesthetic sensibilities and certain preconceptions about the ‘other’. As Elsaesser provocatively argues, World Cinema can be understood as a ‘symptom of neo-colonialism in the cultural sphere’, being essentially a cinema that ‘others’ the other, even if the other colludes in the othering [...] by promoting a form of self-exoticization, in which the ethnic, the local or the regional expose themselves, under the guise of selfexpression, to the gaze of the benevolent other [i.e. Western audiences], with all the consequences this entails. (2005: 509–10) These cynical remarks seem to denounce self-othering as an exploitative and derogatory practice. We also need to acknowledge, however, that selfothering is by no means the only strategy adopted and that, ultimately, the rapidly growing interest in World Cinema in the West translates into an enormous opportunity for hitherto marginalised film-makers and productions without sufficient distribution and exhibition opportunities to move to the centre and to claim a more prominent place in the European film industry. Who is better placed to respond to these conflicting demands of being at the same time ‘other’, ‘exotic’, ‘authentic’ and alluring to the Western

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beholder? Who is better equipped to negotiate the position of European cinema in relation to World Cinema than contemporary migrant and diasporic film-makers? After all, they occupy an interstitial position between what has hitherto been labelled Second/Third Cinema and First Cinema. Those migrant and diasporic film-makers who are living and working in Europe play a crucial role in the process of redefining European cinema, which is no longer seen solely in relation to Hollywood but assumes a new position in this shifting set of constellations – just as Hollywood also reassesses its position vis à vis major new players, in particular from Asia. The increasing competition from various national cinemas that are subsumed under World Cinema results in a ‘diminishing importance of European cinema [...] on a global level and within the US’ as the market shares of European cinema are constantly shrinking (Elsaesser 2005: 495). In a cultural climate with a voracious appetite for ‘ethnic’ and ‘fusion’ products such as music and cuisine from around the world, European cinema is well advised to jump on the World Cinema bandwagon, utilising the exotic appeal of the other to rebrand itself. Migrant and diasporic film-makers have evolved into a new group of auteurs, particularly well equipped to have a transnational following because they are in tune with more than one culture and the expectations of multiple audiences. These film-makers represent ‘more fluid forms of European identity’ (Elsaesser 2005: 72) that can enhance the appeal of European national cinemas – notoriously difficult to export – across European borders and, indeed, further afield. Their competitive advantage and creative distinctiveness lie in their ‘double consciousness’, their ‘polycentric vision’ (Shohat and Stam 1994) and their ‘dialogic imagination’ (Mercer 1994), which enable them to translate cultural hybridity into new aesthetic paradigms and also to expand the cultural imagination of non-migrant and non-diasporic film-makers. This is what Salman Rushdie famously referred to when he praised migration and hybridity as the chief sources of innovation in contemporary culture: ‘Mélange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world. It is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world, [...] change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. It is a love-song to our mongrel selves’ (1991: 394).

Towards a definition of migrant and diasporic cinema in Europe Any attempt to provide a closed definition of migrant and diasporic cinema (in global or European terms) can only result in a form of homogenisation that fails to do justice to the specificity of individual films and their particular socio-political, cultural, historical and industrial contexts. This reservation notwithstanding, we wish to conclude this chapter by entering into further debate with the proposition of the following distinctive features.

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Contemporary migrant and diasporic cinema in Europe 1. encompasses a rapidly expanding corpus of films made roughly since the 1980s, which occupy an interstitial position between Third World, Second Cinema and First World cinema, and marks the World Cinema turn of European cinema. 2. challenges the concept of national cinema and ‘the national’ in as much as it articulates and constructs migrant and diasporic identities which inevitably transcend the boundaries of the nation state. It is a particular type of transnational cinema that resists the homogenising effects of globalisation, foregrounding instead issues of diversity. It is transnational not only in terms of subject matter, but also on the production side and, at least potentially, when it comes to dissemination (finding audiences across Europe and beyond) and reception (offering multiple decoding positions). However, unlike global Hollywood, it tends to be more limited in its address and funding sources, thus targeting specific national audiences and transnational diasporas as well as cosmopolitan cinéphiles.29 3. is based on the distinction between the ‘migrant’ and the ‘diasporic’ experience to accommodate the difference between a migratory first and subsequent diasporic generations. Films often reflect their creators’ memory or postmemory of migration and of belonging to a diaspora, but migrant and diasporic cinema can also include films born out of the cross-pollination occurring in the diaspora space, made by film-makers who articulate a prosthetic memory of migration and diaspora. 4. reflects the ‘double consciousness’ or ‘diasporic optic’ of its creators through its distinctive aesthetic approach. It is an aesthetically hybrid cinema which juxtaposes and fuses stylistic templates, generic conventions, narrative and musical traditions, languages and performance styles from more than one (film) culture. 5. is characterised, on the one hand, by a preponderance of journeys and a heightened sense of mobility. The dominance of transitional and liminal spaces signals that migrant and diasporic films are concerned with identities in flux. On the other hand, a predilection for claustrophobic interiors and the use of locations on the peripheries of global cities underscore the fact that social marginalisation is still experienced by many migrant and diasporic subjects. 6. crucially and centrally engages with the ‘other’: it appropriates ‘other’ cinematic, dramatic and narrative traditions and, in a process of creolising appropriation, embeds them within European cinema and culture. It also draws attention to the ‘other within’, problematising the historical, ideological and cultural divisions between Europe’s North and South, East and West. It is a cinema of identity politics that probes difference along the multiple coordinates of race, colour, ethnicity, nationality, regionality, language, religion, generation, class, gender and sexuality.

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7. is a cinema in which spatio-temporal and spatio-racial modalities coalesce and converge and whose strategic agenda is the relocation of the margins to the centre, the valorisation and, ultimately, ‘the redemption of the marginal’ (Stam 2003: 35).

Notes 1. With this we mean the introduction of World Cinema as a category in the festival as well as the commercial sector and the proliferation of popular and academic publications on film-making across the globe, including that of migrant and diasporic practitioners within already well-researched ‘film nations’. 2. In Jewish thought, the two terms are sometimes synonymous; the Hebrew equivalents, galut and golah, can be translated as both exile and diaspora (Peters 1999: 20). 3. Cohen stresses that trauma is a feature of victim diasporas but does not necessarily apply to others, such as labour, trade or imperial diasporas (2008: 17, 40). 4. The term ‘hybrid’ was originally used in horticulture to refer to the crosspollination or grafting of different species of plants to create a third (‘hybrid’) species. In colonial discourse, ‘hybridisation’ referred to mixed-race unions and, as Robert Young argues, had a pejorative and racist meaning (1995: 159–60). More recently, hybridity has become a celebratory term, denoting ‘the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization’ (Ashcroft et al. 2006: 118). Bhabha (1994) uses hybridity in his analysis of the relationship between the coloniser and the colonised, asserting that the construction of their subjectivities was a mutual, interdependent process. 5. ‘Migrant’ also encapsulates a more transitory experience, for example that of refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented migrants, whose communities are smaller and less stable than long-term, established and ‘legal’ ones. It is rare, however, that film-makers emerge directly from such precarious backgrounds. 6. Hirsch originally developed the concept of postmemory in relation to Holocaust survivors and their descendents, but it has since been applied to other contexts. 7. Ponzanesi and Merolla (2005: 4–5) and Stein (2004: 5) similarly problematise the concept of generation in their discussion of migrant artists and black British writers respectively, while Weigel (2002) provides an erudite discussion of the concept of generation as a symbolic form. 8. See Huyssen, who notes: ‘It is particularly the relationship between diasporic memory [of a minority culture] and the memory formations of the national culture within which a given diaspora may be embedded that remains seriously understudied’ (2003: 151). 9. For another conceptualisation of memory transmission, notably in the aftermath of trauma, see Hirsch on ‘[a]ffiliative postmemory’ which ‘would be the result of contemporaneity and generational connection with the literal second generation combined with structures of mediation that would be broadly appropriable, available, and indeed, compelling enough to encompasss a larger collective’ (2008: 115). 10. See Mercer on black art and the ‘burden of representation’ (1990). 11. Göktürk (2006: 66) argues that ‘transnational’ has replaced ‘subnational’, just as much as the label World Cinema has replaced the more specific term ‘postcolonial hybrid’ cinema. 12. Halle offers an insightful and sustained discussion of two related concepts: globalisation and transnationalism. While ‘globalisation’ refers to ‘rapidly

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13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

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expanding material economic connections within world markets’ (2008: 3), ‘transnationalism [...] designate[s] the socio-political ideational processes, or to put it more simply, the dynamic of culture’ (2008: 5). He further suggests that Europe presents a unique project in which ‘the globalization of capital in the European Union coincides with a transnationalization of culture’ (2008: 6) and that, therefore, Europe is reimagining itself simultaneously in the economic and culture spheres as a transnational community. Examples include the trajectories of early film technology, the migrations of producers, directors and stars in the silent era, multilingual productions and international distribution and exhibition. An understanding of the transnational history of the cinema has also been combined with assumptions about its transcultural quality, for example in Chow’s discussion of film and cultural identity, where she argues that film has always been ‘a transcultural phenomenon having as it does the capacity to transcend “culture” – to create modes of fascination which are readily accessible and which engage audiences in ways independent of their linguistic and cultural specificities’ (1998: 174). Nagib (2006) rightly notes that measuring all other cinemas against Hollywood results in a distorted picture that artificially perpetuates Hollywood and Western hegemony. She advocates a polycentric approach to world cinemas in order to abolish old hierarchies and binary divides. However, see Halle, who critically engages with the denunciation of American cultural imperialism and its putative negative effects on supposedly more authentic local film cultures (2008: 15–20). Taking a positive approach to the formal characteristics of transnational cinema, he identifies eight features of the transnational aesthetic, resulting from the global orientation and commercial considerations which are inscribed in the creation of these films (2008: 83–8). Bergfelder (2005) also addresses the relationship between national, transnational and supranational cinema. ‘Double consciousness’ goes back to W. E. B. Du Bois’s ‘The Strivings of the Negro People’ (1897), subsequently revised for The Souls of Black Folk (1903). Du Bois describes ‘two warring ideals in one black body’, that is, an internally divided diasporic self, resulting from conflicting cultural and ethnic affiliations. See Gilroy (2002 [1993]) for a discussion of ‘double consciousness’ in a twentieth-century context. Mirzoeff’s (1999) concept of ‘intervisuality’ and Mercer’s (2003 [1988]) ‘dialogic imagination’ are also attempts to define a diasporic aesthetic in visual culture. Shohat and Stam argue that the English term ‘miscegenation’ has more negative connotations than its Spanish equivalent mestizaje: ‘Miscegenation calls attention to a taboo action of sexual mixing, while mestizaje endorses the long-term results of such mixing’ (1994: 43). A useful overview of the use of such concepts as ‘métissage’, ‘creolisation’, ‘transculturation’, ‘hybridity’, and so on, can be found on the Creole Social and Cultural Studies website. See CinémAction/Hommes et Migrations (1990), ‘Cinémas métis – de Hollywood aux films beurs’, 56 (July); CinémAction (1983), ‘Cinémas de l’émigration 3’, No. 24; ‘Cinéma contre racisme’, CinémAction (1981), Special Issue, with Tumulte, No. 7. The self-designation beur, which plays with the negative connotations associated with ‘Arab’ and Arab immigrants in France, can be compared to ‘Kanake’, used by young Turks living in Germany who have similarly co-opted a derogatory reference to foreigners and immigrants in Germany and use it as a positive form of self-identification. The German Turkish author Feridun Zaimoğlu published a (mock)ethnography entitled Kanak Sprak (Kanaki Speak) (1995), written in the sociolect of young Turkish men living in Germany.

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22. Early prototypes such as Mehdi Charef’s Le Thé au harem d’Archimède (1985) or Malik Chibane’s Hexagone (1994) were made by directors of Maghrebi descent; La Haine, Etat des lieux and Raï, all of which were released in 1995, were made by non-Maghrebi French directors. 23. Cohen (2008: 123–39) reserves ‘deterritorialized diasporas’ specifically for those multiply displaced people for whom it is difficult to identify a natal home and who have become multi-located cultures. 24. Bryceson and Vuorela (2002: 7–8) draw attention to the class connotations of the term ‘migrant’. They suggest that the term ‘is more readily applied to people that are economically or politically deprived’. The concept of ‘transnational’, by contrast, is commonly associated with families or individuals ‘at the higher end of the income scale, who tend to move for financial or status reasons, [and who] are seen as somehow different, bestowing their presence and skills on the receiving nation as opposed to other migrants who are imposing or even inflicting their needs on the receiving country’. 25. Similar productions can also be found in Spanish, Italian and, to a lesser extent, Greek cinema. 26. In his discussion of the manifestos of Third Cinema and the controversies sparked by them, Guneratne points out that the boundaries of First, Second and Third Cinema are by no means clearly demarcated, and that Third Cinema theorists have been particularly equivocal about ‘the seemingly barbed-wire-ringed conceptual moat between Second and Third Cinema’ (2003: 18). He also provides interesting examples of Indian cinema where the three categories converge (2003: 20–2). 27. ‘Third World’ was ‘coined by French demographer Alfred Sauvy in the 1950s in analogy to the revolutionary “Third Estate” of France, referring to the commoners in contrast to the First and Second Estates, the nobility and the clergy. The three “worlds” describe the following: the capitalist first world of Europe, the US, Australia and Japan; the “second world” of the socialist bloc (China’s place in the schema was the object of much debate); and the third world proper’ (Stam 2007: 97). As Stam notes in an erudite discussion of the concept, the Third World cannot be equated with the poor, the undeveloped, the non-industrialised or the non-white, since in many respects so-called Third World countries do not correspond to these descriptions. ‘Instead “Third World” signifies an international experience of protracted structural domination’ (2007: 97). 28. The relationship between Germany and Turkey, however, is not a random one. The Ottoman Empire fought on the side of Germany and the Central Powers in the First World War – a historical connection that has not yet been explored in German (Turkish) films. 29. The transnational reception of Indian cinema has been well documented in a number of studies, including Larkin (2003), Kaur and Sinha (2005) and Eleftheriotis and Iordanova (2006), whereas the reception of migrant and diasporic cinema amongst various audiences still remains an under-researched area. Gabereau (2007) and Schwingel (2007) provide some useful insights into the audiences of contemporary Turkish German cinema, notably the films of Fatih Akın.

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Naficy, H. (1994) ‘Phobic Spaces and Liminal Panics: Independent Transnational Film Genre’, East-West Film Journal 8(2): 1–30. —— . (ed.) (1999) Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place. London, New York: Routledge. —— . (2001) An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press. Nagib, L. (2006) ‘Towards a Positive Definition of World Cinema’, in S. Dennison and S. H. Lim (eds) Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film. London, New York: Wallflower Press, 30–7. Novak, M. (2002) ‘Speciation, Transvergence, Allogenesis: Notes on the Production of the Alien’, Architectural Design 72(3): 64–71. Peters, J. D. (1999) ‘Exile, Nomadism and Diaspora: The Stakes of Mobility in the Western Canon’, in H. Naficy (ed.) Home, Exile, Homeland: Film, Media, and the Politics of Place. London, New York: Routledge, 17–41. Ponzanesi, S. and D. Merolla (eds) (2005) Migrant Cartographies: New Cultural and Literary Spaces in Post-Colonial Europe. Lanham, Boulder, New York: Lexington Books. Pratt, M. L. (1992) Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London, New York: Routledge. Robins, K. (2007) ‘Transnational Cultural Policy and European Cosmopolitanism’, Cultural Politics 3(2):147–74. Rueschmann, E. (ed.) (2003) Moving Pictures, Migrating Identities. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Ruhe, C. (2006) Cinéma beur: Analysen zu einem neuen Genre des französischen Films. Konstanz: UVK Medien. Rushdie, S. (1991) Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981–1991. New York: Granta. Safran, W. (1991) ‘Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return’, Diaspora 1(1): 83–99. Santaolalla, I. (2005) Los ‘otros’: Etnicidad y ‘raza’ en el cine español. Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza/Madrid: Ocho y Medio. Schwingel, R. (2007) ‘Moving Turkish German Cinema Mainstream? The Producer’s Perspective’, Conference Presentation at The Industrial Context of Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe, 13 January. Online. Available at: http://www.migrantcinema.net/podcasts/ (accessed 1 September 2008). Seeßlen, G. (2000) ‘Das Kino der doppelten Kulturen/Le Cinema du métissage/The Cinema of Inbetween: Erster Streifzug durch ein unbekanntes Kino-Terrain’, epd Film, 12. Online. Available at: http://www.filmportal.de/public/pics/IEPics/d1/03 D8FBEE873A4C20856ACAADA2376272_mat_seexxlen_neu.pdf (accessed 7 May 2007). Sheffer, G. (ed.) (1986) Modern Diasporas in International Politics. London, Sydney: Croom Helm. Shohat, E. and R. Stam (1994) Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. London, New York: Routledge. Solanas, F. and O. Getino (1976 [1969]) ‘Towards a Third Cinema’, in B. Nichols (ed.) Movies and Methods: An Anthology. Vol. 1. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 44–64. Stam, R. (2003) ‘Beyond Third Cinema: The Aesthetics of Hybridity’, in A. Guneratne and W. Dissanayake (eds) Rethinking Third Cinema. London, New York: Routledge, 31–48.

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—— . (2007) ‘Third World and Postcolonial Cinema’, in P. Cook (ed.) The Cinema Book. 3rd edn. London: British Film Institute, 97–107. Stein, M. (2004) Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Tarr, C. (2005) Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Tarr, C. and R. Porton (eds) (2007) Beur is Beautiful: A Retrospective of Maghrebi–French Filmmaking. Special supplement, Cineaste 33(1): 32–54. Tölölyan, K. (1991) ‘The Nation state and its Others: In Lieu of a Preface’, Diaspora 1(1): 3–7. Van Hear, N. (1998) New Diasporas: The Mass Exodus, Dispersal and Regrouping of Migrant Communities. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Weigel, S. (2002) ‘ “Generation” as a Symbolic Form: On the Genealogical Discourse of Memory since 1945’, Germanic Review 77(4): 264–77. Willemen, P. (1987) ‘The Third Cinema Question: Notes and Reflections’, Framework 34: 5–38. Young, R. ([1995] 2006) ‘The Cultural Politics of Hybridity’, in Ashcroft, B., G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin (eds) The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. 2nd edn. London, New York: Routledge, 158–62. Zaimoğlu, F. (1995) Kanak Sprak: 24 Mißtöne vom Rande der Gesellschaft. Berlin: Rotbuch-Verlag.

2 Migration and Cinematic Process in Post-Cold War Europe Dina Iordanova

The year 1989 remains of definitive importance for the recent migratory and diasporic dynamics of Europe at large, and for European migrant and diasporic cinema in particular. Many of the developments that define today’s Europe were, directly or indirectly, triggered by the events of that year, including the German reunification, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the wars of Yugoslavia’s succession in the 1990s and the 2004 enlargement of the European Union, which saw the admission of a range of former communist countries. After the end of the Cold War, global migration and diasporic cultural expression intensified, imposing a new understanding of transnational human interactions. Countries that had been traditional sources of emigration were turning into countries of immigration; worlds that had been unlikely to touch or collide now intersected and overlapped. The new movements consolidated the status of older European diasporas, of migrants who had arrived in the West at an earlier point: all of a sudden the Turks of Germany, the Algerians of France and the Jamaicans, Indians and Pakistanis of the United Kingdom came across as well-established mature settlers whose presence and creative voices were clearly an inherent part of the artistic and discursive fabric of the respective countries. This ‘maturing’ of diasporas took place against the background of new arrivals, mostly from the former Soviet bloc: migrants driven away by the wars in former Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s, Polish construction workers or other migrants from the Ukraine, Romania and Bosnia, whose influx posed new challenges to understanding and managing immigration. Eastern European countries, while being a source of significant outmigration, were simultaneously turning into immigrant-receiving countries. Sometimes in transit to the West and sometimes as permanent settlers, Chinese migrants opened takeaways, Vietnamese migrants ran cheap goods shops, and North African migrants engaged in complex transnational trade networks. There was yet another significant population shift, reflecting the multilayered nature of the former Eastern bloc, in which people from less prosperous former 50

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communist countries flocked to more affluent ones. The migratory histories of Europe’s largest transnational minority, the Roma, were indicative of these economic hierarchies and inequalities.1 This chapter investigates aspects of our understanding of Europe’s migrant and diasporic cinema that were defined by these population shifts and the specific migratory patterns triggered by the end of communism. First of all, I endeavour to show that the prevailing economic and political discourse of progressive transition from centrally controlled state socialism to free market capitalism as put forward in the social sciences, which builds on visions of straightforward and linear post-communist evolution, is not supported by the narratives that emerged in the context of European cinema of the period. Intentionally or otherwise, a range of cinematic texts reveal that the European status quo of the post-Cold War era is more appropriately addressed if one recognises that the state of affairs is distinguished by specifically post-colonial conditions. Films and other narrative arts tell the ‘real’ story of movements, inequalities, cultural hierarchies and exclusion in contemporary Europe, and disciplines like history, anthropology, cultural, literary and film studies have, to some extent, acknowledged that the postcolonial framework is particularly suitable to study these processes and texts in the post-communist context. Secondly, I am concerned with some of the themes that characterise the representation of post-Cold War migrations in cinema. A wide range of films featuring new migrants interacting within multi-ethnic urban neighbourhoods have recently been made across various European countries; I believe these make up a critical body of works that enable us to discover and define a new, specifically European film genre, which I tentatively call ‘cinema of the metropolitan multicultural margin’. Next, I argue for a transnational treatment, that is, for a methodology that transcends the discrete and ultimately limited national frameworks in favour of ‘watching across borders’ and that takes the cinematic discourse to a level that rises above the national. The diversity of migrant and diasporic cinema reveals an expanding universe of common multicultural conviviality; these films can no longer be studied as a mosaic of isolated cultural phenomena, idiosyncratic to specific national contexts. One increasingly recognises that the localities of migrant productions are spatially disjointed and that audiences too live in diasporic conditions scattered around the globe. Finally, I look at some specific career pathways of transnational film professionals in the new Europe. The post-Cold War migrations of East Europeans differ substantially from earlier resettlements that took place in the aftermath of World War Two and into the early 1960s, which produced compact migrant communities and thriving milieus for what came to be known as European migrant cinema in countries such as Germany or France from the 1990s onwards. Nowadays film-makers operate more in a mode of

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perpetual dynamics rather than in an exilic or diasporic mode; their transborder moves are less permanent and more project-based. I illustrate the specifics of these new migratory patterns by looking at recent creative trajectories of film directors, actors and other film professionals. This reveals that, ironically, the most important Eastern European films on post-Cold War migrations have often been made by film-makers who are not migrants themselves.

Post-communism: Transitology and post-coloniality In the context of historical time at large, the Soviet Empire may have been a short-lived phenomenon, yet the tremors of its demise are clearly felt across the continent. The reality of contemporary Europe is one where the established links within the former Soviet bloc’s ‘sphere of influence’ were severed overnight and replaced by new, often rushed, affiliations that essentially formed another sphere where disparities persist; a contested pecking order has been removed to be replaced by another, equally challenging one. In the new configuration, economic inequalities and cultural incompatibilities not only persisted but also predefined the outcomes of many undertakings; many peripherally located countries were reassigned from their previous dependencies into the position of satellites to emerging sovereigns. The ongoing redistribution of wealth and power was often disguised through a Europe-wide rhetoric of deficiency of supposedly culturally inferior areas that are traditionally located in the South East or East of Europe. History textbooks of the future may describe the post-Cold War period as a time during which Eastern European countries underwent a clear-cut passage from authoritarian political regimes and centrally controlled state socialist economies to democratic forms of government and free markets. At least this is the way in which the post-communist period has come to be interpreted and represented within an interdisciplinary range known as transitology, which includes a mix of political science, law, economics and various aspects of finance and governance-related know-how. It is an axiom of transitology that the times after the end of the Cold War are seen as a period marked by linear progressive advancement from state socialism, a form of centralised social organisation that has been exposed as inferior, to a free market economy model that has been verified as superior. Initially influenced by Francis Fukuyama’s pronouncements of the triumphant superiority of Western capitalism and democracy over all centrally run societies (in his essay ‘The End of History’ of 1989, which appeared as a longer book in 1993) and by the economic theories of Jeffrey Sachs, who acted as advisor to various Eastern European countries in their transition from planned to market economies, the ideology of transitology evolved and took various shapes and manifestations across the region. Its main premise, however, assumed an inherent sameness and equality between all nations across the

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New Europe. It operated with an optimistic view of the future, in which, at the end of the ‘transit’ period, Eastern European nations would triumphantly ‘arrive’ at free market democracy and ‘return’ to a united enlarged Europe, where they naturally belong. The emerging civil society was constituted as ‘a core concept of emancipation culture’ and as ‘the subject of history and spokesman for transition’s necessity’ (Kennedy 2002: 49, 46). The formal acceptance of a number of former Eastern bloc countries into the European Union in its enlargements in 2004 and 2007 represented important milestones in the context of the transition; disciplines such as economics or political science that were preoccupied with these developments dominated the studies of the area. On the other hand, scholars who were not directly concerned with the practicalities of the transition, but were focused on the rapidly transforming social milieu, often saw similarities between the processes of postcommunism and those of post-colonialism. Some, like Milica Bakic-Hayden and Robert Hayden (1992), compared the ongoing dissolution of large former multinational federations such as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia to the partition of India, and spoke of concepts such as Orientalism and post-coloniality, in which earlier colonisation by powerful state socialist entities was gradually being replaced by new subtle forms of colonisation by the West. These critical views, however, were not only not taken up but frequently refuted by a choir of political scientists and economists who did not see much value in such an approach, as what mattered at this point was not to question the emancipation from the communist state, but to facilitate the transition of these countries to Western-style democracies, no matter at what cost. Thus, disciplines that were linked with the practical and concrete political dimension of post-communism moved within the transitologist paradigm and enjoyed a high public profile. Scholars who found the less linear and more complex post-colonial framework better suited to understanding the reality of post-Cold War Europe remained confined to their own disciplines, such as history, anthropology, comparative literature and cultural studies. As David Chioni Moore observed, despite the fact that the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the system of its state socialist satellites evoked numerous parallels with those areas of the world extensively interpreted through the post-colonial framework, the matter remained shrouded in ‘two striking silences’ (2001: 117). On the one hand, Moore noted, there was the silence ‘of Western postcolonial studies [...] on the subject of the former Soviet sphere’: most influential theorists do not seem to have made any explicit statements that would relate to the area, thus leaving the impression that the former ‘Second World’ is of no relevance to the core of post-colonial studies. Then, there was the second silence, mirroring the first one and most strikingly visible in ‘the failure of many scholars specializing in the formerly Sovietcontrolled lands to think of their regions in the useful postcolonial terms

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developed by scholars of, say, Indonesia and Gabon. South does not speak East and East does not speak South’ (Moore 2001: 117). Moore believed that post-colonial theory would be particularly suitable for reassessing history and culture, because one can observe conflicting processes of colonisation (from Russia) and reversed colonisation (the view that Russia itself suffers from an inferiority complex and is being indirectly colonised by the West). Moore’s critical assessment of these theoretical developments is largely correct. However, I would not speak of ‘silences’, but rather of ‘muted voices’. There are scholars who made very good use of the post-colonial framework by applying it to material from the Eastern peripheries of Europe. Among historians, there were pioneering studies by Larry Wolff on Russia’s ‘Orientalisation’ (1994) and by Maria Todorova on Central Europe’s Balkanist discourse (1997). Scholars working in cultural studies, anthropology, comparative literature and film extensively explored and exposed the subtle nuances of what came to be known as ‘nesting Orientalism’ and related it to different nuances of whiteness (Bakic-Hayden 1995); they used material from across the former Soviet Empire, such as Central East Europe (Tötösy de Zepetnek 1995, Imre 2005a), the Baltics (Kelertas 2006), former Yugoslavia (Goldsworthy 1998, Iordanova 2001a, Kovacevic 2005), the former Soviet Union (Forrester et al. 2004), or theorised the post-communist migrations of East Europeans in terms of ‘alienhood’ and ‘palatable foreignness’ (Marciniak 2006, 2007).2 When it comes to film studies, a discipline preoccupied with analysing cinematic texts that reflect on social processes rather than trying to be instrumental, the post-colonial framework is more than useful and is widely applied (Imre 1999, Iordanova 2001a). Thus, one can say that the issues of post-communist post-coloniality have, in fact, been taken up in a productive manner even if this body of scholarship is still operating in the shadow of the dominant field of transitology. It is also peripheral in the context of post-colonial studies proper, consigned to what has been referred to as studies into ‘postcolonial whiteness’ (Lopez 2005), and thus not as influential as it could be, for reasons that are beyond the scope of my investigation here. Ultimately, when it comes to understanding Eastern Europe and Russia today, the prevailing paradigm is a preference for a transitological type of thinking: the priority is to see through the direct political and economic reforms and to ensure the success of the transition. As it is driven by completely different preoccupations, transitology cannot possibly see the postcolonial paradigm as ‘useful’; it may be good for explaining implications and subtleties, but does not have an effect on transforming the status quo. Narrative cinema, however, relies on the post-colonial framework much more than is usually acknowledged. It tells the story of dependencies and inequalities in today’s Europe in a way that differs substantially from the view provided by transitology. It subtly presents old and new colonial-type hierarchies and political compromises that affect the lives of the ordinary

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people who are its protagonists. The underlying post-colonial dynamism may not be overtly manifest in cinematic texts, yet it can easily be revealed in the process of closer analysis, especially of films featuring migrants who have been set on the move as a consequence of the radical social shifts of 1989. I will look at two examples. Gianni Amelio’s acclaimed Lamerica (Italy 1994) provides a snapshot of post-colonial anxieties affecting Europe in the aftermath of 1989. The protagonist Gino, an aspiring young businessman from Southern Italy, is sent to insolvent Albania to sort out a shady business deal. A series of unfortunate events, however, lead to a reversal in Gino’s fortunes and his visit unravels in a way that puts him on the breadline and in a position in which he cannot be distinguished from any other destitute Albanian trying to get a slice of Italy’s prosperity. A secondary but important character in the film is an elderly Italian, another Southerner, who had come to Albania during World War Two as a soldier with Mussolini’s army and who had been confined to Albanian labour camps for decades. Now released, but having effectively spent the prime of his life among Albanians, he is closer to them than to his long-forgotten Italian compatriots. Lamerica reveals a situation where Italians live through circumstances that make them experience the challenges that ordinary Albanians face. While accidental, this narrative set-up is not inconsequential; it is used by the director, whose intention is to show that the invisible divisions between East and West are not as durable as they seem to be. The bonding between dispossessed Albanians and castout Italian Southerners charts new fault lines, suggesting that the East and West of Europe’s South are becoming compatible in a new configuration of power affiliations.3 Even films that do not seem to deal directly with migration reveal circuitously this hierarchy of belonging in post-Cold War Europe. Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering (UK/USA 2006) is a case in point, as it offers a revealing symbolic hierarchy of different social groups in London. Its prosperous protagonist, the architect Will, has a beautiful home with a SW postcode; his partner is an attractive Swedish blonde whose daughter, Bea, suffers from autism. A gang of migrants from former Yugoslavia repeatedly breaks into Will’s studio at Kings Cross. Determined to prevent further break-ins, Will takes on night shifts to watch the studio; here he meets and befriends Oana, a streetwise prostitute from Romania. Will also meets the mother of one of the teenage robbers, the Bosnian migrant Amira, who ekes out a living by repairing clothes in her flat in the nearby housing estates. Will falls in love with Amira; their few sexual encounters leave him truly infatuated with her. Soon, however, he begins to doubt Amira’s motives and to suspect that she maintains the relationship in order to protect her felonious offspring; she may be prepared to blackmail him if he talks to the police about it. Even though he is ready to forget the burglaries, Will rapidly sobers up and takes some radical steps to put an end to the relationship with

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Amira. By making the generous gesture of forgiving the aberrant son at the cost of his own public embarrassment, Will regains the respect of his beautiful Swedish partner. The passion for the Bosnian woman fades away, only occasionally haunting him as a bad dream. On the surface, Breaking and Entering focuses on the midlife crisis of a white upper-middle-class Briton, while below the surface it reveals a hierarchical reality of a Western metropolis where ‘clean’, ‘elevated’ (‘white’) Europeans (an Englishman, a Swedish woman) are pushed into temporary interactions with ‘untidy’ (‘dark’) migrants (a Romanian prostitute, a Bosnian delinquent and his jobbing mother), but soon regain control and distance themselves from these low-grade contacts. A variety of details in the film efficiently restate Europe’s hierarchies: the British protagonist is an educated professional, who is responsible for a regeneration project in central London’s Kings Cross, where the film’s migrant characters live. The Eastern European characters, by contrast, may have had professional lives at some point, but now inhabit the murky spaces of the metropolis and earn a living in menial jobs or moonlight as petty criminals. The daughter of the blonde Swede is autistic, but has exceptional talents; she is treated by considerate psychologists. By comparison, the son of the Bosnian brunette is on skid row and in the ‘care’ of tough-talking policemen and frazzled social workers. The Swedish woman has difficulties coping with her child’s disability; hence she needs all of Will’s love (and financial support), which she demands and accepts with an air of noble superiority. The Bosnian woman has difficulties coping with her son’s law-breaking, and the revelation of her relationship with Will is tainted with references to a lowly blackmail-driven affair that should preferably not be mentioned in public. All that Breaking and Entering purports to do is to show the private predicament of a middle-aged man in need of love. In charting his dilemmas, however, the film reveals a background panorama of post-colonial disparities and dependencies, which provide insights into understanding the dynamism of post-colonial Europe and ultimately bring up issues of identity and ideology in the aftermath of communism. A wide range of European films that look at aspects of the post-1989 migrations – from Lukas Moodysson’s Lilja 4-Ever (Sweden/Denmark 2002) to Ken Loach’s It’s a Free World (UK/Italy/Germany/Spain/Poland 2007) – make powerful statements on the post-colonial human condition. The subtle matters that such films raise cannot be explored in the context of the self-contained paradigm of transitology, which is not capable of integrating human drama alongside statistics and its preoccupation with civil society and market reform. The post-colonial paradigm, however, offers fine tools that allow us to understand and appreciate precisely those half-spoken instances of duplicity, segregation, control and even enslavement that make up the contemporary human condition for those who were put on the migratory path after the collisions of 1989.

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Metropolitan multicultural margins The dynamic forces of global economy brought new diversity to Europe’s urban margins – a process that has been analysed by anthropologists (Hannerz 1996) and sociologists (Sassen 1998) and represented in films since the mid-1990s. The classical cinematic text of the multicultural urban periphery is probably Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine/Hate (France 1995), a European hip-hop cult drama (Vincendeau 2005) that – with its black, Jewish and Moroccan protagonists – foregrounds the dynamics of migratory and diasporic togetherness against the background of an immobile, segregated and violent location, thus underscoring what David Morley has aptly called ‘incarceration in the banlieues’ (2000: 159). A range of other films that tackle very similar concerns, however, were made and released independently in the context of other European cinemas, most notably in places where the influx of migrants and the formation of multicultural peripheries in previously ethnically homogeneous urban areas was a relatively new phenomenon. I believe, therefore, that we have a critical mass of films that allows us to identify a new genre within European cinema. I call it the genre of the ‘metropolitan multicultural margin’, and will outline its main characteristics below. In offering a definition of genre that extends beyond the mere textual characteristics and endeavours to include the contexts of film creation and reception, Andrew Tudor stresses that genre is best employed in the analysis of the relation between groups of films, the cultures in which they are made, and the cultures in which they are exhibited [...]. It is a term that can be usefully employed in relation to a body of knowledge and theory about the social and psychological context of film. (1986: 10) Tudor’s framework is particularly useful in the context of the metropolitan multicultural margin as genre in that our attention here, since we are interested in both specific textual elements and specific conditions of production and reception. Let us look at the textual elements first: many of the films that belong to the genre take place in European cities that are still struggling to acknowledge their multicultural side. One example is Vienna in Barbara Albert’s Nordrand/ Northern Skirts (Austria 1999), which features a motley group of displaced Eastern Europeans inhabiting the periphery beyond the ‘Gürtel’ (‘belt’) that separates the desirable downtown locations from the ethnically diverse Vorstadt and plays a very similar function to the equally segregating périphérique, the ring road that encircles the central arrondissements of Paris and cuts them off from the banlieues, mostly populated by immigrants (as featured, for example, in Abdellatif Kechiche’s L’esquive/Games of Love and Chance, France 2003).

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Fatih Akın’s debut feature Kurz und schmerzlos/Short Sharp Shock (Germany 1997) is another example of the genre; it centres on a group of friends – a Turk, a Greek and a Serb – of whom two get involved in the shady activities of an Albanian mafia boss in Hamburg-Altona in Germany. Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher series (Denmark 1996–2007) and Bleeder (Denmark 1999) show the business of drug dealers in Copenhagen and their regular interactions with newly arrived Serbs, Ukrainians and Russians. Similar films have been made in other European countries, including Sweden, Hungary, Greece and Spain, often featuring a peripheral city setting, an inner-city ghetto or a deprived landscape of cookie-cutter housing projects. These films of ‘European métissage’, as termed by Italian critic Giovanni Spagnoletti (2000), can be placed in the category of the metropolitan multicultural margin, and evolve around interactions of peripheral characters. A recent light comedy by director Vijay Singh (One Dollar Curry, France/ India/UK 2004), for example, shows the Sikh protagonist, a new immigrant, intermingling with streetwise souvlaki vendors and Russian women in the neighbourhood around Château d’eau metro station, one of the seediest areas of the French capital. ‘I wanted to show a part of the city that has never been shown before,’ the director said in an interview (Gentleman 2003: 12). The touristy glamour of Paris is far away from the daily life of the protagonists, whose migrant lives evolve around routines of nail parlours and shops that sell hair extensions and ethnic fashions. Another good example of the genre is Goran Paskaljevic’s Tudja Amerika/Someone Else’s America (France/UK/Germany/Greece 1995). Set in the multi-ethnic enclaves of New York, the film is a European production telling a story of a Montenegrin migrant marrying a Chinese–American in a wedding celebration during which they all dance flamenco to the accompaniment of a Basque neighbour. All these films share similar production, distribution and reception conditions: usually made in the context of national cinemas, they ‘travel’ in the sense of being appreciated across Europe. Films that map the contested territories of the cosmopolitan metropolis within the space of the screen effectively juxtapose the diverse and hybridising periphery of the ‘global city’, an inclusive concept that reflects dynamic confluence, with the concept of ‘diaspora’, a notion that naturally tends to continue a nation-centred discourse. This juxtaposition is extensively discussed by theorist Ien Ang in her essay on ‘undoing diaspora’ (2001). To Ang, diaspora is an extension of the idea of transnational nationalism and presupposes a certain ‘sameness-in-dispersal’, whereas the global city is a formation of an inherently hybrid nature that embraces and thrives on ethnic diversity, the only true site of spatial convergence where the cosmopolitan imagination can discover togetherness-in-difference. Ang argues that the uncritical celebratory concept of diaspora, which she sees as limiting, needs to be defied (‘undone’, in her words) in favour of the multicultural

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global city, which is better suited to serve as a ‘model for analyzing social relations in the age of globalization’ (2001: 76). She even contrasts the characteristics of the two transnational formations in a table (Ang 2001: 89): Diaspora

Global city

Ethnic unity, spatial scattering

Ethnic diversity, spatial convergence

Transnational nationalism

Local hybridity

Virtual deterritorialized space

Actual social/territorialized space

Sameness-in-dispersal

Together-in-difference

As final destinations for migrants from various points of departure, global cities are the sites where hybridisation occurs and diaspora is ‘undone’. In these cities, migrants are no longer confined within their own ethnic communities, but are able to break free and participate in the multiple crosscultural interactions that are now within reach. In the context of the global city and its multicultural urban margin, the discourse on diaspora, Ang insists, had failed to recognise its own ‘limiting conceptual and political implications’ (2001: 81). It has been important, therefore, to develop the counter-metaphor and counter-discourse of the global city as a site for the truly transnational and cosmopolitan imagination. The syncretism and the multidimensionality granted by the global city effectively subverted the ‘sameness-in-dispersal’ stance of the diaspora. Global cities are deeply internationally oriented, by virtue of the transnational essence of the very activities that sustain their existence (media, tourism, trade, trafficking). These cosmopolitan cities are – to use Arjun Appadurai’s term – ‘translocalities’ (1996: 192), spaces where various itinerant populations have come together to create neighbourhoods defined by and dependent on transnational connections. Here ‘externally imposed modes of regulation, credentialization, and image production’ (Appadurai 1996: 192) have superseded most of the traditional ways. Echoing Appadurai, Morley speaks of the global city as a site of encounters between ‘moving images and deterritorialised viewers’ (2000: 153) where the traditional ideas of homeland and nation have been ‘destabilised, both by new patterns of physical mobility and migration and by new communication technologies which routinely transgress the symbolic boundaries around both the private households and the nation state’ (2000: 3). In cinema, the potential of multicultural global city narratives is best seen in the periphery-to-periphery exchanges in which the inhabitants of the metropolis engage on a daily basis. These migrating protagonists have taken off from one peripheral place to end up in another peripheral place, one of ‘side streets’ and ethnic enclaves. Their trajectory proved not to be a liberating escape from a restrictive marginal environment leading to a

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triumphant settling into whatever they perceived to be the socially or geographically desirable centre. Yet it is still an acceptable progression that appears to move in the right direction, and, even if it does not get them to the hub of their aspirations, at least brings them closer to it. The African migrants in La promesse/The Promise (Belgium 1996, dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) make Belgium the centre of their small universe, but, once there, they are confined to an isolated ethnic slum. To the Russian migrants in Last Resort (UK 2000, dir. Pawel Pawlikowski), England, a country linked in the popular imagination with an image of prosperity and stability, seems to be acceptably central, but they have to join a depressed community of asylum seekers, confined to transit accommodation in the fictional seaside town Stonehaven, for which Margate served as location. Having arrived, the migrant characters continue moving within a universe that consists of city margins, between banlieues.4 These films rarely feature interactions with members of the characters’ ‘own’ ethnic group, and, when they do, episodes are likely to show how a new migrant is rejected by a well-established diasporic patriarch. New arrivals more frequently intermingle with members of other cultural groups or marginalised sexual minorities (as seen in Sébastien Lifshitz’s Wild Side, Belgium/France/UK 2004) rather than being welcomed and guided through the immigration maze by older settlers of their own ethnic background. Most of the protagonists in the films of the multicultural urban margin are new migrants from various parts of the former Soviet Empire; they are seen crossing paths and forging alliances with other migrants whose itineraries to Europe have originated somewhere in the Third World. Having come together in the global city, these newcomers encounter older migrants who have been there for decades and who know their ways, yet are still equally marginal and dispossessed. Most of their exchanges do not lead to any cathartic breakthrough, but remain monotonous and unchanging. The very act of finding each other, however, helps the protagonists of either group to come to terms with their own social exclusion. Rather than ending up in bitter disillusionment, these newly forged alliances allow them to interrelate and bond in ways that may lead to limited advancement but are nonetheless psychologically comforting and also mutually empowering. When one looks from the periphery, there is no need of a conditional centre to determine a hierarchy of ambitions and locations, no need to make oneself stretch out to reach a higher, superior level. The intensity of interactions at the margins turns the global city into a universe that consists of an endless periphery, a place set apart from the centre of gravity and its symbolic condensation of power, where migrants can live content and happy lives without constantly feeling inferior or excluded.

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Watching across borders: Above national frameworks Migrant and diasporic cinema is usually discussed as it manifests itself in the context of cinematic traditions defined by the nation state; thus the national is still the defining paradigm in most studies of this cinema in Europe. This framework, however, is also the main obstacle to moving towards a more dynamic understanding of the processes and properties of migrant and diasporic cinema. It takes a thriving form of an essentially transnational cultural output and chops it into pieces, which can then be neatly slotted into discrete national entities, thus inexorably taking the attention away from the global processes that bring the whole phenomenon of migratory and diasporic creativity into existence. If we want to primarily study the development of a national cinema in its complexity, we can happily stay within the national framework. If, however, we want to focus on cinematic representations of migration and on the production of diasporic identities, we can do so better if we go beyond the confines of the national and begin ‘watching across borders’. The migrations of the Bosnians who dispersed all over the world as a result of the 1990s upheavals are best studied if we look at films made in a variety of countries, including Austria, France, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Canada (Iordanova 2001b). If we wanted to study, in more general terms, the representation of migrant hardship on the route to Europe, we could more productively look at films from Italy (Nanni Moretti’s Aprile, 1998), Slovenia (Zelimir Zilnik’s Tvrdjava Evropa/Fortress Europe, 2001), Damjan Kozole’s Rezervni deli/Spare Parts, 2003) and the United Kingdom (Michael Winterbottom’s In This World, 2002) rather than at the films made in one European country only. Transnational film studies offer an alternative to the national framework by tracing the cycle of film production, dissemination and reception as one dynamic process that rises above national boundaries. Such treatment reflects more adequately the mode of human existence in the global age; it explores the narrative and stylistic features of films that come about as a result of a supranational cycle of film-making and reception. It keeps a clear distinction between migrant and diasporic film-makers and films tackling issues of migration and diasporic existence, yet it insists that in each case the processes should be studied at a supranational level. While migrant and diasporic cinema may be conceived at sub-state and sub-nation state level when we look at concrete films, the true extent and dynamics of the phenomenon come to light only if borders are transcended for the sake of the investigation (the diasporic cinema of the Bosnians, for example, is made across countries and continents and has no defined key location). On the other hand, when it comes to representing the migrations of a specific group of people, films made independently of each other in different

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countries often tackle the movements of the same group (e.g. migrating Russians; Iordanova 2000); thus, if film scholars really want to explore this representation in its vibrant entirety, there is a clear need to go beyond the context of a singular nation. Even if the attention is on one particular diaspora, the study of which represents a specific extension of the study of a national cinema, watching across borders is still the more adequate approach. Turkish diasporic filmmakers, for example, have made films not only in Germany, but also in Austria, France, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In order to study effectively the dimensions of any diasporic movement of cinéastes, one would need to look at films made in a variety of regions: Bulgarians, for example, have been active in Italy (screenwriter Doriana Leondeff, actor Christo Jivkov), Hungary (actor Djoko Rossic), the Czech Republic (actor Ivan Barnev), Germany (actor Sami Finzi), Sweden (actor Georgi Staykov), Canada (animator Evgeni Tomov, actress Nina Dobrev), the USA (actor Hristo Shopov), and so on. Lacking a critical mass in one single location, the Bulgarian diaspora is not likely to have much focused impact; yet, in order to investigate it at all, only by watching across borders can we understand the inherently transnational dimension of the diasporic existence. In the New Europe, countries that had traditionally been a source of emigration, such as Italy or Ireland, have turned into preferred destinations for new migrants, and new films reflect this migratory dynamics. In Sweden, directors and actors of various nationalities make films about Russian or Arab migrants, whereas previously Swedish cinema had explored the migratory experience and ordeal faced by Swedish migrants who had struggled finding a new place for themselves away from home, for example Jan Troell’s Utvandrarna/The Emigrants (1971) and Nybyggarna/The New Land (1972) or Bille August’s Pelle erobreren/Pelle the Conqueror (Denmark/Sweden 1987) and Jerusalem (1996). In more recent years, however, such narratives of diasporic dispersal have gradually been replaced by films that focus on the experience of transit migrants or newcomers into Sweden, such as Josef Fares’s Jalla! Jalla! (2000) and Zozo (2005) or Geir Hansteen Jörgensen’s acclaimed TV mini-series Det Nya Landet/The New Country (2000) about Somali and Iranian itinerants who escape from a refugee camp. Other films have focused on Sweden’s new multicultural reality (e.g. Rafael Edholm’s Babas Bilar/Baba’s Cars 2006). Along with the shift from emigration to immigration, films made in Sweden also reflect pan-European migratory patterns and propose a more inclusive concept of Europe’s cultural territories that includes its formerly divided Western and Eastern parts. Lukas Moodysson’s Lilja 4-ever addresses human trafficking across Europe, thus becoming a film of transcultural significance that supersedes Sweden’s domestic concerns. The supranational take of this film has already invited and facilitated comparative scholarly investigations into the representation of migrant

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women, such as Lars Kristensen’s study (2007) that juxtaposed Lilja and Pyotr Todorovsky’s Soviet–Swedish production Interdevochka/Intergirl (1989) by looking at both production context and reception issues. Recognising migrant and diasporic cinema as inherently transnational allows us to acknowledge the increasing migrancy among film-makers, the diversification of distribution channels and the dispersal of audiences (Iordanova 2007). Transforming the view on the dialectics of global cinema was accompanied by a concerted move of the attention from the national onto the post-national and the transnational, echoed, for instance, in such works as Laura U. Marks’s The Skin of the Film (2000), Hamid Naficy’s Accented Cinema (2001) and Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden’s Transnational Cinema (2006). A reflection on alternative cinemas with a multinational focus was initiated in the context of studies such as Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie’s Cinema and Nation (2000), Stephanie Dennison and Song Hwee Lim’s Remapping World Cinema (2006), Paul Willemen and Valentina Vitali’s Theorising National Cinemas (2006) and Mette Hjort and Duncan Petrie’s Cinema of Small Nations (2007). The ‘floating lives’ project (Cunningham and Sinclair 2001) offered a new dialectical understanding of cinema’s transnational dynamics by developing a framework that takes into account the interactions between cinematic output, the ever-changing diasporas and their dynamic consumption patterns. Taking its name from the eponymous migrant film of Hong Kong–Australian director Clara Law (1996), the ‘floating lives’ study was the first project that commissioned and presented case studies tracing the idiosyncratic patterns of production and circulation of visual material destined for both domestic and diasporic audiences from its point of origin to the point of consumption, thus facilitating the understanding of these seemingly disjointed processes. Influential edited collections applied this approach to a range of global media and film examples (Ginsburg et al. 2002, Shohat and Stam 2003). At the reception end, transnational cinephilia was described by critics as an emerging trend who closely observe the dynamics of the global cinematic process (Rosenbaum and Martin 2003, Egoyan and Balfour 2004). All these studies approached the exploration of individual cinematic texts in direct connection to the cycle of their production, distribution and consumption, thus putting forward a model of a novel approach to the global cinematic process, one that was transnational (in that it transcended national confines) and comprehensive (in that it combined the analysis of cinematic text with the analysis of cinematic traffic). Although it was recognised from early on in media scholarship focusing on Europe (Morley and Robins 1995), the work that documented the transnational dynamics of the cinematic process grew out of studies more closely linked to Asian cinemas, in particular to the Indian and Chinese diasporic traditions. It is only recently that scholarship dealing with the cinemas of Europe began approaching its material through the lens of

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transnationalism (Mazierska and Rascaroli 2002, 2006, Bergfelder 2005). The big cinematic traditions of Europe (British, French, German, Italian, Spanish) are still explored from within national frameworks even in those instances where migrant and diasporic cinema is in focus (Göktürk 2002, Korte and Sternberg 2004, Santaolalla 2005, Tarr 2005, Burns 2006, Ruhe 2006, O’Healy 2007); for now the watching across borders model has been applied predominantly in instances that focus on peripherally positioned European traditions, such as the East Central European or Scandinavian cinemas (Iordanova 2003, Hjort 2005, Nestingen and Elkington 2005). The present volume, and other forthcoming studies, will hopefully break the mould and turn the exploration of issues in a trans-European manner into a compelling and favoured approach.

Creative trajectories Phenomena like German Turkish or French beur film-making evolved out of more or less permanent migrations; here, film-makers who are second- or third-generation descendants of migrants address identity concerns related to their particular group (Göktürk 2002, Tarr 2005). The protagonists who populate these films are usually born into a certain migrant group, which is settled more or less permanently into a clearly linguistically and nationally defined territory, and are often closely involved with their ethnic communities. If one accepts that a sizeable, stable and compact immigrant community (such as Turks in Germany or North African Arabic speakers in France) is a precondition for the development of a migrant and diasporic cinema, it will not be difficult to conclude that the phenomenon is not likely to last unchanged in post-Cold War Europe. Because, with the exception of the more or less permanent repatriation of German Russians (who are already producing literary works but are still to break into cinema), no other migratory group is likely to achieve steady resettlement or develop a milieu of enduring tightly knit communities. Such stable communities that persist in upholding their idiosyncrasies within a foreign context, however, are a necessary precondition for thriving migrant and diasporic cinema, as it is a cinema born out of a critical approach to the isolationism of the self-contented diaspora. Whatever migrations there are to come, they are more likely to end up in dispersal within the multicultural urban margin that we already spoke of. As we can see, the emergence of migrant and diasporic cinema presupposes a certain set of characteristics which are more or less absent from the pattern of post-Cold War Eastern European migrations that represent the bulk of movements within Europe in the 1990s and 2000s. Their migrations are very different from the migrations of Southern Europeans that characterised the post-World War Two period, when Turks or Italians migrated to the North. Like those earlier migrations, new migrations are economically

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driven; the migrants can return at any time, due to the greater ease of moving back and forth nowadays. The new migrants can play with multiple career scenarios; they do not settle in compact groups, they assimilate effortlessly and are highly mobile. The recently acquired border fluidity of ‘Schengen’ Europe comes with a freedom of movement that precludes the formation of more or less permanent migrant and diasporic groups, a situation that lessens the chances of migrant and diasporic cinema as we know it today.5 It is becoming increasingly difficult to brand any of the post-Cold War film-makers who work in another country as ‘migrant’ or ‘diasporic’, as they are typically not part of a mature migrant milieu or primarily anxious to voice the concerns of their particular group. They simply do not need to migrate on a permanent basis. It is a priority for these film-makers to keep their options open: they move fluidly across Europe; they work abroad but they also go back, and are used to working across a range of countries. While migratory identities may be of interest to them, so are a host of other, very different themes. Thus, in current European cinema we observe an interesting phenomenon: film professionals function in a supranational context where they migrate on what we call a ‘per project’ basis. They do not qualify as bona fide ‘migrant’ or ‘diasporic’, nor are they ‘exilic’ or ‘intercultural’ film-makers in the sense that has been prominently focused on by researchers such as Marks (2000) or Naficy (2001). As their migrations are projectbased enterprises, they are more adequately described as ‘transnationally mobile filmmakers’. I will highlight this state of affairs by referring to several recent career trajectories of film personalities from the countries of the former Eastern bloc who have worked in this specific ‘per project’ migratory mode in the post-Cold War environment: high-profile film-makers, art-house transnational film-makers of the middle generation, as well as other established and well-respected film professionals.6 The post-Cold War trajectories of these film-makers span over a range of countries and could easily qualify them as migrant and diasporic, not least because of the co-presence of their compatriots in the destination countries. However, none of them are considered to truly belong to the migrant cinema category, precisely because they are under no obligation to continuously display loyalty to their migrant compatriots but instead keep moving between situations and are free to associate with whoever they see fit; working in a transnational mode on a ‘per project’ basis has become their modus vivendi. Paradoxically, as far as Eastern European cinéastes are concerned, the same directors who were around during the Cold War and had reached prominence before 1989 still enjoy the highest international profile today. Most of them – István Szabó, Agnieszka Holland, Goran Paskaljević, Emir Kusturica, Sergei Bodrov, Andrzej Zulawski and others – were already internationally recognised names by the time of the fall of the Wall, and most of them had

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undergone artistic migration by 1989. Ironically, they had benefited from the Cold War division of Europe, as it was the presence of the Iron Curtain that granted their films a degree of attention that is not given to film-makers from the region today. Some of them had clearly fallen out with the socialist regimes and settled permanently in the West, while others manoeuvred and maintained a strong position both at home and abroad, making a range of internationally financed films throughout the 1980s. Since 1989, many of these directors have worked predominantly outside their home countries and could, therefore, easily qualify as ‘migrant’. Yet we do not think of them in this way, perhaps because they switch countries all the time and have access to financial resources quite different from those available to more traditional migrant and diasporic film-makers, or, most significantly, because their films are not primarily concerned with issues of identity and bridging cultures. What is characteristic of the work of all these directors is that, with the exception of Polish-born director Andrzej Zulawski, who has durable ties to France, they are not permanently based in one country, but rather make films transnationally, with ad hoc arrangements of financing and other elements on a ‘per project’ basis. While migration and diasporic existence figure as topics in their films, they can barely be described as their only or primary concern. Serbian Goran Pasklajević, for example, appeared to have migrated to France, from where he received partial funding for all the films he has made since the 1990s. Yet each one of his subsequent projects would take him to a different geographical and thematic territory, with films taking place among illegal migrants in New York (Someone Else’s America), in depressed wartime Belgrade (Bure baruta/Powder Keg, France/Greece/Turkey/Macedonia/ Yugoslavia 1998) and in Ireland (How Harry Became a Tree, Italy/France/UK/ Ireland 2001). All these productions were supported through pan-European arrangements, with the participation of countries such as Greece, Turkey, Ireland, France, the United Kingdom and Italy, and took advantage of programmes such as MEDIA and Eurimages.7 Since leaving Poland in the mid-1980s, Agnieszka Holland has made films in France, Germany, the USA, Canada, Poland and Slovakia. Russian Sergei Bodrov, officially based in Los Angeles, has worked on films that were financed by a range of mostly European partners (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and more) and Central Asian investors, and take place in a range of American, European and Asian locations, from Sweden to Kazakhstan. His latest film, Mongol (2007), an epic on Genghis Khan’s early life, was co-produced by Kazakhstan, Germany, Russia and Mongolia and shot in China and Kazakhstan. For the role of young Mongol Temujin, Bodrov cast Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano. His creative team consisted of a Russian and a Dutch cinematographer, an Icelandic editor and a Finnish composer, as well as scores of Chinese, Koreans, Germans and Russians employed in ‘below the line’ roles.

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Other successful directors, such as Szabó or Kusturica, have not wasted time in deliberation over the pains of migration and identity. They enjoy a high pan-European profile and could presumably settle, if they wanted to, in any country of their choosing. Yet, maybe because they can work in a variety of countries on ventures that attract transnational financing, they do not really need to migrate. They are regularly invited to head juries at international festivals and to lecture at the European Film Academy and other public relations forums, and benefit from a supranational status that supplies them with a unique immunity (Kusturica has not been shattered by public criticisms about his dubious allegiances in Yugoslavia’s aftermath and has successfully transformed himself from a Bosnian into a Serbian, even changing his given name to Nemanja; recent revelations about Szabó’s past as an informer to Hungary’s secret services do not seem to have affected his international standing). Kusturica left his native Bosnia before the Yugoslav wars for succession, had a stint in the USA, then settled temporarily in France (where he also obtained French citizenship), but has now more or less permanently settled in his country of choosing, Serbia, maintaining residences near Paris and in Greece, while continuing to work internationally (for example on the documentary about the Argentinean footballer Maradona by Kusturica, France 2008, which took him to Buenos Aires on a number of occasions). Hungarian Szabó had been engaged with international co-productions since the early 1980s, and, in the aftermath of 1989, expanded his international presence even further, making films with American, British, German and Swedish partners and working with A-list actors, such as Glenn Close, Jeremy Irons, Harvey Keitel, Adrien Brody, Annette Benning, Michael Gambon and Ralph Fiennes, without the need to migrate out of Hungary. The post-Cold War situation also enabled another type of artistic trajectory: the art-house Eastern European. Members of this group – representatives would include directors such as Lithuanian Sharunas Bartas or Macedonian Milcho Manchevski – were typically born around 1960 and have seen their careers take off since 1989. They come from smaller European countries and bring along locally flavoured sensibilities. They were either educated or worked abroad temporarily, thus acquiring practical savvy on how things are done in the international arena and developing international contacts. Their films are, in most cases, financed internationally. Their stories often have a transnational slant and concern cross-cultural encounters, sometimes taking place in remote settings while at the same time retaining references to their original culture. Whatever films they make, they are always fully conscious of the international dimension of the film’s narrative. These directors spend extended periods of time abroad, but they return to work at home.8 They are globetrotting for fundraising and for festivals, yet they see advantages in shooting within their domestic environment and opt to stay in their native countries for the most intense periods of their

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work. Here they enjoy the support of a small but strongly committed fan base; internationally they benefit from the appreciation of a narrow circle of influential connoisseurs who help them maintain sufficient attention to guarantee their international stature. Thus, while neither migrant nor diasporic, their work is characterised by interstitial transnationality. In the current conditions of film financing and distribution, there is no need for them to migrate permanently. They can set up home wherever they want and stay for as long as they want, yet they seem to be better off retaining affiliation with their small Eastern European countries rather than permanently moving to the West.9 As cinema is a collective art, there is much more mobility and fluidity than we can acknowledge, and personal trajectories are much more diverse. The traditional framework we use in approaching migrant and diasporic cinema often leaves out of focus a large group of those other ‘above the line’ professionals who have migrated and work in other European countries. No matter what we think of the shortcomings of the auteurist approach, we still mostly scrutinise and study the migration of directors. What other migrant film professionals might do – screenwriters, editors, cinematographers, set designers and composers – does not count as ‘migrant cinema’, and is often not even acknowledged as ‘diasporic’. But are not the inputs of editors, cameramen and -women or set designers definitive for the look and feel of a film? Cinematographers such as Sławomir Idziak (known from his work with Kieslowski) and Lajos Koltai (known from his work with István Szabó) have worked across a range of European countries, including Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom, whereas Czech cameraman Igor Luther, a seasoned professional who has worked across Europe with directors such as Polish Andrzej Wajda and German Volker Schlöndorff, was responsible for the cinematography of the Thai historical epic Suriyothai (Thailand 2001, dir. Chatrichalerm Yukol). Zbigniew Preisner and Goran Bregovic, whose remarkable scores were first heard in the films of Kieslowski and Kusturica respectively, have since provided staple soundtracks for Scandinavian and French cinema. In the specific case we investigate, the mobility of film professionals has significantly intensified since the end of the Cold War and is often linked to periods of slowdown in their respective domestic industries. In some cases professionals migrate, settle in another country, and after some time become regular members of the film community in the new place; they are often engaged in term contracts or teaching at a variety of film schools. In many more instances, however, these people move between projects rather than retaining national affiliations, meaning that within a year they may work on an internationally financed shoot in one European country, then participate in a locally funded project in another European country, and then move on and work for a few months back in their Eastern European country of origin, before taking off for a project in America or Asia. These fuzzy

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and flexible border crossings do not precisely qualify as migrations; there is no steady flow here but rather dispersal to multiple national, regional, industrial and linguistic environments. These shifts have rarely been examined in the context of the clearly delineated phenomenon of migrant and diasporic cinema, yet they are a direct consequence of the post-Cold War opening of Europe’s newly unified space.10 In this range of consideration, the trajectories of actors are the most visible and accessible to study. At the same time, scrutinising their creative paths is most instructive, especially as one traditionally believes that for actors, faced with the hardship of mastering new languages and accents, emigration often spells the end to a career. Only exceptional actors are able to sustain meaningfully visible careers abroad, and it is a mixture of resilience and luck that proves decisive in the process. Many vanish, or, even worse, keep appearing in films, having moved over to the nearly invisible periphery where they are never noticed. Migrant actresses remain invisible even when cast in key roles. For example, international critics nearly unanimously destroyed Bruno Dumont’s controversial Twenty-nine Palms (France/Germany/USA 2003), featuring Russian–Lithuanian–French actress Katia (Yekaterina) Golubeva; their criticisms of the film were directed elsewhere, yet most of them spoke of the actress as a completely unknown face dug out by Dumont from who knows where. In fact, Golubeva has been a more or less permanent presence in films by Sharunas Bartas since the late 1980s, so these same critics are likely to have watched her in a range of films at the festivals they frequent. In addition, she played significant parts in well known French art-house films such as Claire Denis’s J’ai pas sommeil/I Cannot Sleep (France/Switzerland 1994), L’Intrus/The Intruder (France 2004) and Leos Carax’s Pola X (France/ Switzerland/Germany/Japan 1999), all extensively covered by these same international critics. Yet, in her new reincarnation in the Californian desert, Katia Golubeva remained unrecognised and was treated as a newcomer. Similar examples can be made of many other migrant actresses (e.g. Russian Chulpan Khamatova, Polish veteran Grazyna Szapolowska, Lithuanian–Russian Ingeborga Dapkunajte, Serbian Branka Katić), all stars of award-winning films, yet unrecognised in the Western productions they have appeared in lately. One discovers that these actresses have managed to keep themselves employed by appearing in perfectly respectable Western European films even after changing countries. In reality, however, they remain well known only in the context of their original national cinema and they effectively lose career continuity.11 The situation with migrant male actors is similar. The most successful among them are those who, while abroad, are happy to embrace the limitations of typecasting and play the roles of Eastern European villains or migrant patriarchs. This fully applies, for example, to former DEFA star Armin Mueller-Stahl and to Yugoslav Rade Serbedzija, who enjoy high-profile

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international careers today. Both actors maintain a remarkable transatlantic schedule by regularly taking on roles in Hollywood, in American art-house and indie films, as well as in films made in a range of European or other countries (New Zealand, Canada, Australia) and in their countries of origin. They are both well known for roles that link them to their Eastern European heritage and tradition: Armin Mueller-Stahl played a London-based Russian Godfather in David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises (2007) while Serbedzija has readily embraced the roles of an Eastern European mafioso, Russian gangster or underground trader in a range of international productions since the mid-1990s.

Conclusion Interestingly enough, directors based firmly in their native countries who have never migrated seem to have made the most important films about post-Cold War migratory identities. It appears that it is not the experience of migrating, but rather the experience of observing the effects of migration on individuals and communities that allows these cineastes to make important contributions to the post-Cold War representations of migrant and diasporic identities. One such director is Ibolja Fekete in Hungary, with her perceptive observations on displacement and the migratory condition in remarkable films such as Bolshe Vita (Hungary 1996), featuring the influx of Russian and other Eastern migrants into a Central European capital, Budapest. Fekete’s Chico (Germany/Croatia/Hungary/Chile 2001) is a film tracing the identity conundrums of a Bolivian-born Chilean-andHungarian-raised Jew, whose search for ideals and faith forms the basis of a finely crafted psychological study of migration, split not only geographically between Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East but also between systems of belief and social order, showing the ideological insecurities and undermined allegiances that characterise the post-Cold War condition (Waller 2007). Another example is the acclaimed Romanian Cristian Mungiu,12 whose black comedy Occident (Romania 2002) scrutinised the gloomy everyday lives of present-day Romanians, agonising over the decision whether to emigrate or to stay at home. The picture of post-Berlin Wall Europe that emerges from these films is of an area where old evils have been swept away while a host of new ones have emerged. Their protagonists belong to the confused post-Cold War generation that had to live the volatility of crumbling political systems, incessantly patch up past and present-day realities, and continuously adjust to changing circumstances. Confronted with relentlessly contested claims on history and with a collapse of coherent ideologies, with linear efforts to progress towards free market economies in the context of intricate postcolonial realities, many of them are plunged into irreconcilable identity quests. Witnessing the complex and often distressing events evolving right

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in front of their eyes, film-makers from the ‘New’ Europe deal time and again with gloom and despair, presenting frail characters faced with the mighty sweep of historical change.

Notes 1. Estimates of the total number of Roma in Europe vary between eight and twelve million people (compared with about two million Jews). For a complexity of reasons, there are no definitive census data on this issue, but Roma and Sinti constitute Europe’s largest minority (Rose 2006). On issues of cross-cultural representation see Iordanova (2008) and the other articles in this special issue of Third Text, edited by Paloma Gay y Blasco and Dina Iordanova. 2. The online journal Spaces of Identity, edited in Edmonton and Vienna, is one of the publications in which interdisciplinary transnational post-colonial studies relating to Central and Southeast Europe have evolved over the years. 3. For a detailed analysis of Lamerica within a post-colonial framework see my Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and the Media (Iordanova 2001a). 4. Even when they move towards the city centre, it is in a context that foregrounds their peripheral standing. Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas’s short ‘Loin du 16ème/ Far from the 16th [arrondissement]’ in the omnibus film Paris je t’aime/ Paris, I Love You (France/Liechtenstein/Switzerland 2006) gives a modern-day take on older versions of migration that links class hierarchies to movements within urban space: Ana is a young, migrant single mother, who gets up in her dark apartment and then crosses the urban high-rise jungle to take her baby son to the nursery, where she leaves him for the day. She is then seen undertaking a lengthy journey on the RER to her employers’ home in the affluent 16th arrondissement of Paris, where another baby boy, almost identical to her own, waits to be taken care of. All day long she stays with him and sings the same songs that she will sing to her own son later that night after she has returned to her home in the banlieue. 5. In the summer of 2008, British media reported extensively on the phenomenon of the ‘returning Poles’: migrants who had arrived in the UK after the EU enlargement of 2004 and had taken up jobs across the country were now, in view of the UK’s stagnating economy, packing up and leaving. It was claimed that the shortlived Polish migration had in some places led to tensions with disenfranchised local residents. Ken Loach’s film It’s a Free World compellingly shows important aspects of this phenomenon. The fact that migrants leave when they encounter difficulties (and will probably return when things improve) confirms my view that permanent resettlement is unlikely. 6. The middle generation includes film-makers whose careers started before and continued after the turn of 1989. By comparison, cinéastes of the younger generation entered the scene only after 1989, while many of those belonging to the older generation had a difficult time adjusting to the new production conditions and significantly reduced their outputs. 7. See Anne Jäckel’s chapter in this volume for a detailed discussion of the panEuropean funding initiatives. 8. This is different from cases where directors have made a clear move to settle in another country – such as Polish Stanislaw Mucha, who lives in Germany, or the Yugoslavs Aleksandar Manic, Mira Erdevicki, Sinisa Dragin and Zoran Solomun, who live in the Czech Republic, the UK, Romania and Germany respectively.

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9.

10.

11.

12.

Many of these directors find it difficult to make the leap from documentary into features; like other migrants or even local film-makers, they struggle to gain access to financing. They are quietly encouraged to stay within the thematic areas they are supposed to know best and make films mostly on Eastern European topics. They often revisit material from back home, yet are also sensitive to themes of cross-border migrations and exchanges. Simultaneously, in the aftermath of the Cold War, there have been young filmmakers from the West who crossed earlier divides and migrated (temporarily) to Eastern Europe to learn the trade or make films. Some come from migrant families that are linked to the region, such as Swiss–Croat Andrea Staka, whose early shorts, documentaries and acclaimed debut feature Das Fräulein (Switzerland/ Germany 2006) are all concerned with stories linked to former Yugoslavia. British director Emily Young studied at Łodz in Poland and was said to have brought Eastern European sensibilities to her feature Kiss of Life (UK 2003), starring Russian–Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkunaite, now based in the UK. Since the end of communist rule, many Western Europeans have studied at FAMU in Prague, some returning to their countries of origin and some opting to operate transnationally. Of equal importance would be to explore migratory moves of professionals who have followed the West–East trajectory; they are particularly influential in the industry. The young Briton Matthew Stillman founded Stillking Films shortly after arriving in post-communist Prague in 1993. It gradually grew into the main intermediary service company, facilitating the work of numerous large Hollywood productions shooting at the Barrandov Studios and across the Czech Republic, thus capitalising on locally available skilled labour and lower prices and building up a booming business throughout the 1990s. Anamaria Marinca, the star of the 2007 Cannes-winner 4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile/4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (Romania 2007), had migrated to the UK and launched her career there. By the time director Cristian Mungiu discovered her, she had only appeared in British TV dramas such as the BBC’s two-part Sex Traffic (2004); she had to be invited and brought back home to star in the film, which became one of the most celebrated films of new Romanian cinema. Mungiu also directed the multi-award-winning 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days.

Works cited Ang, I. (2001) ‘Undoing Diaspora’, in On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West. London, New York: Routledge, 75–92. Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bakic-Hayden, M. and R. M. Hayden (1992) ‘Orientalist Variations on the Theme “Balkans”: Symbolic Geography in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics’, Slavic Review 51(1): 1–19. ——. (1995) ‘Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of Former Yugoslavia’, Slavic Review 54(4): 917–31. Bergfelder, T. (2005) ‘National, Transnational or Supranational Cinema’, Media, Culture and Society 27(3): 315–31. Burns, R. (2006) ‘Turkish-German Cinema: From Cultural Resistance to Transnational Cinema?’ in D. Clarke (ed.) German Cinema since Unification. London, New York: Continuum, 127–50.

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Cunningham, S. and J. Sinclair (eds) (2001) Floating Lives: The Media and Asian Diasporas. Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield. Dennison, S. and Song Hwee Lim (eds) (2006) Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film. London: Wallflower. Egoyan, A. and I. Balfour (eds) (2004) Subtitles: On the Foreignness of Film. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Ezra, E. and T. Rowden (eds) (2006) Transnational Cinema: The Film Reader. London: Routledge. Forrester, S., M. J. Zaborowska and E. Gapova (eds) (2004) Over the Wall/After the Fall: Post-communist Cultures through an East-West Gaze. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Fukuyama, F. (1993) The End of History and the Last Man. London: Penguin. Gentleman, A. (2003) ‘Bollywood on Seine’, The Guardian, 7 November, Friday Review: 12–13. Ginsburg, F., L. Abu-Lughod and B. Larkin (eds) (2002) Media Worlds: Anthropology on New Terrain. Berkeley: University of California Press. Göktürk, D. (2002) ‘Beyond Paternalism: Turkish German Traffic in Cinema’, in T. Bergfelder, E. Carter and D. Göktürk (eds) The German Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute, 248–56. Goldsworthy, V. (1998) Inventing Ruritania: The Imperialism of the Imagination. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Hannerz, U. (1996) Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London: Routledge. Hjort, M. (2005) Small Nation, Global Cinema: The New Danish Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hjort, M. and D. Petrie (eds) (2007) Cinema of Small Nations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hjort, M. and S. McKenzie (eds) (2000) Cinema and Nation. London: Routledge. Huntington, S. P. (1993) ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Foreign Affairs 72(3): 22–49. Imre, A. (1999) ‘White Man, White Mask: Mephisto Meets Venus’, Screen 40(4): 405–22. ——. (2005a) ‘Whiteness in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe: The Time of the Gypsies, the End of Race’, in A. J. Lopez (ed.) Postcolonial Whiteness: A Critical Reader on Race and Empire. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 79–103. —— . (ed.) (2005b) East European Cinemas. New York, London: Routledge. Iordanova, D. (2000) ‘The New Russians in Film: Nostalgia for the Occupier, Commiseration for the Immigrant’, Canadian Slavonic Papers 17(1–2): 113–31. ——. (2001a) Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture and the Media. London: British Film Institute. ——. (2001b) ‘Displaced? Shifting Politics of Place and Itinerary’, Senses of Cinema 14 (June). Online. Available at: http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/14/ displaced.html (accessed 17 May 2010). ——. (2003) Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film. London: Wallflower Press. ——. (2007) ‘Transnational Film Studies’, in P. Cook (ed.) The Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute. ——. (2008) ‘Mimicry and Plagiarism: Reconciling Actual and Metaphoric Gypsies’, Third Text 22(3): 305–10. Kelertas, V. (ed.) (2006) Baltic Postcolonialism. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Kennedy, M. D. (2002) Cultural Formations of Postcommunism: Emancipation, Transition, Nation and War. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

74 Dina Iordanova Korte, B. and C. Sternberg (2004) Bidding for the Mainstream? Black and Asian British Film since the 1990s. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi. Kovacevic, N. (2005) Narrating Post/Communism: Colonial Discourse and Europe’s Borderline Civilization. New York, London: Routledge. Kristensen, L. (2007) ‘Divergent Accounts of Equivalent Narratives: Russian-Swedish Interdevochka Meets Swedish-Russian Lilya 4-ever’, Portal 4.2. Online. Available at: h t t p : //e p r e s s . l i b . u t s . e d u . a u /o j s / i n d e x . p h p / p o r t a l /a r t i c l e / v i e w/4 8 8 (accessed 29 November 2007). Lopez, A. J. (ed.) (2005) Postcolonial Whiteness: A Critical Reader on Race and Empire. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Marciniak, K. (2006) Alienhood: Citizenship, Exile, and the Logic of Difference. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. —— . (2007) ‘Palatable Foreignness’, in K. Marciniak, A. Imre and A. O’Healy (eds) Transnational Feminism in Film and Media: Visibility, Representation, and Sexual Differences. New York, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 187–207. Marks, L. U. (2000) The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Mazierska, E. and L. Rascaroli (2002) From Moscow to Madrid: European Cities, Postmodern Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris. —— . (2006) Crossing New Europe: Postmodern Travel and the European Road Movie. London: Wallflower. Moore, D. C. (2001) ‘Is the Post- in Postcolonial the Post- in Post-Soviet? Toward a Global Postcolonial Critique’, PMLA 116(1): 111–28. Morley, D. (2000) Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity. London, New York: Routledge. Morley, D. and K. Robins (1995) Spaces of Identity: Global Media, Electronic Landscapes and Cultural Boundaries. London, New York: Routledge. Naficy, H. (2001) An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press. Nestingen, A. and T. G. Elkington (eds) (2005) Transnational Cinema in a Global North: Nordic Cinema in Transition. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. O’Healy, A. (2007) ‘Border Traffic: Reimagining the Voyage to Italy’, in K. Marciniak, A. Imre and A. O’Healy (eds) Transnational Feminism in Film and Media: Visibility, Representation, and Sexual Differences. New York, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 37–53. Rose, R. (2006) ‘Europe’s Largest Minority Roma and Sinti Demand Equal Rights’, UN Chronicle Online Edition. Online. Available at: http://www.un.org/Pubs/ chronicle/2006/webArticles/120106_rose.htm (accessed 27 August 2008). Rosenbaum, J. and A. Martin (eds) (2003) Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia. London: British Film Institute. Ruhe, C. (2006) Cinéma beur: Analysen zu einem neuen Genre des französischen Kinos. Konstanz: UVK. Santaolalla, I. (2005) Los ‘Otros’: Etnicidad y ‘raza’ en el cine español contemporáneo. Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza. Sassen, S. (1998) Globalization and its Discontents: Essays on the New Mobility of People and Money. New York: New Press. Shohat, E. and R. Stam (eds) (2003) Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media. New Brunswick, London: Rutgers University Press. Spagnoletti, G. (ed.) (2000) Il cinema Europeo del metissage. Peasro: XXXVI Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema.

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Tarr, C. (2005) Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Todorova, M. N. (1997) ‘Between Classification and Politics: The Balkans and the Myth of Central Europe’, in M. N. Todorova (ed.) Imagining the Balkans. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 140–61. Tötösy de Zepetnek, S. (1995) ‘Post-Colonialities: The “Other,” the System, and a Personal Perspective, or, This (Too) Is Comparative Literature’, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 22(3/4): 399–407. Tudor, A. (1986) ‘Genre’, in B. K. Grant (ed.) Film Genre Reader. Austin: University of Texas Press, 3–11. Vincendeau, G. (2005) La Haine. London: I.B. Tauris. Waller, M. (2007) ‘The Abjection of Patriarchy: Ibolya Fekete’s Chico and the Transnational Feminist Imaginary’, in K. Marciniak, A. Imre and A. O’Healy (eds) Transnational Feminism in Film and Media: Visibility, Representation, and Sexual Differences. New York, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 227–41. Willemen, P. and V. Vitali (eds) (2006) Theorising National Cinemas. London: British Film Institute. Wolff, L. (1994) Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

3 State and Other Funding for Migrant, Diasporic and World Cinemas in Europe Anne Jäckel

State funding policies for the arts have always been controversial. So are dichotomies applied to cinema (i.e. mainstream/marginal, Hollywood/independent, popular/auteur, national/non-national, European/non-European, etc.), however useful they may be to policymakers (by serving political and cultural goals as well as the needs of the local industry) and to producers and distributors in identifying niche markets. Today, categories have almost been made redundant by globalisation trends brought about by advanced technologies and the emergence of ‘a multiplicity of capitalisms’ (Halle 2002: 21). Yet state funding continues to be crucial to the existence of world cinemas. In Europe, the EU (MEDIA) and pan-European (Eurimages) programmes have provided funding to film-makers since the 1990s. In 2007, the number of film support schemes operating across the EU was estimated at 600, with France providing the highest overall amount of state aid for films followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain (Broche et al. 2007: 1). The European Commission insists on ‘cultural tests’ to underpin government subsidies, but it is up to each Member State to ‘ensure that the content of the aided production is cultural according to verifiable national criteria’ (Broche et al. 2007: 4). Each country has set up its own criteria (usually based on a sophisticated point system) to establish the nationality and/or the cultural specificity of a film. However, the definition of what constitutes a ‘national’ film has been considerably expanded with the opening up of state financing to co-productions with EU and third-party countries. Moreover, many contemporary European directors are multiple passport-holders, living between Europe (or the US) and North Africa and the Middle East, often to avoid government censorship (Carver 2006), or to avail themselves of the best funding opportunities for making films. The increasing mobility of people working in the audiovisual industries and the existence of a multiplicity of stable and unstable groupings and/or 76

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allegiances within a particular territory make problematic both the attribution of terms such as ‘migrant’, ‘diasporic’ or ‘exilic’ to a film-maker and the identification of – as well as his or her identification with – a particular cultural and/or ethnic community. Furthermore, various – and often conflicting – traditions exist within Europe when it comes to promoting cultural and ethnic diversity. Most EU countries now have programmes in place to facilitate awareness of ethnic diversity and encourage cultural and artistic expression of minorities, but while some countries, such as the United Kingdom, have chosen to institutionalise ethnic differences (i.e. ethnic monitoring, anti-discrimination legislation with statutory duty in the public sector to promote equal opportunities), others, like France, have worked on the principle of individual integration. This chapter explores some of the current initiatives that promote or support the production, distribution and exhibition of migrant and diasporic cinema in Europe. European cinema is still very much defined in terms of auteur cinema. Despite the emergence of categories such as black and Asian British film, beur and banlieue cinema in France, Turkish German film or Hispano-American film in Spain, the majority of film-makers working in and from Europe, including ‘hyphenated’ film-makers, choose to define themselves and their work in terms of individual vision and creative independence rather than under a collective label. The reasons are manifold: personal (artists are particularly aware of their own value), socio-economic and cultural (they may want to distance themselves from the background they come from and/or escape the ‘burden of representation’) as well as financial (grants are normally offered on an individual basis). France, the country which gave birth to la politique des auteurs and has the most prolific film industry in Europe and the most comprehensive support system to cinema, offers an interesting case study that will be used to explore funding and policy changes affecting the development of migrant and diasporic cinema nationally and beyond.

France’s avance sur recettes At the 1996 Douarnenez Film Festival, which was dedicated to ‘Migrant Communities in Europe’, integration measures such as France’s special investment fund in audiovisual production developed within the framework of the Fonds d’Action Sociale pour les travailleurs immigrés et leurs familles (FAS) was hailed as ‘a real step forward regarding knowledge and recognition of migrant populations and the possibility for the younger generations to express themselves’ (Da Silva 1996: 12). At the time, the impact of Mathieu Kassovitz’s La Haine/Hate (1995) and other banlieue films, several of them made by film-makers of Maghrebi origin, on the renewal of French cinema in the 1990s was widely acknowledged. Since then, the careers of migrant and diasporic film professionals have flourished in France with some help from French film subsidies.

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Support to French and non-French auteurs is central to France’s film policy and has long been a key strategy for resisting American dominance and expanding the country’s prestige and linguistic reach in the world. Among the array of measures set up by the Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC) under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture or/and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) that benefit migrant and diasporic film-makers in particular are grants for script development and production, funds that help foreign film-makers who cannot make films in their own country and support offered for training, distribution and exhibition, including film festivals. Central among the production grants is the avance sur recettes (ASR). Introduced in 1959, the avance is an interest-free loan designed to support an innovative and challenging cinema and to encourage creativity and renewal by helping first films as well as second films and the works of more established film-makers. The amount of aid varies from one project to another, but normally represents between 10 and 15 per cent of the film budget. Between 40 and 55 films receive the aid each year (10 per cent of all applications). According to a CNC report (CNC 2007), between 2000 and 2006, 93.7 per cent of the 546 projects selected were actually shot, with 43.8 per cent being selected – 12.5 per cent in competition – at the six major film festivals (Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Toronto, Locarno and San Sebastian). The view of Georges Kiejman, Chairman of the ASR Committee in 1979, that ‘film professionals and personalities sit in complete independence’ (1979: 39) is still widely shared by members on the panels. Of the sixteen projects granted a loan by the committee chaired by Kiejman, five dealt with or were set in colonial and/or post-colonial Africa (including Moumen Smihi’s 44, Morocco/France 1979, released 1985, and Med Hondo’s West Indies Story, France/Algeria/Mauritania 1979). A survey of the list of ASR recipients over the last twenty-five years shows that a considerable number of migrant and diasporic film-makers are included. Among the major beneficiaries of the ASR are the ‘Gypsy beur’ Tony Gatlif (with a ten times record), followed by Karim Dridi, Mehdi Charef, Otar Iosseliani, Rithy Panh and Tran Ahn Hung (more than five times), while Merzak Allouache, Hiner Saleem, Mahmoud Zemmouri, Alain Gomis, Euzhan Palcy, Abdelkrim Bahloul, Moumen Smihi, Maroun Bagdadi, Cheik Dukouré, Idrissa Ouedraogo, Dani Kouyaté, Randa Chahal Sabbag, Moussa Touré and Avi Mograbi also received the aid several times. In helping some of those film-makers to make their film debuts, the CNC’s selective aid contributed to launching their respective careers in France and on the international scene. Many of the ASR-supported films made by migrant or diasporic filmmakers have been critical of their funding/adoptive country and, to a lesser extent, of their ‘country of origin’. Like many other French films made in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, these productions tend to be what Mike Wayne calls ‘anti-national national films’ (2002: 40), that is,

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films ‘defined by their critique of the myth of community which underpins national identity’ and in which the national ‘territory is seen as a conflicted zone of unequal relations of power’ (2002: 45). As new generations and new talent emerge and reputations become more established, migrant and diasporic film-makers are granted aid at the same rate as other French auteurs, and are also invited to sit as members of the awarding bodies.1 Rachid Bouchareb, for example, received the aid several times, including for his first feature Baton Rouge (France 1985) and for Indigènes/Days of Glory (Algeria/France/Morocco/Belgium 2006), his most successful film to date, and was a member of the committee in charge of selecting ASR winners in 2007.2 Perhaps more importantly, films made by migrant and diasporic directors are regularly shown on television, and the film-makers are now also able to raise substantial financing for their projects. Days of Glory, for example, was one of the eleven films granted the ASR between 1997 and 2006 which claimed a budget of over € 10 million (with a reported budget of € 14.48 million). It was under pressure from young and ambitious individuals on the periphery of the system (the future New Wave directors) that the French government in the 1950s introduced the avance sur recettes to reward quality films and support emerging talent. Half a century later, the ASR is still playing an important role in helping film-makers ‘on the margins’ to access the means of production. And, like the New Wave directors before them, migrant and diasporic film-makers today are contributing to the reputation of French cinema.

UK versus French film policy In sharp contrast to France, the United Kingdom has never had a longterm film policy or a comprehensive support system for its film industry. Financial incentives have largely taken the form of tax relief, usually to entice foreign (i.e. Hollywood, but also today Bollywood) producers to shoot their films in the United Kingdom. Slate funding (i.e. funding available for slates of projects rather than a single film) has been another favourite form of support. The widely acknowledged body of work of many British – including black and Asian – film-makers may entitle them to auteur status on the international scene, but not to special funding in Britain. Black film-makers have long worked independently of the British system. The optimism of the 1980s following the Workshop Declaration of 1981 and the founding of Channel 4 in 1982 with its championing of culturally diverse content was short-lived. As Ali Jaafar comments: The movement [of Black Collectives] wound down in the early 1990s as Channel 4’s involvement subsided and funding disappeared, a situation that was exacerbated by the later closure of the British Film Institute’s

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and Arts Council’s production boards, which had been among the chief backers of black filmmakers. (2005: 4) The 1990s were a bleak period for minority ethnic film-makers. Their hopes rose with the creation of the UK Film Council (UKFC) in 2000, yet it took four years for the UKFC to roll out its Diversity Strategy and five years to launch the Equality Charter for Film. Among UKFC initiatives that can benefit black and Asian film-makers today are the Development Fund (particularly its First Film programme), the Digital Short schemes and the New Cinema Fund (for short and feature films). On the UKFC website, ‘films from black, Asian and other minority ethnic filmmakers’ are singled out among the ‘talent [the New Cinema Fund is] looking for’ (UKFC 2007). Soda Pictures distributor Eve Gabereau (2007) remarks that migrant and diasporic film-makers could benefit from the UKFC’s wide definition of ‘specialised film’ (films that do not sit easily in the mainstream or highly commercial genres) as those films can qualify for print and advertising support. However, the reach of the UKFC’s diversity programmes is not limited to people from minority ethnic groups, as it also includes, in certain categories, women and disabled people. It is too early to assess the impact of the UKFC’s recent initiatives, but longterm commitment and continuity of funding are crucial to a healthy film industry, let alone diversity programmes. Given the history of the British film industry, long-term chances for migrant and diasporic film-makers are far from guaranteed. While film-makers from an Indian background may find better opportunities in the current expansion of popular South Asian cinema, the new generation of African, African Caribbean, Chinese and other minority ethnic film-makers in Britain see the new technologies as offering their best hopes for the future.

Further funding opportunities in France In France, some of the migrant and diasporic film-makers have also been able to take advantage of funds set up to help the cinemas of countries facing economic hardship. They include the Fonds Francophone de Production Audiovisuelle Sud (FFPAS), created in 1988 to support ‘the creative and technical talents from French speaking countries of the South’ (OIF 2007), the Fonds ECO (Fonds d’aide aux coproductions avec les pays d’Europe Centrale et Orientale) and the Fonds Sud. Active between 1990 and 1997, the Fonds ECO focused on Central and Eastern Europe,3 while the Fonds Sud was originally set up in 1984 to assist film-makers from the former French colonies in Africa and South-East Asia. The Fonds Sud offers production, completion and rewriting support to film-makers from Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, Latin America, the Middle East (with the exception of Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United

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Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Brunei and Qatar) and Asia (with the exception of Korea, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan) as well as from Central and Eastern Europe (non-EU members) and Central Asia (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan). With an annual budget varying between € 2.2 and € 2.6 million, the fund is co-financed equally between France’s MAE and Ministry of Culture and Communications represented by the CNC; it operates an upper limit of forty projects per year. Fonds Sud-supported films are automatically entitled to the distribution aid set up in 1983 to help the distribution of films originating from countries whose productions are little known in France. The aid covers the editing costs and the French distributors’ cost in acquiring the distribution rights. As Fabyène Mansencal summarises, ‘the aim is to train the film directors of the developing countries and then to promote these world cinemas by creating collections that tour the world in film theatres, the French arts network and local festivals’ (2001: 11). Between 25 and 50 per cent of the aid must cover production costs in the eligible country. The composition of Fonds Sud committees reflects their members’ involvement in transnational projects and their commitment to promoting cultural diversity. In 2005–6, for example, the committee was chaired by the French director Régis Wargnier and included Karin Albou (film-maker, France), Nathalie Mesuret (Sunday Morning Productions producer, France), Philippe Avril (Unlimited producer, France) Christian Baute (Celluloid Dreams producer, France), Dani Kouyaté (film-maker, Burkina Faso), Thierry Lenouvel (Ciné Sud Promotion producer and Amiens Film Festival organiser, France), Michel Marx (scriptwriter, France), Raphaël Vion (Les Films du Safran distributor, France) and Ghassan Salhab (film-maker, Lebanon). Over the years, the Fonds Sud has been criticised for spreading its support too thinly over an ever-increasing geographical area and offering financial support for the benefit of the French film industry, without any significant help to local infrastructures. In response, France has set up two new initiatives focusing exclusively on Africa, Africa Cinémas (with EU support) and Fonds Images Afrique in 2003 and 2004 respectively, to improve the intracontinental distribution of African films and encourage local audiovisual production by developing local infrastructures. Feeling short-changed by France’s increased support to other countries, a group of Paris-based African film-makers, including Zeka Laplaine, Abdherrahmane Sissako and Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, formed the Guild of African Directors and Producers in 1999 to assist diasporic African film-makers in the production and distribution of their films. France’s new initiatives in Africa may go some way to help – mainly sub-Saharan – film-makers, but French support still does not include specific provision for post-colonial film-makers within France. However, a significant number of film-makers – particularly those from the former French colonies – have been able to take advantage of the ASR, the FFPAS and the Fonds Sud, some of them for several projects. They

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include Youssef Chahine (Egypt), Rithy Panh (Cambodia),4 Idrissa Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso), Merzak Allouache (Algeria) and Ferid Boughedir (Tunisia). For bi- or multilingual film-makers such as those mentioned above, shooting in the French language represents a stratagem to obtain funding, but it can also, as Jean-Michel Frodon argues, constitute ‘their claim as a right and/or a sign of belonging’ (2006b: 5, my translation). The Algerian-born Abdelkrim Bahloul, who made his film career in France, declares: ‘I do not feel I am an immigrant. I don’t feel I am a foreigner in France because my country is the language I speak. I speak French since birth. The French language is my country’ (Bahloul 2007). Working in the French context, Bahloul feels he is able to direct the films he wants to make about the subjects he wants to address in the best auteur tradition. If he makes films with a social purpose, it is by choice. ‘I love cinema,’ he says: ‘I would like to make nice films, thrillers, comedies, but I am always moved by the social, political and human reality of the country in which I live, and of my country [sic] of origin, the Maghreb’ (Bahloul 2007). Not all film-makers of Maghrebi origin, however, are as happy as Bahloul to work within the French system or with French funding. Zaïda GhorabVolta, for example, claims that in France people are ‘put in boxes [and] kept there’. She finds that, as a result, ‘it is very hard for a director to move from one genre to another’ (quoted in O’Shaughnessy 2007: 52). Using a vocabulary reminiscent of the ‘Young Turks’ of the French New Wave, she says that ‘by becoming even more uncontrollable’, she constantly had ‘to learn other ways of getting things done. But that never influences the content of [her] films or what [she] wanted to say’ (Ghorab-Volta in O’Shaughnessy 2007: 52). However, as Ghorab-Volta found out, making films ‘without concession’ entails certain risks. Labels such as ‘woman’, ‘beur’ or ‘auteur’ film-maker inevitably generate certain expectations. Continuity in thematic concerns is normally expected from an auteur. By playing the auteur card, one may – as she did – get the support of an ASR committee, regional or European funding, but film financiers including independent producers may be harder to convince, particularly when the film in question involves shooting in faraway locations – in her case, Cape Verde – with high insurance costs and a budget to match. Yet all film directors are faced by these problems, not just migrant and diasporic film-makers. Before concluding on the French case, it is worth recalling that, in France, film professionals have taken an active and sustained role in opposing harsher legislation against immigration proposed by the French government. In the 1990s, they organised major protests and, in 2007, over 350 film-makers and technicians supported the production and exhibition of a short film demanding that the children of illegal immigrants should have the right to remain and be educated in France. Undoubtedly, the existence of French funds has encouraged film-makers from all corners of the world to seek a career and/or settle in France. Those

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who have found a French producer and who work and have chosen to stay in France either temporarily or permanently are, by and large, film-makers from the former French colonies in Africa and South-East Asia and from Central and Eastern Europe (i.e. Iosseliani, the late Krzystof Kieślowski and Lucian Pintilie). 5 ‘Transnationally mobile’ (see Iordanova in this volume, p. 65) may better describe the position of those film-makers who move from one country to another to find the best funding and production opportunities, since they are not necessarily part of a diasporic collectivity, nor were they forced to migrate after being banished from a country of origin.

Co-productions With the support of European funding institutions, films are increasingly made as co-production and/or co-financing arrangements. Interestingly, some of the major independent European producers and other film professionals involved in co-productions who team up with partners from Eastern Europe and film-makers from the South are themselves migrants or descendants of migrants. Among those producers whose dedication to international cinema and art cinema has remained consistent are the France-based Greekborn Constantin Costa Gavras and Romanian-born Marin Karmitz. The latter raised finance for the films of Pintilie, Kieślowski, Theo Angelopoulos, Amos Gitaï, Jiri Menzel, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Bartabas and Michael Haneke. Other producers of films directed by migrant and diasporic film-makers are often European film-makers, who have themselves directed or produced films featuring migrants, for instance the brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne in Belgium. An accelerating globalisation has led film professionals to put pressure on their government to find new partners around the globe (the UK, for example, signed a co-production agreement with India in 2008 and has been seeking one with China), blurring even further the distinctions between international, post-colonial and migrant and diasporic filmmaking. Cultural and linguistic historical links no doubt continue to play a part in special agreements between some of the larger European countries and their former colonies (cf. the co-production agreement signed between the governments of Algeria and France in December 2007). French producers have long collaborated with francophone Arab countries, and France now also has a small but significant number of producers of Maghrebi origin (i.e. Bouchareb, Gatlif, Saleem, Zemmouri). While a number of films involving professionals – but not necessarily financing – from Algeria and France have already been made by migrant or diasporic film-makers as co-productions (i.e. Days of Glory and Mahmoud Zemmouri’s Beur, blanc, rouge, 2006), the agreement can offer them more opportunities and bring about new partnerships.

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Along with France, other European countries have been involved in producing films from the Arab world. Roy Armes notes that all the films, with the exception of the Egyptian entries, screened at the Third Biennale of Arab Cinemas in Paris in 1996 were produced in Europe, that is, in France, Belgium, Norway and Switzerland. He inferred that [t]he question of what constitutes an Arab film was posed most forcefully by Rachid Bouchareb’s Living Dust/Poussières de Vie (1995). [...] This is clearly a work of distinction, nominated in the ‘best film’ category for the 1996 Hollywood Oscars – but is it in any sense meaningful to talk of it as an Arab film? The director, it is true, is of Algerian descent, but he was born in France, the film’s funding is French (with European Script Development funding), it was shot in Malaysia and deals with the fate of Vietnamese children abandoned by their US soldier fathers after the fall of Saigon in 1975. (Armes 1997: 85) Today, the increasing number of Arab films receiving awards at film festivals and reaching multiple audiences has led to a rush by film producers from all over Europe to enter into a deal with partners in the Arab world. In 2006, Charlotte Mikkie, managing director of Celluloid Dreams (France), predicted ‘a rise in [such] co-productions’ as a result of ‘the talent base [being] on the rise’ and ‘the increasingly large diasporic population in Europe’ (quoted in Carver 2006: 22). The current interest of Western producers in co-productions with nonEuropean partners is on a scale never seen before. There is also a new variety of funding sources available (regional, national, European, pan-European, public, private etc.) in Europe and beyond. In her study of ethnicity and race in Spanish cinema, Isabel Santaolalla points out that ‘[a]lthough the main reason to enter into co-productions was economic, there is no doubt that they also brought with them a whole series of ideological and cultural effects whether intended or not’ (2005: 206, my translation). Citing Maité (Cuba/Spain 1994, dir. Eneko Olasagasti and Carlos Zabala), Martín (Hache) (Spain/Argentina 1997, dir. Adolfo Aristaráin) and Todo está oscuro (Spain/ Portugal/Colombia/Cuba 1997, dir. Ana Diez), she suggests, with recourse to Manuel Palacio, that those coproducciones mestizas are ‘not limited to a mere economic agreement between partners’ (Santaolalla 2005: 206), but are films that seek ‘an unprecedented and ambivalent place between the image of ourselves and that of the other [... and] reflect the multicultural and hybrid character of today’s world’ (Palacio 1999: 232, quoted in Santaolalla 2005: 206). Bearing this in mind, it is not surprising that ‘hyphenated’ film-makers are particularly suited to attract co-production partners. Co-production arrangements present opportunities but also risks. Unequal power relationships between partners have created problems for

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the producers and/or film-makers from the economically subordinate visà-vis the dominant country, with the latter being able to establish firmer control over the production. These problems have long been inherent in co-financing arrangements in a mode of production dominated by capital and corporate interests and partly explain why a more narrowly defined coproduction model has been adopted by the European Funds initiated in the late 1980s. Under the aegis of the EU MEDIA programme, a number of training schemes and co-production forums have provided networking opportunities for all European film-makers. However, two co-production initiatives, provided by the pan-European Fund Eurimages and the Franco-German cultural channel Arte, stand out among those that have contributed most to both the presence of migrant and diasporic subjects on the screen and films directed by migrant and diasporic film-makers.

Eurimages Eurimages was developed within the Council of Europe’s cultural programme with the remit to support the production and distribution of ‘works which uphold the values that are part and parcel of the European identity’ (Eurimages News 1990). Since its inception in 1988, the pan-European fund has supported about 1,300 feature films and documentaries. One of the first co-productions to receive Eurimages funding was Reise der Hoffnung/Journey of Hope (Switzerland/Turkey/UK 1991). The film, by the Swiss director Xavier Koller, depicts the tragic efforts of illegal immigrants (a Turkish family) to reach ‘Paradise somewhere in Europe’. Eurimages funding has gone to further films dealing with the situation of ‘old’ labour migrants and ‘new’ arrivals, including refugees and asylum seekers and migrants from Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Examples include films directed by non-migrant directors, for example, Gianni Amelio’s Lamerica (Italy/France/Germany 1994) and Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things (UK 2002), and by migrant and diasporic film-makers such as the Albanian-born Fatmir Koçi (Tirana, année zéro/Tirana Year Zero, France/ Albania 2001), the Algerian-born Mahmoud Zemmouri (Beur, Blanc, Rouge, France/Algeria 2006) and the German director of Turkish origin, Fatih Akın (Auf der anderen Seite/The Edge of Heaven Germany/Turkey/Italy 2007). Randall Halle contends that ‘through Eurimages, Europe – or the idea of Europe – is given a “civilizing” mission’, insofar as films funded under this scheme are expected to promote ‘cinema as one of the arts’ and to reflect the idea that notwithstanding its ‘multiple facets’ European society is based on ‘common roots’ which ‘are evidence of a single culture’ (2002: 34). Yet, by their way of dealing with issues of migration and displacement, these productions offer an interesting challenge to notions of cultural, national and European identity. Far from attempting to establish a ‘closed European ensemble’ (Halle 2002: 31), the pan-European Fund has not only fostered

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co-productions between Western and Eastern European countries when the latter needed them most, but it has also been influential in the emergence of a European cinema through which the questions of cultural identity and representation – in terms of ethnicity, socio-economic position, race, gender and youth – are articulated (Jäckel 2007).

Arte With funding from the French and German governments, Arte’s remit is to support films and television programmes of ‘a cultural and international nature’ (Arte 2007). Michel Reilhac, Arte France Cinéma CEO, describes Arte as providing ‘a research and experimental ground by helping first-time filmmakers and to remain faithful and continue to support auteurs who have become more commercial’ (for example, Lars von Trier, Michael Haneke and Patrice Chéreau; quoted in Sojcher 2006: 75, my translation). Arte Cinema support goes to between twenty and twenty-five feature films a year and its average investment (pre-buy and co-production) per film is around € 0.41 million (Arte 2007). Like Eurimages-funded projects, a number of works supported by Arte are directed by film-makers concerned with migrant issues, such as Amelio, the Dardenne brothers, Robert Guédiguian, Peter Handke and Ken Loach, and the works of migrant and diasporic film-makers.6 The latter include short and/or television films (Zaïda Ghorab-Volta), documentaries (Raymond Rajaonarivelo’s Mahaleo, France/Madagascar 2005) and feature-length films such as Mohamed Camara’s Dakan (Guinea/France 1997), Fatih Akın’s Gegen die Wand/Head-On (Germany/Turkey 2004), Amos Gitaï’s Free Zone (Israel/Belgium/France/Spain 2005), Hany AbuAssad’s Paradise Now (Palestine/France/Germany/Netherlands/Israel 2005), Dagur Kári’s The Good Heart (Denmark/Iceland/USA 2008), Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Daratt (Chad/France/Belgium/Austria 2006) and Tony Gatlif’s Vengo (Spain/France/Germany/Japan 2000). Since its inception, Arte France Cinéma has been involved in over 400 productions, working with more than 200 different producers and 270 directors (Arte 2007). Covering over fifty different nationalities, Arte’s support has gone far beyond European borders. Interestingly, the increase in the number of projects originating from non-European film-makers over the last few years was vehemently criticised by Jean-Michel Frodon in Cahiers du Cinéma in 2006. Comparing the rejections faced by reputed French directors such as Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Alain Resnais, Claire Denis, Jacques Doillon or Pascale Ferran with Arte’s growing support for co-productions emanating from international film-makers (two-thirds in 2005), Frodon asserted that ‘this judicious opening to the world increasingly appears to be a way not to support French auteur cinema at a time when it so desperately needs it’ (2006a: 17, my translation).

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This ‘opening to the world’ is part of a global trend affecting all national cinemas in Europe today, not just French auteurs. Yet the contribution of institutions such as Eurimages and Arte in the emergence of what Wayne calls ‘a pan-European cinematic consciousness and a struggle around what the Europe of the future will be’, along with films whose ‘transnational diasporan sensibility calls into question temporal continuity, cultural cohesion and fixed pure identities’ (2002: 140), remains of great significance.

Europa Cinemas and Euromed Distribution and exhibition have long been a problem for European films. Taking into consideration the lack of visibility of European films despite efforts made under the MEDIA and Eurimages programmes, the European Union has allocated the major share (55 per cent) of its MEDIA budget to distribution.7 Today, the prime international network of cinemas is Europa Cinemas (with 816 cinemas housing 2,070 screens in 475 cities in forty-two countries in 2010), funded with the support of the MEDIA programme, Eurimages and France’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Since 2000, Europa Cinemas operates Euromed with partners in the Mediterranean countries from Morocco to Turkey and Lebanon. Euromed’s aim is to improve the circulation of Mediterranean and European films (Europa Cinemas/Euromed 2000: 1). In the countries of North Africa, where film exhibition is dominated by Hollywood and Bollywood productions and where a huge market for pirate DVDs exists, Euromed initiatives have been welcomed. Following the success of the first two Euromed Audiovisual programmes (I and II), the EU agreed, in July 2009, a new budget of € 11 million over three years for their successor, Euromed Audiovisual III (2009–11). Like France’s Fonds Sud, Euromed Audiovisual II (2006–8) focused mostly on the South. Medscreen, one of Euromed’s initiatives, launched a number of activities designed to enhance the visibility of Arab films (i.e. the organisation of Arab Film Weeks in cinemas in Europe and in the Mediterranean countries, support for the promotion of Arab Mediterranean films released on DVD and the creation of a website for Arab cinema). EU support within the Euromed framework also goes to a number of film festivals and other events. In 2007, for example, the latter included the Manchester Film Week (April), the Cannes Film Market (May), Hamburg and Bodrum (June), the Lille Film Week (July), Barcelona and Fameck in October. All these programmes offer potential distribution opportunities for European migrant and diasporic productions, particularly for German Turkish films in Turkey and beur cinema in Maghrebi countries. However, it remains to be seen whether migrant and diasporic film-makers benefit or suffer from being situated at the interstices of European and World Cinema.

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Film festivals ‘Arab filmmakers in the diaspora – particularly France – are making some of the best cinema in the world’, declared Toronto International Film Festival co-director Noah Cowan in 2006 (quoted in Carver 2006: 22). In the 2000s, films made in Europe by migrant and diasporic film-makers have been particularly prominent at international film festivals and have received numerous awards both in and outside Europe. As far as festivals are concerned, double or ‘multiple occupancy’ (Elsaesser 2005) offers the same advantages as co-productions: it allows films to be presented under different labels at various events around the world. Jean Brehat, the French producer of the French/Belgian/Moroccan/Algerian co-production Days of Glory, points out that Bouchareb’s film is ‘seen as Arab at international film festivals, French in France and is representing Algeria at the Oscars’ (quoted in Carver 2006: 22), even though the film was partly shot in Morocco (not in Algeria) and has no Algerian financing.8 EU countries are staging screenings and retrospectives dedicated to migrant and diasporic film-makers, with France having the largest number of such events. Among the major festivals and events that stand out for their commitment to cultural and ethnic minorities in France are Montpellier’s Cinemed (which awards two development grants of € 7,000 each and a writing residency), the Amiens International Film Festival, reputed for screening films originating from and representing minorities (which offers four grants of € 7,500 for screenplay development), the Festival des 3 Continents in Nantes (and its Produire au Sud workshop created to reduce disparities between the richer countries in the North and poorer countries in the South), CITA in Biarritz, the Biennale of Arab Films in Paris (set up in 1992 to promote Arab films and contribute to their distribution in France and in Europe), the Mediterranean Culture Film Festival in Bastia and the Cannes Film Festival. Further festivals across Europe screening Arab films are the Mediterranean Festival of New Film-makers in Larissa (Greece), Nuremberg’s Film Festival (Turkey/Germany) and Tübingen’s Mediterranean Film Festival (Germany). Istanbul’s International Film Festival and the Mostra of Valencia/Mediterranean Cinema (Spain) have almost become showcases for Turkish cinema. In the United Kingdom, black and Asian cinemas have been presented at the Black Filmmaker Magazine International Film Festival in London and the Bite the Mango Festival in Bradford. Outside Europe, the Diaspora Film Festival, held in Toronto since 2003, is an important forum celebrating the diversity of films and videos made by film-makers working outside their countries of origin. The trend to award funding for film projects at festivals started at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in the late 1980s and is now well established. Arguably, the most interesting initiatives that contribute to the production, distribution and exhibition of minority film-makers in and

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outside Europe are based at the European film festivals where they were initiated. Holland has two such funding initiatives: The Jan Vrijman Fund and The Hubert Bals Fund. The former supports documentaries from developing countries; the latter is linked to CineMart, the international co-production market which also takes place in Rotterdam during the festival and attracts most of those European independent producers who are looking for international projects. In The Netherlands, film-makers from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean can also receive funding from the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development. In Sweden, the Göteborg Festival Fund is dedicated to films from developing countries, with a particular focus on African cinema. Switzerland has been sponsoring film-making in less privileged countries since the 1980s. The Fribourg International Film Festival (screening African and Latin American films) offers small grants along with the Pesaro’s Mostra International Film Festival in Italy. In Germany, the World Cinema Fund (WCF), launched at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2005, was set up in co-operation with the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes) and the Berlin Festival ‘to support filmmakers from transition countries’ (WCF Profile 2007). The WCF aims ‘to help the realisation of films which otherwise could not be produced, i.e. feature-length films and documentaries with a strong cultural identity’ as well as ‘to strengthen the profile of these films in German cinemas’ (WCF Profile 2007). More recent initiatives are the New Crowned Hope project, launched at the 2006 Vienna Film Festival, the co-production forum Crossroads, introduced at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in November 2007, which provides film producers linked to the Balkan and the Mediterranean regions with a network of financiers and co-producers from around the world, and Babylon, first presented at the Locarno Film Festival (2006), which is intended as ‘a pan-European forum for minority filmmakers in Europe’ (see also Jones in this volume). Another initiative, ArteEast, deserves to be mentioned. Set up in New York in 2003 as a non-profit organisation to exhibit the work of film-makers from the Middle East and its various diasporas, it offers several annual film programmes including the CinemaEast series and a biennial film festival, visual art exhibits, publications and online resources. In 2006 one of its touring programmes was dedicated to Palestine, and in 2007 the CinemaEast Film Festival included a section dedicated to beur cinema, which arguably makes migrant and diasporic cinema suitable to be showcased as European cinema. Through their Ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs, a number of European governments along with the EU sponsor film festivals dedicated to the screenings of films from the Southern hemisphere. In Africa, the most important are the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage (JCC) and Burkina Faso’s FESPACO (Festival Panafricain du Cinéma de Ouagadougou). If some see these events as crucial to the development and promotion of African cinemas, others have been critical of festivals sponsored by the

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West, accusing Europeans of ghettoising African films and creating opportunities for themselves (Diawara 1993). While support for JCC and FESPACO is indicative of a growing interest in and engagement with world cinemas, it also means, like French patronage, that European influence is maintained and expanded. Nevertheless, the African diaspora is an important public there, and, if the 2007 FESPACO conference is anything to go by, the extent to which ‘Africans across the continent and the Diaspora [have] become aware of the need to take ownership of their image’ (FESPACO 2007) is now firmly on the agenda. Among issues debated at the ‘African Cinema and Cultural Diversity’ colloquium were questions about ‘the responsibility of African professionals across the continent and the Diaspora [...] regarding how to film Africa and Africans today’, the role of governments and international agencies engaged in ‘the fight against a standardized world’ and ‘which legal mechanisms can be put in place to regulate the liberation of waves and to foster funding for endogenous productions’ (FESPACO 2007). The 1990s and 2000s have seen a worldwide boom in film events and film festivals, including events dedicated to ‘cinemas of the margins’. As a result, competition has become more intense. Festivals such as Rotterdam or Sundance that had built their reputation as finders of new talent are not only ‘competing with each other for the attention of the industry and with a host of emerging events for talent’ (Gubbins 2008: 3), but also with an array of other festivals around the world from Toronto to Dubai, from Berlin to Marrakech. Thomas Elsaesser argues that [o]ptimizing its respective local advantages, each festival thus contributes to the global network effect, offsetting the negative consequences of competition (over the finite number of films and timing) with the positive effects of familiar format and recognition value, while giving innovative programmers the opportunity to set trends, or to come up with concepts taken over by others. From the perspective of the films (or rather, their makers) these properties of festivals constitute essential elements in the grid of expectations: films are now made for festivals. (2005: 86) The same argument has been made about Western funding bodies’ support for film-making in the developing countries. Yet, as Geoffrey Macnab points out, ‘the counter-argument is that filmmakers such as [Malaysianborn] Tsai Ming-Liang and [the Iranian] Bahman Ghobadi need an outlet since they struggle to get their films released at home because of censorship or lack of distribution’ (2007: 38). Even though many of the festivals and events mentioned above are World Cinema-oriented rather than specifically dedicated to migrant and diasporic film-makers in Europe, this rebranding of European migrant and diasporic cinema is likely to benefit these films and European cinema more generally, because it allows European cinema

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to jump on the World Cinema bandwagon and exploit the growing popular appeal of everything prefixed ‘World’, ranging from World Music to World Cuisine. The growing number of outlets for films, along with the multiplicity of festivals and awards bestowed on films from developing countries and migrant and diasporic cinemas, has certainly increased the chances of those films gaining visibility. The mid-2000s have been good years for films made by migrant and diasporic film-makers, regardless of whether they are fulfilling the expectations of film festival organizers (Elsaesser 2005), those of European ‘civilizing institutions’ and Western humanist producers (Halle 2002) or the ambitions of auteur cinema. Not only have respective films been present at all major film festivals, but they have also received a number of prestigious awards across Europe and in the rest of the world. Films written and/or directed by migrant and diasporic filmmakers along with the representation of migrants by other film-makers have also been the focus of a number of events and conferences around the world, most remarkably in Africa and the Middle East. Yet, to date, in terms of commitment to promote the diversity of voices from the many minority cultures within Europe’s borders, the Babylon initiative may prove one of the most significant. The year 2008 was designated as the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. Migrant and diasporic film-makers should have benefited from a budget of € 10 million allocated by the EU within the framework of EU programmes and other community actions to support a wide variety of projects (mainly in the fields of culture, education, youth, sport and citizenship). In December 2007, France had already set up its own initiative dedicated to ‘images of diversity’ under the aegis of a new committee, the Commission Images de la Diversité.

Conclusion The chapter has explored a number of existing schemes designed to help film-makers from minority cultures in Europe. As France’s ASR case illustrates, state funding has been crucial to migrant and diasporic film-makers. The freedom film-makers enjoy to realise their own projects in France today makes it difficult to sustain the claim made by Paul Willemen that, unlike other French film-makers, those from ‘ethnic groups are imprisoned by art funding’ (1988: 211). However, it is also evident that public funding, whether available from national sources such as France’s ASR and Fonds Sud or from European funds such as Eurimages, Arte and Euromed, is limited in terms of percentage of a film budget and the number of awards. This also holds true for the array of funding initiatives developed within the framework of several film festivals. However helpful these funds may be to the successful applicants, and despite additional resources having been made available

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recently, the fact that they are now open to more eligible film-makers and in a larger geographical area risks reducing one of the funding sources which a number of European film-makers from minority cultures have been able to access. Moreover, the long-term commitment of many of these funds to migrant and diasporic film-makers – like the very existence of festivals – is far from guaranteed. Halle argues that ‘the new production techniques compel local sites to look for transnational connection, even at the cost of bypassing Europe’ (2002: 20). While this has certainly been happening in the 1990s and early 2000s, it does not necessarily result from ‘a loss of engagement from the state’, as Halle contends in the case of Germany today. Halle cites the work of experimental film-maker Harun Farocki, describing ‘how changed conditions of production have actually benefited his highly political work and opened up new venues, especially on television’ (2002: 45). It is true that in the 1990s, a period of market expansion, more opportunities arose for the young generation of Turkish Germans, Maghrebi French and other more recent migrant groups in Germany, France and Europe as a whole. It is also the case that power relationships are changing and a number of film-makers from minority cultures have become experts at tapping into subsidies and other funding resources, and have themselves become brand names of national cinemas, which they now also claim as their own. In this respect, both co-productions and the networking initiatives encouraged at EU level by the MEDIA programme and other institutions can be used as strategies that allow a more fluid negotiation of power. However, as Halle himself acknowledges, ‘the new century has brought a period of market concentration, which may result in the collapse of a number of these projects’ (2002: 45). Given the temporary and volatile nature of many of the initiatives mentioned above, the visibility enjoyed by the works of migrant and diasporic film-makers in the mid-2000s may be short-lived. Market concentration has also brought fears that the larger players in the industry may use the new technologies and distribution channels to make audience-driven and/or formula-led products, compromising artistic vision. Many film-makers –migrant, diasporic or otherwise – continue to choose to work and remain in Europe where, as artists, they claim to have the freedom to express themselves. However controversial they may be, the terms migrant and diasporic imply a condition of double/multiple occupancy which can, like film (i.e. co-productions), be national and transnational. France’s support to new talent and auteurs does not include in its remit helping film-makers from minority ethnic backgrounds. Yet, by supporting important films made by, among others, migrant and diasporic film-makers, the French ASR is proving to be one of the most successful strategies to promote not only new talent but also the rich diversity of the works produced by ‘hyphenated’ French film-makers. Thus, in the age of globalisation and liberal multiculturalism, a long-established form of state aid has proven able to promote

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what has been called in France ‘double culture’ at a time when state support to cinema is under scrutiny. This should give food for thought to European policymakers eager to promote cultural diversity.

Notes 1. Around 10 per cent of films are successful enough at the box office to repay the loan. 2. Bouchareb founded the production company Raya with Yasmina Benguigui (director of Mémoires d’Immigrés, l’héritage maghrébin, France 1997, and herself an ASR winner in 2001 for her film Inch’Allah dimanche/Inch’Allah Sunday) to produce Baton Rouge and a documentary on Raï music. 3. The ECO Fund commissions examined more than 330 projects and contributed to the making of sixty-five feature films. Support went to both established filmmakers (Otar Iosseliani, Srdjan Karanovic, Danis Kenovic, Goran Markovic, Vitali Kanevski, Alexei Guerman, Vera Chytilova, Andras Jeles, Sharunas Bartas, Lucian Pintilie) and newcomers (Marcin Ziebinski, Jan Svankmajer, Evgueni Lounguine, Nicolae Caranfil). 4. Panh, a Cannes award winner with the first Cambodian film Les gens de la rizière/ Neak sre (Cambodia/France/Switzerland/Germany 1994), fled his native country and graduated from the Idhec Film School in Paris in 1985. Since then he has continued to make films in co-production with French organisations, notably Arte, which has distributed most of his works and co-published a book about his documentary S21, la machine de mort khmère rouge/The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (Cambodia/France 2003), screened at Cannes in 2003. 5. Iosseliani, originally from Georgia, has settled in France since the beginning of the 1990s when the economic situation in his own country no longer gave him the opportunity to make films. Exiled in France in the 1980s, Pintilie now works both in France and in Romania. 6. For a complete list of directors whose projects have been supported by Arte Cinéma between 1986, the year Arte’s predecessor La Sept was created, and 2005, see Sojcher (2006: 131–5). 7. Renamed MEDIA 2007, MEDIA is operating with a budget of € 755 million over seven years. 8. Bouchareb’s decision that his film should represent Algeria at the Academy Awards provoked an outcry in France. On the other hand, John Akomfrah and Abdelkrim Bahloul experienced their own double occupancy as a drawback when entering film festivals, because occasionally their films fell between two stools, eligible neither as entries for the UK or France nor for the African countries involved. See Akomfrah (2007) and Bahloul (2007).

Works cited Akomfrah, J. (2007) ‘The Experience of Making Diasporic Film in the UK’, Conference Presentation at The Industrial Context of Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe. Online. Available at: http://www.migrantcinema.net/podcasts/ (accessed 31 March 2008). Armes, R. (1997) ‘Review of the Third Biennale of Arab Cinemas in Paris in 1996’, Screen 38(1): 85.

94 Anne Jäckel Arte (2007) Online. Available at: http://www.artefrance.fr/ (accessed 9 February 2007). Bahloul, A. (2007) ‘Diasporic Filmmaking in France’, Conference Presentation at The Industrial Context of Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe. Online. Available at: http://www.migrantcinema.net/podcasts/ (accessed 31 March 2008). Broche, J., O. Chatterjee, I. Orssich and N. Tosics (2007) ‘State Aid for Films: A Policy in Motion?’ Competition Policy Newsletter 1: 1–8. Carver, A. (2006) ‘Arabian Lights: The Film Industry in the Middle East on the Rise’, Screen International 1575: 22. CNC (2007) ‘Rapport sur l’avance sur recettes 2002–2005’. Online. Available at: http://www.cnc.fr/ (accessed 10 February 2007). Da Silva, F. (1996) ‘Cinéma en FAS’, 19th Douarnenez Film Festival Programme, 22. Diawara, M. (1993) ‘New York and Ouagadougou: The Homes of African Cinema’, Sight & Sound 3(11): 24–6. Elsaesser, T. (2005) European Cinema Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Eurimages News (1990) Online. Available at: http://www.coe.int/t/e/cultural_cooperation/eurimages (accessed 16 April 1993). Europa Cinemas/Euromed (2000) Online. Available at: http://www.europa-cinemas. org/en/programmes/euromed/ (accessed 12 February 2002). FESPACO (2007) Online. Available at: www.fespaco.bf/fespaco2007/panelcolloque/ (accessed 5 December 2007). Frodon, J.-M. (2006a) ‘Arte est-elle devenue une chaîne de télévision?’ Cahiers du Cinéma 608: 16–17. ——. (2006b) ‘De quoi parlons-nous?’ Cahiers du Cinéma (Supplément Francophonie) 609: 4–5. Gabereau, E. (2007) ‘ “That’s a world music film for us”: The Distributor’s Perspective’, Conference Presentation at The Industrial Context of Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe. Online. Available at: http://www.migrantcinema.net/ podcasts/ (accessed 31 March 2008). Gubbins, M. (2008) ‘Dates with Dilemma’, Screen International 18 January, 3. Halle, R. (2002) ‘German Film, Aufgehoben: Ensembles of Transnational Cinema’, New German Critique 87: 7–46. Jaafar, A. (2005) ‘BFI Black World Events’, Sight & Sound 7(Supplement): 28. Jäckel, A. (2007) ‘The Inter/Nationalism of French Film Policy’, Modern & Contemporary France 15(1): 21–36. Kiejman, G. (1979) ‘Entretien’, Cinématographe March: 39. Macnab, G. (2007) ‘Film Funds: Cinema’s Tap in the Desert’, Sight & Sound 17(7): 38. Mansencal, F. (2001) Interviewed in Label France 44: 11. OIF (2007) Online. Available at: http://www.francophonie.org/actions/cinema/inicinema.cfm/OIF/FFPAS (accessed 5 December 2007). O’Shaughnessy, M. (2007) ‘The Experience of a Maghrebi-French Filmmaker: The Case of Zaïda Ghorab-Volta’, Cineaste 38(1): 52–3. Palacio, M. (1999) ‘Elogio postmoderno de las coproducciones. Los límites de la frontera: la coproducción en el cine español’, Cuadernos de la Academia 5(May): 221–35. Santaolalla, I. (2005) Los ‘Otros’: Etnicidad y ‘raza’ en el cine español contemporáneo. Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza; Madrid: Ocho y Medio. Sojcher, F. (2006) Arte et le cinéma: le désir d’autre chose. Biarritz: Séguier.

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UKFC (2007) Online. Available at: www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/information/about us/ diversity/ (accessed 20 October 2007). Wayne, M. (2002) The Politics of Contemporary Cinema: Histories, Borders, Diasporas. Bristol: Intellect. WCF Profile (2007) Online. Available at: www.berlinale.de/en/das/festival / (accessed 3 February 2007). Willemen, P. (1988) Looks and Frictions. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

4 Nostalgic Journeys in Post-Soviet Cinema: Towards a Lost Home? Birgit Beumers

Irina: To leave for Moscow. To sell the house, finish with everything here and – to Moscow ... Olga: Yes! To Moscow, soon. Anton Chekhov, The Three Sisters, 1901 The Russian playwright Anton Chekhov offers possibly the best introduction to a discussion of nostalgia and its meaning in Russian culture. His major plays The Seagull (1896), Uncle Vanya (1899), The Three Sisters (1901) and The Cherry Orchard (1904) deal with the melancholy of the characters as they face the passing of one age and the arrival of new times; they long for the past and fear the future, lapsing into inertia in the present. The longing articulated by Masha, Irina and Olga in Chekhov’s The Three Sisters is a longing for another place, Moscow, where they were born and raised; but the location Moscow encapsulates the longing to return to a happy past, to their childhood when father and mother were still alive and they led a more interesting life than their present, dull existence in provincial Russia. The sisters are nostalgic about the past, associating it with a place that exists only in their imagination. The longing for another time rather than another place explains the sisters’ lack of action in the present: they have moved, or ‘migrated’, from the capital to the provinces, and a return is impossible because of the temporal rather than the geographical distance. As the cultural historian Svetlana Boym has argued: Nostalgia (from nostos – return home, and algia – longing) is a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy. [...] nostalgia is a longing for a place, but actually it is a yearning for a different time – the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams. In a broader sense, nostalgia is rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of history and progress. The nostalgic desires to obliterate history and turn it into private or collective mythology, to 96

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revisit time like space, refusing to surrender to the irreversibility of time that plagues the human condition. (2001: xiii, xv) Such an equivalence of time and space for the nostalgic relates to the concept of the chronotope, which Mikhail Bakhtin defined as the intersection between temporal and spatial relationships, also called ‘time-space’ (1981 [1937/8]: 84). Nostalgia is an attempt to return ‘home’, where the past is transferred onto a spatial concept, thus incorporating displacement as a necessary component of nostalgia. In many European cultures the term ‘nostalgia’ is understood to refer to time, whereas the longing to return to a place, most commonly home, is expressed through different terms, for example homesickness (in German Heimweh, in French mal de pays), derived from the concept of homeland (Heimat) or country.1 In Russian, this etymology is not applicable: there is no term for homesickness other than ‘nostalgia’. However, the Russian language has two words for homeland: rodina, the motherland where one is born; and otechestvo, the fatherland, with its patriotic connotations.2 Both terms rely on familial roots (mother and father) rather than a location (home). For Russians, therefore, the home is not a location but a portable set of connections, relying on family and community as a necessary ingredient to feel ‘at home’.3 A further intricacy of Russian nostalgia lies in historical circumstance: the twentieth century saw European imperial powers, notably France and Britain, relinquish control over former colonies, leading to migration from these colonies (the periphery) to the coloniser’s mainland (the centre), as for example the migration of the ‘Windrush generation’ from the Caribbean to the United Kingdom after World War Two or the migration of the pieds noirs (as the European settlers in the Maghreb were called) to mainland France after the end of the Algerian War of Independence in 1962. The German case is an exception here: the country attracted Gastarbeiter (guest workers) after World War Two in an effort to rebuild the economy, which led to what was originally envisaged as a merely temporary form of migration outside a colonial/post-colonial framework. In the Soviet Union the opposite process occurred in the 1920s: republics in central Asia and the Caucasus became part of the Soviet empire, losing their cultural and national identity in the process of Soviet nation-building that followed in the 1930s.4 The Soviet Union encompassed different nationalities in the multi-ethnic state created under Stalin, restricting internal mobility and shutting off the USSR from other countries (the idea of ‘socialism in one country’ of the 1930s).5 Historically, the premise for journeys and migration is therefore unique for the territories of the former Soviet Union: it followed the East–West axis, along which migrants sought political freedom in the West. At the same time, a process of internal migration from the countryside to the cities took place, usually heading for Moscow, viewed as the cultural and political centre, which would offer a better infrastructure

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and opportunities for more diverse lifestyles. Thus, in the Soviet context the term ‘migrant’ normally refers to someone who migrates internally, while the terms émigré and exile denote a departure from the USSR, voluntary in the first instance and forced in the second. Emigration was possible only for specific ethnic groups (such as Volga Germans or Jews), for purposes of marriage or, in exceptional cases, for people who sought to leave the country after political repression (the writer Andrei Sinyavsky, for example, was allowed to emigrate in 1973 after having spent a term in prison for publishing works abroad in the 1960s). The terms exile, deportation and defection (during visits to the West) refer specifically to the involuntary departure that excluded the possibility of returning to the homeland.6 In the early years of Soviet nation-building, returns to the new state were possible; however, they were frequently marred by political reality: many people who had fled Russia after the October Revolution (1917) were encouraged to return by Stalin’s regime – only to be suspected of espionage, arrested, sentenced and executed.7 Such is the fate of Alexei Golovin in Régis Wargnier’s Est-Ouest/ East-West (Bulgaria/France/Russia/Spain/Ukraine 1999): Golovin returns to Soviet Russia in the 1940s and falls victim to Stalin’s campaigns against foreigners. Only after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 did Soviet citizens gain the opportunity to travel,8 and to migrate from East to West, where both temporary and permanent returns became possible. These political and historical obstacles to free movement explain to some extent the peculiar relationship of Russians to their country in the twentieth century, the longing for a land which is often idealised in recollections because of the impossibility of return. Such a return would almost certainly have proven that the idealised West could not stand the test against reality, partly because the Russia that people had left was a country that had ceased to exist and had been replaced by the Soviet Union. While nostalgia commonly involves actual and imaginary homes, Russia’s history meant that people remembered a time-space they knew no longer existed because the actual home had been destroyed physically or through political upheaval. A longing for the pre-Revolutionary past suggests, rather, opposition to the new regime and a rejection of its attempt to create a new space that is out of joint with time. Thus emigration became an irreversible exile, as confirmed by the failed returns of the 1930s. In the Soviet era migration along the East–West axis was caused less by a search for economic improvement – as is the case for South–North migration (for example, people from the Maghreb coming to France or Italians and Turks seeking work in Germany) – than by dissent with the system. However, with the fall of the Iron Curtain in the late 1980s, economic factors have increasingly played a role in motivating people – both intellectuals and workers – to emigrate. The so-called brain drain that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 caused a depletion of (underpaid) scholars and researchers in Russia and the former Soviet republics, while the eastward

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expansion of the European Union has facilitated a flow of immigrant workers from the new member states into the ‘old’, Western constituent states. Migration from post-Soviet Russia may be motivated by aspirations for a better life (materialistic motivation), by the need for a (better-paid) job abroad or by the desire for a different lifestyle: the factors previously decisive in South–North migration in Western Europe. At the same time, the separation from Russia tends to nurture a constant longing for the past in that homeland. I argue here that late Soviet (Gorbachev era, 1985–91) and post-Soviet films portray characters who idealise their homeland from the distance and who yearn to return. Often, the return to the homeland disappoints, but it confronts the protagonists with their own illusions about the past and about their roots. In this sense, nostalgia is a way of refusing to engage with a reality that surrounds the individual at present, a withdrawal into a happy and protected past. Svetlana Boym makes a useful distinction between restorative and reflective nostalgia (1994: 283–91, 2001: xii–xix, 41–55). Restorative nostalgia is utopian and dwells on rebuilding the past, while reflective nostalgia emphasises the memory of the past: ‘Restorative nostalgia puts emphasis on nostos and proposes to rebuild the lost home and patch up the memory gaps. Reflective nostalgia dwells in algia, in longing and loss, the imperfect process of remembrance’ (2001: 41). It is the restorative type of nostalgia that is prominent in post-Soviet culture. In the early 1990s, immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, nostalgia tended to assert Russia’s superiority, after the former empire had lost its colonies and its status as political superpower vis-à-vis the United States, thus promoting a utopian, fake concept of national identity; the artificial construct of ‘Soviet identity’ had vanished, while a Russian national identity had to be (re)built.9 To this end, many artists harked back to pre-Revolutionary times, as is evident in Nikita Mikhalkov’s film Sibirskii tsiriul’nik/The Barber of Siberia (Russia/France/Italy/Czech Republic 1998). At the same time, other artists turned back to the 1960s and 1970s, relishing the golden memories of the Soviet era, as evident both in the ‘(n) ostalgia’ (‘Ostalgie’) trend in the former German Democratic Republic and in the revival of Soviet musical traditions in Russia’s New Year television shows Starye pesni o glavnom/Old Songs about the Main Thing (Russia 1996–8). For the former Soviet republics with their non-Slavic languages and cultures, the process of remembering showed the Soviet era in a negative and oppressive light, while the return to the homeland – now an independent state with a newly discovered national identity – forms a particularly interesting object for analysis. Central Asian cultures as reflected in film build their own national identities through an appraisal by a foreign visitor or a returning émigré, and thus engage in a reflective nostalgia that restores traditions as a memory, usually in a remote location. For this reason, the preferred topos of post-Soviet Central Asian film is the village: the aul or the kishlak.

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Post-Soviet cinema, with its strong focus on issues of identity formation, offers a platform for projecting a new national identity. As Andrew Higson points out: To identify a national cinema [...] is to proclaim a unique identity and a stable set of meanings. The process of identification is thus invariably a hegemonising, mythologising process [...] the concept of a national cinema has almost invariably been mobilised as a strategy of cultural (and economic) resistance; a means of asserting national autonomy in the face of (usually) Hollywood’s international domination. (1989: 37) In the case of Central Asian cinema, the assertion of national autonomy was largely vis-à-vis the previously dominant Soviet culture, while Russian cinema continued with its preoccupation of defining itself in relation to its former rival of the Cold War era, the United States. Many Russian films of the Putin era follow Hollywood models and genres in the hope of reaching domestic and international audiences.10 I argue that Soviet/Russian cinema constructed a nation-building discourse, emphasising the ‘home’ that can only be rebuilt by the collective input of Russia’s citizens,11 thus dwelling on Soviet principles of collectivity to restore the former empire in which either Soviet times are nostalgically remembered or pre-Revolutionary times recaptured. By contrast, the constituent republics of the former Soviet Union that gained independence in 1991 offer a different discourse on the homeland. Through case studies from Central Asian cinema, notably Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, where film industries are strongest, I intend to show how the traditions of those cultures, which had been suppressed during the Soviet era, are restored. While many Central Asian films in the 1990s show tradition as backward, in the new millennium a critical reassessment brings out its positive features as the émigrés reflect on the loss of traditions through their own departure from the homeland (rather than through the imposition of other value systems, Soviet or Russian). I focus here on the concept of nostalgia in Russian and Central Asian discourse, regions representing empire and colony. I explore the view of migrants who have witnessed the formation/expansion of the European Union while their homelands have been struggling to recover their own identity from underneath the rubble of such a ‘union’ led by Soviet Russia.

Leaving the empire Any discussion of nostalgia in Soviet/Russian cinema must begin with Andrei Tarkovsky’s emblematic film Nostalghia/Nostalgia, made in Italy in 1983. After the completion of the Italo-Soviet co-production Tarkovsky did not return to Soviet Russia, as he was dissatisfied with the working conditions and

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the lack of opportunities to realise his film projects there. Having declared his intention not to return, he was stripped of his Soviet citizenship. In the final frames of Nostalgia the central character Gorchakov is sitting in the ruins of an Italian abbey that encompasses, as the camera pans out, the Russian countryside with his long-dead mother as a young woman, and his own aged face reflected in a small pond. The aesthetic power to visually merge time and space encapsulates Gorchakov’s and Tarkovsky’s longing for another time, which interlocks with another space: ‘A cinematic image of nostalgia is a double-exposure, or a superimposition of two images – of home and abroad, past and present, dream and everyday life’ (Boym 2001: xii–xiv). The image of a wooden house in the Russian meadow is not only in the past, but also in the distance, and it is simultaneously in the present in Italy, surrounded by ruins. This merger of time and space is achieved through such a double exposure. Gorchakov’s personal memory of Russia is transferred on to present-day Italy. Tarkovsky transposes this image of the past into the here and now, unifying the space of Italy and Russia while representing through this very same image the split of his character between Russia and Italy, past and present (Tarkovsky 1986: 213, 216). Tarkovsky created with this sequence a powerful image for nostalgia, visually combining past and present, here and there, but also commenting on nostalgia as a feeling that tears Gorchakov apart and distorts his vision, an experience visualised for the viewer through the superimposed images of Russia and Italy. Tarkovsky exposes the power of personal memory to create images of the past and of the homeland – times and spaces that no longer are – in a manner that remains unique in film history.

Figure 4.1

Merging the past and the present in Nostalgia (1983)

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Most Russian film-makers deal with nostalgia for the homeland on a narrative level, illustrating nostalgia through flashbacks or comparing Russia with other countries in order to reveal her superiority. Such comparisons with ‘abroad’ feature in many late Soviet and post-Soviet films with migrants offering an idealised perspective on Russia, despite its political, ideological and economic problems. Most migrants or émigrés yearned to return to Russia despite leading a materially better life in the West. An example of such an idealised view of Russia can be seen in the Soviet– Russian film-maker Petr Todorovsky’s Interdevochka/Intergirl (USSR/Sweden 1989), which first shows the bleakness of life in Russia, before giving it an idealised gloss when assessing it from the distance. Tania Zaitseva is a nurse by day and a hard-currency prostitute by night in Soviet Leningrad, where she meets a Swedish businessman who marries her and takes her to a comfortable life in Sweden. However, Tania is bored and isolated, barred from working as a nurse. In a different culture with a different pace of life, Tania longs to return ‘home’, enacting Boym’s contention that ‘[n]ostalgia inevitably reappears as a defence mechanism in a time of accelerated rhythms of life and historical upheavals’ (2001: xiv). Tania wants to return to Soviet Russia despite the hardship of life there, but she perishes in a car accident en route to the airport. Intergirl paints in dark colours the predicament of a young woman who tries to lead a better life in the West, showing the impossibility of social mobility both inside and outside Russia. For Russians, Todorovsky’s film suggests, material values do not equal happiness. The film asserts Russia’s superiority over foreign lands in a juxtaposition of spiritual and material values. Similar views are expressed in films showing the exploitation of vulnerable women émigrés from Eastern Europe in other European films. Examples of women exploited by capitalist society can be found in a range of foreign films portraying Russians abroad. Among them are Pawel Pawlikowski’s Last Resort (UK 2000), where pimps attempt to recruit migrants for internet porn films, and Lukas Moodysson’s Lilja 4-ever (Sweden/ Denmark 2002), where the young Lilja ends up as a prostitute who is lured to Sweden, meeting there a similar fate to that of Tania Zaitseva. In Teresa Villaverde’s Transe (Portugal 2006) a Russian woman leaves St Petersburg to earn money in Germany, where she is kidnapped, raped and sold to an Italian pimp. Amos Gitaï’s Ha’aretz Hamuvtachat/Terre promise/Promised Land (Israel/France/UK 2004) tells the story of a group of Estonian prostitutes being smuggled through Egypt into Israel, where they are auctioned off as prostitutes; Marina Spada’s Come l’ombra/As the Shadow (Italy 2006) centres on a Ukrainian girl who disappears on a visit to Milan, probably kidnapped for sexual exploitation. Even the beautiful and enigmatic Laura, played by the Russian actress Dina Korzun, in Ira Sachs’s 40 Shades of Blue (USA 2005) has no chance of happiness in her marriage to a rich, but aged and vain, American music producer; she eventually runs off into nowhere. All these

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films construct the Russian (female) migrant as unable to survive or lead a self-determined life in the West. Jez Butterworth’s Birthday Girl (UK/USA 2001) might at first sight show the Russian mail-order bride Nadia as cheating the poor banking clerk John, but she too is duped by her associates Alexei and Yuri, and ultimately is just as much a victim as John.12 The stereotype of Russian women as victims can be connected to the ‘victim complex’ as defined by the Russian sociologist Lev Gudkov (2004). For the Russian mentality, the victim complex serves to assert one’s own superiority and functions as a shield against action, removing responsibility from the individual: ‘The victim complex is a perversion of personal initiative’ (Gudkov 2004: 108). Gudkov sees the victim status as self-inflicted and typical of the Russian character, enabling the victim to defend and justify his or her passivity and refrain from action – a condition that Gudkov explains in historical terms, owing to the Soviet people being largely deprived of political or social responsibility and instead subjected to ideological indoctrination. Moreover, Russia may not have America’s wealth, but the country is felt to be morally and spiritually superior when compared with the West, where degradation, exploitation and superficial material value systems reign. In other words, Russians – unhappy with their fate at home – look abroad for evidence of their superiority by discovering that the ‘other’ is no better, but actually worse. This endeavour substitutes the lost dominance of the former superpower, and enables Russians to be proud of their weaknesses. Such an assertion of Russia’s superiority is frequent in Russian comedies of the 1990s, where it is treated with a touch of humour without undermining the substance of the claim. Yuri Mamin’s Okno v Parizh/Window on Paris (Russia/France 1993) portrays a series of phantasmagoric journeys to Paris. The inhabitants of a communal flat in St Petersburg discover that the back of an old wardrobe opens up onto the roof of a Parisian apartment block. The inhabitants soon begin to go back and forth, returning with goods that they cannot obtain at home. At the same time, the accidental visit of a Parisian artist reveals the poverty, chaos and anarchy of Russia in the 1990s. Similarly, a Russian émigré in Paris, who dreams of returning to St Petersburg, is horrified when facing it in reality. This is a fine example of ‘[r]eflective nostalgia [which] thrives in algia, the longing itself, and delays the homecoming – wistfully, ironically, desperately’ (Boym 2001: xviii). Longing for Russia is all very well, but the actual possibility of return is swiftly rejected. The same is true also for the Russians longing to visit (rather than emigrate to) the West: when faced with the ultimate choice, the schoolchildren in The Window on Paris, guided by their music teacher Nikolai, who discovered the window, choose to stay in Russia. Nikolai is the ‘bearer of spirituality and hopes of Russian culture’ (Dobrotvorskaya 1994: 85). He appeals to his pupils to return, having found in the West only the corruption of his ideals. He convinces the children to build their future in Russia, which – despite its chaos – remains a place that is preferable to the West. This idealistic outlook

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is ironically presented through fairy-tale devices: the magic power of the wardrobe expires and real borders are eventually restored. A similar ‘spiritual dominance’ of Russia is also promoted in Dmitri Astrakhan’s comedy Vse budet khorosho/Everything Will Be OK (Russia 1995), a Cinderella story about a pretty but poor Russian working-class woman, Olga. The wealthy émigré Smirnov pays a visit to his provincial hometown with his son Petia, a young mathematical genius who has already won the Nobel Prize (boasting Russia’s intellectual potential). Petia falls in love with Olga, and – in true fairy-tale style – they marry and live happily ever after in sunny California. Astrakhan shamelessly exaggerates the wealth and the intelligence of Russian émigrés, but he also asserts that a Russian man can only find real happiness at home, where Petia finds his Russian bride (even though he then takes her abroad). If journeys to the West assert Russia’s superiority parodically and ironically in the early 1990s, they later become the real testing ground for Russia’s moral superiority over the West. In Alexei Balabanov’s Brat 2/ Brother 2 (Russia 2000) Danila Bagrov travels to Chicago to free his murdered friend’s brother, Mitia, from the claws of the American mafia boss Mennis. On the way, Danila also ‘saves’ the Russian prostitute Dasha from the American exploiters before he recovers Mitia’s money from Mennis. Danila has an innate understanding of social justice: he never acts to enrich himself, but to help others, be it Dasha or Mitia. All of Danila’s actions serve to punish the exploiters and rehabilitate the exploited, asserting right over wrong, Russia over America, socialist over capitalist values.13 Danila encounters several Russian émigrés who all rip him off; whether it is the car salesman in Brooklyn or Mitia, émigrés are portrayed as corrupted by the materialist West. Films made by émigré film-makers who had to leave their native land in order to survive tend to capture characters who cannot move away from a location where they are doomed to suffer. The Iraqi-born Kurdish filmmaker Hiner Saleem, who left Iraq aged 17 to study in Italy and later settle in France, depicts in Vodka Lemon (France/Italy/Switzerland/Armenia 2003) a woman, Nina, who refuses to move even on a regional level, despite the economic hardship that forces her to sell off her possessions. Nina lives in a Yazadi Kurdish mountain village in Armenia on the Kurdish border, where people are attached to their way of life and to the land. These characters act not out of a desire to assert some national identity or superiority vis-àvis another nation; they are simply tied to their roots. The Armenian-born director Maria Saakyan left her homeland in the early 1990s, a time of depravation and civil war. She set her debut film Mayak/The Lighthouse (Russia 2006) in her homeland, where the protagonist Lena, a journalist in Moscow, goes to see her grandparents, who live in an unspecified region subjected to air raids during a civil war (probably Nagorno-Karabakh or Abkhazia). The grandparents refuse to leave their mountain village, and Lena cannot

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leave either; she encounters both physical and moral obstacles that cannot be overcome. It seems that for these two film-makers the national identity of the independent Caucasus republics is not the dominant theme. Instead, both Saleem and Saakyan dwell on cultural traditions and historical roots with the land, but they deny their characters the right to depart from their villages as they have done themselves. Russian film-makers who have moved across borders in the post-Soviet era, by contrast, largely resist the theme of migration in their films. Instead, they use their dual residence to facilitate co-production: this is the case for Andrei Konchalovsky, who emigrated to France and the United States in 1980 (through marriage) and returned to Russia in 1991, Pavel Lungin, who has worked in France and Russia since the 1990s, and Sergei Bodrov, who has shared his time between Los Angeles and Moscow since the collapse of the USSR.14

Returning to the former colonies The cinema of Central Asia is primarily concerned with the clash of tradition and civilisation, old and new, past and present, Soviet and ethnically specific. In this sense, film-makers engage in the quest for a national identity and a national cinema as separate from the former Soviet domination. The nostalgic journeys of émigrés to their homeland reflect a temporal and spatial mismatch of past and present, home and abroad. At the same time, the discoveries they make about their indigenous culture on their journeys are full of stereotypes and clichés. The émigrés are striving to construct a (fake) concept of their own national identity in the absence of and separated from the homeland. The projection of a tradition onto the homeland that makes it incompatible with the culture in which the émigrés now live serves to create a sense of community in exile. A fine cinematographic example can be found in Nurbek Egen’s Sunduk predkov/Isabelle ou La Rencontre inattendue/ The Wedding Chest (Russia/France/Germany/Kyrgyzstan 2006) in which the landscape of Issyk-kul and the rooftops of Paris are filmed in sweeping and powerful panorama shots, thus creating a visual parity between the two cultures (Rouland 2006). Likewise, the Kyrgyz wedding chest spatially fits into the small Parisian apartment, and, as a spider crawls and spins its web around the chest, it preserves the slow time-flow that it harboured in the Kyrgyz village. The Wedding Chest explores the visit to Kyrgyzstan of the émigré Aidar, who lives in Paris with his French fiancée Isabelle. Aidar delays the journey home because he fears that his engagement to a foreigner will upset his parents. He believes that his family will insist on his marriage to the local girl Sayanat, who is, however, in love with a man from outside the village. After his return to the village, Aidar changes his behaviour towards Isabelle: he invents a set of rules of behaviour that leads to absurd situations for her; she

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Figure 4.2 The Wedding Chest (2006) – Aidar (Bolot Tentimyshov) and Isabelle (Natacha Régnier)

does not speak the language and has not learned much from her future husband about the Kyrgyz culture. As Michael Rouland has argued, ‘[t]he tension [between cultures] also comes across as artificial, since most of the struggle with tradition is played out in Aidar’s mind’ (2006). In fact, Aidar is already far too removed from his culture to be able to return. In particular, his ‘manliness’ is often questioned in the film. He comes across as a foreign dandy, sporting crisp clothes and delicate eyeglasses. While all the other men in the village participate in a horse contest, Aidar abstains because he is not a ‘zhigit’ (Rouland 2006).15 He dreams of horses running across the steppe, although he himself cannot ride a horse. His voice provides a narrative backdrop: he represents the tenth generation that starts a new tribe, and therefore he must marry a Kyrgyz girl. This, however, is a legend: Aidar is entrapped in his own version of tradition, which he has internalised but has already broken by his engagement to Isabelle. In the dream sequence a legendary nomad princess is trampled to death by horses after the khan’s favourite horse has been slain. Isabelle, on the other hand, stands fearless as the horses race past her; they pose no threat to her. Legend is detached from reality. The Kyrgyz boy Aidar is no more; he is symbolically killed by a rifle shot by his angry uncle Yusup, liberating Aidar from his nightmare of betraying his people and his entrapment in tradition.

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Dislocation is possible, but condemned by the village community. Aidar behaves differently in his village, where he plays by traditions and rituals rather than making his own decisions and acting according to his own beliefs. The journey to his native village exposes the collapse of tradition beneath the surface of wedding rituals and legends, underlining the impossibility of these traditions to survive and be passed on to future generations. The journey also exposes Aidar’s perception of himself as alien to French culture – exaggerating and amplifying the differences from his native traditions. Isabelle does not change – she is open, frank and curious; she tries to please people while remaining true to herself. Isabelle continues to smoke, but in hiding; she accepts the dresses she is given, but also continues to wear her own clothes. She will bake cakes or milk the cow, but she always ends up out of place – whether the cow pulls her skirt or the father frowns upon her cookies. Aidar never explains his culture to her, and his reluctance to make the trip in the first place signals his fear of making the final step that breaks with tradition – and renouncing (symbolically) the wedding chest, containing the dowry for his Kyrgyz bride. Aidar has closed for himself the route of return by constructing a set of hostile traditions that protect his present life, but the journey makes him face up to a reality in which customs turn out to be quite flexible and accommodating. Isabelle is fascinated by the wedding ritual and the wedding chest that Aidar’s mother prepares for her daughter-in-law – and the future daughter-in-law is what Isabelle believes herself to be. Ultimately the Kyrgyz heritage follows the couple to France. Aidar may break with tradition, but he cannot separate from his roots: ‘And the wedding chest (which should be understood as “Kyrgyz traditions”) that has safely reached Paris and has taken its place in the protagonists’ apartment, will never allow Aidar to forget his roots and to dissolve himself into French culture’ (Tolomusheva 2006). The wedding chest might remain unopened in the Paris apartment, covered in a spider’s web as it contains either the (Kyrgyz) past – or the future – preserving its contents for another generation. The journey to his village is thus a journey into a past where the boy Aidar had been brought up according to the village rules. He returns to that past – a ‘disobedient’ child – and lies about his life in Paris, renouncing Isabelle as his fiancée. Meanwhile, Isabelle eases the process of breaking the bond with a tradition that would normally rule out their marriage; that it has nevertheless taken place is clear from the presence of the wedding chest in their Paris apartment. Aidar is comfortable in two worlds: ‘exile is a double conscience, a double exposure of different times and spaces’ (Boym 2001: 256–7), and the double exposure to French and Kyrgyz culture is comparable to the superimposed images of Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia. Aidar is a stranger at home and at home abroad or, to speak with the title of Nikita Mikhalkov’s film, Svoi sredi chuzhikh, chuzhoi sredi svoikh/At Home among Strangers, a Stranger at Home (USSR 1974).

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Kyrgyz culture may appear strange to Isabelle because she does not understand the language, but there is no culture shock or rejection of a way of life as can be seen in Western European films that show returns of alienated characters to their native lands with religion-driven cultures, such as the attempt of Zano and his girlfriend Naïma to find their Algerian roots in Tony Gatlif’s Exils/Exiles (France/Japan 2004), Rallia’s journey to find her mother in Mehdi Charef’s La Fille de Keltoum/The Daughter of Keltoum (France/Belgium/Tunisia 2001) or Marjane’s return to her parents in Iran in Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s cartoon film Persepolis (France/ USA 2007). These films leave the returning émigrés shocked and unable to accept their native lands. It is noteworthy that Egen is a Kyrgyz film-maker who studied in Moscow and worked with international funding. A slightly different, more critical view of the West is presented by Amanzhol Aituarov, a Kazakh director, who studied in Almaty and made his film in Kazakhstan. Stepnoi ekspress/Steppe Express (Kazakhstan 2005) is loosely based on Alexander Pushkin’s classical story ‘The Stationmaster’ (1831). The film transposes the story to the Kazakh steppe and turns the traveller from St Petersburg into a dashing Frenchman. On a train journey across Kazakhstan, Etienne’s wallet is stolen and he gets off at a stop in pursuit of the thief. When the train departs without him, Etienne is invited to stay with the stationmaster Aidar and his daughter Sauliye. Sauliye is intrigued by the Frenchman, and, although she has been raised according to Kazakh traditions, she is also attracted by fashion and life in the big city. She is ‘a girl who may be equally at home in the grassy steppe or in glitzy downtown Almaty, but who is wholly adrift in distant Europe’ (Welsford 2007). Fascinated by fashion, Sauliye follows Etienne first to Almaty and later to Paris, breaking with her father and her traditions. She returns to her village a few years later to attend her father’s funeral; she is travelling with her son, but without her husband – either they have separated or he cannot accompany his wife. Even though Sauliye’s life in France is better in material terms, it comes at a price. She no longer fits into Kazakh culture and realises, after separation from her homeland, what she has lost: the genuine love and warmth in her community, a husband who would be with her all the time and the freedom of the steppe. From Aituarov’s perspective, emigration stands for a betrayal of values, which makes the return into the ‘pure’ and unspoilt world of traditions impossible. Sauliye’s is a reflective and tragic nostalgia: she returns only temporarily, realising that a permanent return is no longer possible. Both Egen and Aituarov present migration as a separation from home that precludes the possibility of a permanent return. As in the Soviet period, there is no turning back, but for different reasons: now it is because of a different value system that is no longer compatible with the old life. However, the film-makers realise the impossibility of their nostalgia: they know that the three sisters’ yearning to return to Moscow suggests a journey back in

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Figure 4.3 Labbé)

Steppe Express (2005) – Sauliye (Aizhan Aitenova) and Etienne (François

time, and time cannot be turned back. Therefore, the journeys of Egen’s Aidar and Aituarov’s Sauliye’s are motivated by a yearning for a way of life they have voluntarily left behind, but that is also in danger of disappearing. Neither character finds fulfilment in Western values either; as Gulnara Abikeeva has argued, ‘none of the types of new heroes orienting their lives towards Western values found a happy continuation’ (2006: 146). Film production and distribution of domestic films is thriving in Uzbekistan, with a more commercialised film culture than in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The Uzbek film-maker Zulfikar Musakov’s Mal’chiki v nebe [Osmondagi bolalar]/Boys in Heaven and Boys in Heaven 2 (Uzbekistan 2002 and 2004) also deal with the issue of migration. In the first film, Lola and her family (her father is a diplomat) return to Tashkent, where four boys of her school first tease her and then fall in love with her – secretly, of course. The sequel follows Lola to London, where two of the friends visit her, only to find that she is married to an unfaithful husband. The West is once again no haven of happiness, and in material terms the diplomat’s family live well both at home and abroad; neither Uzbekistan nor the West is a better place to live. Musakov’s Rodina [Votan]/The Homeland (Uzbekistan 2006) begins with the life of an Uzbek family in America, as the grandfather decides to follow his son on a business trip – with a mission of his own: he wants to

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settle a childhood feud with the man who, he believes, destroyed his happiness. When he faces this man, ready to shoot him, he finds out that there is another side to the story; he has to rewrite the past and make peace. Nostalgia here translates into the longing to turn time back and settle the scores of the past. Musakov’s film is informed by reflective nostalgia, which ‘can be ironic and humorous’ and in which nostalgics display an awareness ‘of the gap between identity and resemblance; the home is in ruins or, on the contrary, has just been renovated and gentrified beyond recognition’ (Boym 2001: 49–50). In The Homeland, Uzbekistan is viewed from a temporal and spatial distance, while the confrontation of the same space in a different time creates an ironic situation for the grandfather, but also a gap between the imagination and reality. Central Asian film-makers such as Egen, Aituarov or Musakov tend to be honest about their émigré characters’ nostalgic feelings for the homeland, endowing attempts to return to a long-lost past and dying traditions with a degree of irony typical of a reflective nostalgia. Old traditions that have been recovered since independence turn the homeland into a place that the protagonists perceive with estrangement or alienation, and the rift between rural areas and urban centres (national or international) is too large to warrant the possibility of a permanent return to a way of life that appears now altered and backward-looking. The German film-maker Volker Schlöndorff offers a more romantic view of the traditional Central Asian lifestyle and perceives the region as harbouring spiritual values.16 Schlöndorff’s Ulzhan (Kazakhstan/Germany/ France 2007) follows the Frenchman Charles to Kazakhstan. Charles has recently lost his wife and children in an accident and is in search of a meaning for his now empty life. He clings on to a map that allegedly guides him to a treasure near Mount Khan Tengri. This legendary treasure, left by the Assyrians (Nestorians) on their flight eastward to China, harbours the ‘light’, which Charles claims to seek.17 However, the title character Ulzhan merely smiles at the story, as Khan Tengri to her is the place where the shamans went to die. Different cultures attach different meanings to places. Charles tempts fate several times by running into restricted areas (a military zone, an area of radioactive contamination). On his journey he meets a number of people, yet it is Ulzhan who understands him – linguistically and spiritually: she teaches French at a school in the middle of nowhere, and refuses to let him travel on his own, especially as he has chosen her horse for his journey. Ulzhan leaves her village to accompany Charles to the mountains, trying to lead him out of his dark life through her simple and wise demeanour, but he sends her back once they reach the mountains. Ulzhan leaves her horse to bring Charles back ‘home’ to her village. Charles’s salvation lies in Ulzhan and not in the treasure, which is a red herring. Nostalgia here is inverted: Charles seeks his reason for being

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and rebirth in the East, in a foreign land that beholds cultural treasures and spiritual values.

Conclusion Both Russian and Central Asian film-makers view their homeland with nostalgia, as a place that is morally superior to the West – the destination of their migratory trajectories. However, this nostalgia for the home is essentially different in quality for Russians and for Uzbek, Kazakh and Kyrgyz migrants. For émigrés from Central Asia, migration constitutes largely a positive experience, because they are able to integrate into Western culture. Their nostalgia is both for a different place (home) and for a different time (the past) with its national traditions that were suppressed by the Soviet regime and that are gradually being recovered after independence. The cinemas of Central Asia thus endow their protagonists with a nostalgia for a place that is turning time back in its search for roots and for a national identity. This nostalgia is, in Boym’s terms, ‘inconclusive’ – a quality associated with reflective nostalgia that ‘dwells on the ambivalence of human longing and belonging and does not shy away from the contradictions of modernity’ (2001: xviii). Russian cinema, on the other hand, emphasises how for Russian émigrés the myth of the West collapses in the encounter with reality. Their migratory trajectories are characterised by the trauma of displacement and typically culminate in catastrophe: Russian émigrés are portrayed as solitary, alienated figures and as victims of a culture that remains alien to them – either because they are unwilling to adapt or because they are marginalised by the host society. The centrality of the victim complex in these narratives reflects Russia’s deep insecurity after the loss of its empire status. Russian nostalgia is for another time-space, one that beholds the collective spirit of the Soviet era and identity. This reflects the attempt to gain a sense of a new (Russian) national identity after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus, in the post-Soviet context, nostalgia is related to nation-building, where both the homeland and the concept of nation are illusory: ‘nostalgia is about the relationship between individual biography and the biography of groups or nations, between personal and collective memory’ (Boym 2001: xvi). The desire to return to an illusionary homeland is characteristic of restorative nostalgia, which is ‘reconstructive and totalizing’ and ‘puts the emphasis on the return to that mythical place on the island of Utopia where the “greater patria” has to be rebuilt’ (Boym 1994: 284). Ultimately, this kind of restorative nostalgia prevents Russian characters from taking action: like Chekhov’s three sisters, they long for a different time and place, which cannot be regained, because it has ceased to exist. This explains why Russians form strong diasporas – communities of émigrés – who rebuild their lost homes, but abroad.

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Notes 1. For the use of the term ‘Heimat’ in relation to migrant and diasporic cinema see Berghahn (2006) and, in German cinema more generally, von Moltke (2005). 2. Rodina contains the root of rodit’sia – to be born; otechestvo is a derivative of otets – the father. 3. For the relevance of intimacy and community, especially in exile, see Boym (2001: 251). 4. The formation of the Soviet Union led to the dominance of the Russian language, the imposition of Moscow time for travel schedules across the country which stretched over nine time zones, and the political and ideological control from the centre. 5. For a representation of the multi-ethnic community see Grigori Alexandrov’s musical Tsirk/Circus (1934), which in the finale sees the protagonist’s black child integrated into the Soviet community, cradled to a lullaby sung in Hebrew, Tajik, Ukrainian and other tongues of the Soviet Union. 6. Examples are the dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who defected during a tour in Paris in 1961, the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was arrested and deported to Germany in 1974, and the theatre director Yuri Liubimov, who was stripped of his citizenship while in London in 1984. Different conditions applied for emigration through marriage to a foreigner, when the Soviet spouse normally retained his or her Soviet citizenship and passport, allowing a return, as was the case for film-maker Andrei Konchalovsky, who was married to the French citizen Viviane Gaudet from 1969 to 1980. 7. The poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941) left the Soviet Union in 1922 and returned in 1937 with her husband Sergei Efron, who had been enlisted by the Soviet secret police. Efron was shot, and Tsvetaeva killed herself under mysterious circumstances in 1941. 8. ‘Iron Curtain’ was first employed by Winston Churchill on 5 March 1946 in his Fulton speech, formally defining the beginning of the ‘Cold War’. 9. For a discussion of Russian national identity in post-Soviet cinema see Beumers (1999). 10. This idea was promoted by Nikita Mikhalkov in the late 1990s, as outlined by Beumers (1999: 50–3). For Russian blockbusters in Hollywood styles see Bekmambetov’s Nochnoi dozor/Night Watch (2004), Dnevnoi dozor/Day Watch (2006) and Wanted (2008), the latter made in Hollywood and starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy. 11. An interesting parallel can be drawn here to the terminology used by Soviet/ Russian leaders: Gorbachev referred to the ‘European House’; there was a party called ‘Nash dom – Rossiia’ (NDR/Russia, Our House), founded in 1993 and led by Viktor Chernomyrdin until 2000. 12. For a full discussion of the image of Russians in foreign films see Beumers (2008a). 13. I have argued elsewhere that Balabanov is not a nationalist, but a political leftwinger and socialist (Beumers 2008b). 14. A partial exception is Pavel Lungin’s Bednye rodstvenniki/Roots (Russia/France 2005), which deals with a young man who visits Russia in search of his grandparents. This film, however, involves neither nostalgia nor migration nor returning home. 15. A dzhgit, as the word is normally spelt, is a skilful and brave rider.

Nostalgic Journeys in Post-Soviet Cinema 113 16. Few international film-makers have made films in Central Asia. Among these are Russian-born Sergei Bodrov, who began his career at Kazakhfilm and returned for Kochevniki/The Nomad (France/Kazakhstan 2005) and Der Mongole/Mongol: The Rise to Power of Genghis Khan (Germany/Kazakhstan/Russia 2007), and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who shot Sex and Philosophy (France/Iran/Tajikistan 2005) in Tajikistan. 17. The Nestorians were also known as ‘bearers of light’.

Works cited Abikeeva, G. (2006) Natsiostroitel’stvo v Kazakhstane i drugikh stranakh tsentral’noj Azii i kak etot protsess otrazhaetsia v kinematografe. Almaty: Tsentr Tsentral’noAziatskoi kinematografii. Abikeyeva, G. (2003) The Heart of the World: Films from Central Asia. Almaty: Tengizchevroil, Kazakhfilm, SKIF, Kino Firm. Online. Available at: http://www. kinokultura.com (accessed 18 September 2007). Bakhtin, M. (1981) ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel’ [1937/38], in The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press, 84–258. Berghahn, D. (2006) ‘No Place like Home? Or Impossible Homecomings in the Films of Fatih Akın’, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 4(3): 141–57. Beumers, B. (ed.) (1999) Russia on Reels: The Russian Idea in Post-Soviet Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris. —— . (2008a) ‘Killers and Gangsters: The Heroes of Russian Blockbusters of the Putin Era’, in S. White (ed.) Media, Culture and Society in Putin’s Russia. London: Routledge, 204–25. ——. (2008b) ‘Through the Other Lens? Russians on the Global Screen’, in S. Hutchings (ed.) Screening Intercultural Dialogue. London: Palgrave, 166–83. Boym, S. (1994) Common Places. Cambridge, MA: London: Harvard University Press. —— . (2001) The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. Chekhov, A. (2002) Plays, trans. P. Carson. London: Penguin. Dobrotvorskaya, K. (1994) ‘Uvidet Parizh i vyzhit’, Seans 9: 85. Gudkov, L. (2004) ‘Kompleks “zhertvy” ’, in Negativnaia identichnost. Moscow: NLO, 83–120. Higson, A. (1989) ‘The Concept of National Cinema’, Screen 30(4): 36–45. Rouland, M. (2006) ‘Nurbek Egen: The Wedding Chest’, Kinokultura 14. Online. Available at: http://www.kinokultura.com/2006/14r-sunduk2.shtml (accessed 18 September 2007). Tarkovsky, A. (1986) Sculpting in Time. Austin: University of Texas Press. Tolomusheva, G. (2006) ‘Nurbek Egen: The Wedding Chest’, Kinokultura 14. Online. Available at: http://www.kinokultura.com/2006/14r-sunduk1.shtml (accessed 18 September 2007). Von Moltke, J. (2005) No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press. Welsford, T. (2007) ‘Amanzhol Aituarov and Satybaldy Narymbetov: Steppe Express’, Kinokultura 17. Online. Available at: http://www.kinokultura.com/2007/16rsteppeexpress.shtml (accessed 18 September 2007).

5 Transculturation in German and Spanish Migrant and Diasporic Cinema: On Constrained Spaces and Minor Intimacies in Princesses and A Little Bit of Freedom Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez

German film critic Georg Seeßlen (2000) claims that, since the 1990s, European films about migration and multiculturalism have adopted a new perspective. In Germany, he notes, directors such as Fatih Akın, Thomas Arslan, Kutluğ Ataman, Ayşe Polat and Yüksel Yavuz have developed a ‘cinema of two cultures’, emphasising the ordinariness of multiculturalism and hybrid identities. Seeßlen interprets Homi Bhabha’s notion of ‘hybridity’ as ‘cultural mixing’ and ‘living between cultures’. For Bhabha, however, hybridity is not just about the fusion of cultures. Rather it represents continuous and discontinuous processes of identification, dis-identification and re-identification, a ‘Third Space’, which questions and transforms national identity (Bhabha 1994: 38). This perspective resonates with the concept of transculturation developed by Cuban theorist Fernando Ortiz. Unlike Bhabha, Ortiz foregrounds the material conditions which produce and influence cultural contact and transformation; he concentrates on the habitation of ‘social spaces where people are coerced to labor and live’ (Coronil 1995: xv). This chapter explores Ortiz’s concept of transculturation in relation to two films, Princesas/Princesses (Spain 2005, dir. Fernando León de Aranoa) and Kleine Freiheit/A Little Bit of Freedom (Germany 2003, dir. Yüksel Yavuz). Both films focus on cross-cultural intimate encounters at the margins of the nation. Referring to Lauren Berlant’s notion of an ‘aesthetic of attachment’ and ‘minor intimacies’ (2000: 5), this chapter engages with the portrayal of desire, emotions and attachment articulated by the forging of friendship and close relationships between members of marginalised groups through Ortiz’s focus of transculturation. Discussing the limits and possibilities of transcultural encounters, it explores ‘intimate encounters’ in which desires and fears 114

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are expressed through the exchange of gestures of tenderness or gazes of affection in German and Spanish migration cinema. Transculturation can be viewed as a paradoxical process, in which proximity and distance are experienced simultaneously. Its representation in these films shows, on the one hand, that friendships can develop between members of disenfranchised groups such as prostitutes, homeless people and particularly ‘undocumented migrants’, and, on the other hand, that these friendships are impossible to maintain because of the restrictions of migration policies, which open up an unbridgeable gap between the protagonists. The experience of intimacy is here portrayed as sporadic and precarious, occurring in the marginalised but gentrified neighbourhoods of ‘global cities’ such as Madrid and Hamburg. Princesses and A Little Bit of Freedom thus portray the ambivalent character of a vernacular cosmopolitanism and the promise and failure of conviviality.1 Both films belong to a new cinema portraying the effects of migration regimes2 on people, which also includes En Garde (Germany 2004, dir. Ayşe Polat), Agua con sal/Saltwater (Spain 2005, dir. Pedro Pérez-Rosado) and Fremde Haut/Unveiled (Germany/Austria 2005, dir. Angelina Maccarone).

Transculturation Ortiz elaborated the concept of transculturation in Contrapunteo Cubano del Tabaco y el Azúcar (1940), in which he presents a historical, sociological and cultural analysis of the tobacco and sugar industries in Cuba.3 Here, Ortiz examines the reciprocal interplay between material conditions and their cultural articulation, taking into account the histories of domination in Cuba derived from colonialism, imperialism and global capitalism. Ortiz intervened in an anthropological debate of the 1940s on cultural contact by introducing the socio-historical and ethnocentric critical perspective of transculturation. This debate was marked by two poles, represented on the one hand by the British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and his notion of ‘cultural contact’ (1995: lix, see also Coronil 1995: xxxi) and on the other by the US scholar Melville J. Herskovits and his concept of ‘acculturation’ (Coronil 1995: xxx, Santí 2002: 69). Redfield, Linton and Herskovits defined acculturation as an outcome ‘when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original culture patterns of either or both groups’ (1936: 149). Despite the fact that these scholars understood acculturation as a two-way process of change, affecting all cultures in contact in the same way, the focus of subsequent research on acculturation was on the necessity to assimilate into the dominant culture.4 Malinowski interpreted acculturation to be nothing more than an instantiation of assimilation. In his introduction to Cuban Counterpoint he states: It is an ethnocentric word with a moral connotation. The immigrant has to acculturate himself; so do the natives [...] who enjoy the benefits of

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being under the sway of our great Western culture. The word acculturation implies, because of the preposition ad with which it starts, the idea of a terminus ad quem. The ‘uncultured’ is to receive the benefits of ‘our culture’; it is he who must change and become converted into ‘one of us’. (Malinowski 1995: lviii) Malinowski appropriates Ortiz’s concept of transculturation to reinforce his own argument about cultural contact. In the same introduction, however, he also uses the term transculturation to describe the fusion of cultures, underlining the mutual process of transformation that both cultures undergo through contact (1995: lix). Malinowski, therefore, grasps Ortiz’s aim of understanding transculturation as a process of cultural transmutation. For Ortiz, transculturation is an outcome of Cuban history and the confluence of different cultures, reflecting ‘the economic [...] the institutional, legal, ethical, religious, artistic, linguistic, psychological, sexual, or other aspects’ of Cuban life (1995: 98). Thus, transculturation defines the transformation of culture through the impact of different historical legacies on cultural exchange. Yet this transformation of culture is not an outcome of harmoniously living together. Rather, it emerges from a myriad historical struggles and negotiations inflected by the fact that each Cuban is ‘torn from his native moorings, faced with the problem of dis-adjustment and readjustment, of deculturation and acculturation – in a word, of transculturation’ (Ortiz 1995: 98). Transculturation then ‘expresses the different phases of the process of transition from one culture to another’, from deculturation, ‘the uprooting of previous cultures’ to neoculturation, ‘the consequent creation of new cultural phenomena’ (Ortiz 1995: 103). These new cultural phenomena emerge out of oppositional cultural movements and historical counterpoints, in which – as in the colonial encounter – ‘cognitive categories [are forged] as well as structures of sentiments’ (Coronil 2005: xiv). While Ortiz insists on transculturation as a process of cultural and societal transformation inherent in Cuban society, he acknowledges that it can be translated to other parts of the world. Its analytical potential is also pertinent to the understanding of the impact of colonial legacies on European societies. Transculturation raises the question of the colonial, imperialist and economic links between Europe and other parts of the world by focusing on the impact of these histories on everyday culture. It offers a theoretical framework for tracing interdependencies between current processes of migration and European history as well as an insight into the power dynamics between culture and politics, manifest in ‘restricted or subordinated forms of citizenship’ (Lewis 2005: 554), produced by migration policies. The question of how these power dynamics impact on everyday lives and shape cultural encounters in Europe is addressed in recent films on ‘undocumented migrants’.

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Spanish and German cinema on migration Princesses and A Little Bit of Freedom draw attention to common features of European asylum and migration policies, but their narrative and form are influenced by different national migration patterns and regimes (Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2007). Post-1945 labour migration to West Germany started with the intergovernmental ‘Guest Worker Agreement’ with Italy in 1955 and was extended to other countries until 1968.5 In Spain the first ‘foreigner law’ was instituted in 1985.6 These different historical backgrounds to the recruitment of labour migrants explain, to some extent, the different points of departure for a ‘cinema on migration’ in Germany and an ‘immigration cinema’ in Spain. While the topic of immigration had already appeared in German cinema as early as in the 1960s with documentaries on Italian immigrants such as In der Fremde/Far from Home (FRG 1968, dir. Klaus Wildenhahn) and the feature film Ruf der Wälder/Call of the Forest (Germany 1965, dir. Franz Antel), it was not until the beginning of the 1990s that this theme was addressed in Spanish cinema (Santaolalla 2005). German cinema on migration underwent different phases. In the 1970s and 1980s, migrants in Germany were represented as caught up in inflexible traditional patterns and torn between cultures (Göktürk 2002). ‘Guest workers’ were characterised as pre-modern figures with plotlines revolving around women’s oppression, sexual repression/hypersexuality, patriarchy, illiteracy and violence (Göktürk 2001a).7 In the mid-1990s, the voices of the daughters and sons of ‘guest workers’, largely from Turkish or Kurdish backgrounds, began to emerge. Film-makers such as Ayşe Polat, Yüksel Yavuz and Fatih Akın reversed the dominant fantasies of the nation’s ‘other’ by focusing on the intricacies of ethnic minority communities (Göktürk 2001a, 2002, Berghahn 2006).8 These directors engage with the ordinariness of multiculturalism by producing an introspective view of the subjective migrant and diasporic experience. By comparison, Spanish cinema did not acknowledge immigration until the beginning of the 1990s with films such as Las cartas de Alou/The Letters from Alou (1990, dir. Montxo Armendáriz), Bwana (1996, dir. Manuel Uribe), Taxi (1996, dir. Carlos Saura), Flores de otro mundo/Flowers from Another World (1999, dir. Iciar Bollaín) and Poniente/West (2002, dir. Chus Gutiérrez).9 The growing number of films about migration to Spain, almost exclusively directed by non-migrant Spanish film-makers, not only constitutes a reaction to the increasingly racist representation of migrants in the media (Molina Gavilán and Di Salvo 2001), but also reveals a new interest within the film industry in multicultural societies (Santaolalla 2005). Films such as Susanna (1997, dir. Antonio Chavarrías) and Saïd (1998, dir. Llorenç Soler) reflect this new trend. Most of these films, however, ‘reveal less about the real lives of the newcomers and more about Spain’s anxiety regarding its own “liminal location” ’ (Flesler 2004: 103) at the border of Europe.

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Princesses to some extent engages with the nation’s fantasies of the other, but it also offers a new way of understanding the immediacy of everyday encounters by situating friendships and moments of intimacy in the context of migration. This new perspective on minor intimacies in societies marked by migration regimes brings Spanish cinema closer to German cinema. As the discussion on A Little Bit of Freedom and Princesses will show, however, transculturation is given a different emphasis in each film. While Princesses focalises its narrative through the Spanish protagonist Caye, A Little Bit of Freedom foregrounds the experiences of two ‘undocumented’ refugees through the viewpoint of the young men themselves. León de Aranoa’s fourth feature film Princesses is considered by critics to be the last part of a trilogy that includes Barrio/Neighbourhood (1998) and Los Lunes al sol/Mondays in the Sun (2002) (Costa 2005, Echart 2007). The trilogy explores social conflict by focusing on the intimate encounters between members of disenfranchised groups such as truants (Barrio), unemployed shipyard workers (Los Lunes al Sol) and prostitutes (Princesses). The films concentrate on everyday problems, social circumstances and the interior worlds of the characters’ psyche; these aspects are discussed within the frameworks of ‘new realism’ (Echart 2007) or ‘timid realism’ (Feenstra 2007). Princesses portrays the relationship between two sex workers in Madrid: Zulema, an ‘undocumented migrant’ and single mother caring for her son and family in the Dominican Republic, and Caye, a single woman and Spanish citizen.10 While Caye is struggling at the margins of Spanish society for a dignified life, Zulema lives with the daily threat of deportation. These two women first meet as competitors, but become friends in the course of the film. The two characters share common worries and desires, but their social positions are marked as different by the legal distinction between citizen and ‘undocumented migrant’. A Little Bit of Freedom also centres on the friendship between marginalised characters, depicting the intimate encounter between the Kurdish teenager Baran and the young African Chernor.11 Unlike in Princesses, their friendship is not affected by any difference in legal status – they are both ‘undocumented minor refugees’ – but it is under threat from external forces, most significantly the constant threat of police arrest, detention and deportation. A Little Bit of Freedom is the second feature film of the Kurdish director Yüksel Yavuz, who came to Hamburg in 1980 to join his father. Yavuz began working in the film industry in the 1990s. His autobiographical film Mein Vater, der Gastarbeiter/My Father, the Guest Worker (Germany 1994) was a documentary about his own family, focusing not only on the life of the father who left home to work in a shipyard in Hamburg for fifteen years, but also on the story of the mother who stayed behind in the village of Karakoçan in Southeastern Turkey (Göktürk 2005). April Children/Aprilkinder (Germany 1998) was Yavuz’s first feature film, telling the story of a Kurdish family living in Hamburg.

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In A Little Bit of Freedom, Baran comes to Hamburg from a war-torn Kurdish village after the death of his parents. German asylum law provides residence rights for ‘unaccompanied minor refugees’ until the age of sixteen (see B-UMF 2008). When Baran and his friend Chernor reach this age, they both need to apply for asylum. After their asylum petitions are rejected, they become ‘illegal’ and support themselves through jobs in the submerged economy in St Pauli, a district of Hamburg. St Pauli is also the setting of Helmut Käutner’s classic film Große Freiheit Nr. 7/Great Freedom No. 7/Port Freedom (Germany 1944), alluded to in the title of Yavuz’s film.12 Yet, while the protagonist of Käutner’s film, the sailor Hannes (played by film star and singer Hans Albers), embodies the freedom associated with going to sea, Baran’s and Chernor’s freedom of movement is constrained by asylum and migration policies. Thus ‘a little bit of freedom’ refers to the protagonists’ constant attempt to catch some glimpses of freedom in their daily lives. Through the prism of intimacy both films discussed here show the emergence of everyday transculturation as ‘the destructive and constructive moments in histories’ (Coronil 1995: xv), articulated in the tension between constrained spaces and minor intimacies.

Constrained spaces and minor intimacies The representation of intimacy in popular culture is commonplace in exploring the ‘communion’ and ‘limits’ of the nation (Herzfeld 1997, Berlant 2000, Fortier 2007). Friendship and romance are employed to portray the encounter between members of different social groups within the confines of the nation state. Set within this socio-political framework, the representation of intimate encounters between migrants and citizens in films carries more than just a personal story. It reveals the mechanisms of political and social inclusion and exclusion in the nation state, disclosed by the interaction of individuals and the social dynamics surrounding them. Through the representation of close friendships and the articulation of emotions, intimate lives are depicted within the ‘rhetorics, laws, ethics, and ideologies of the hegemonic public sphere’ (Berlant 2000: 3). While portraying personal proximity, intimacy also contains structural moments that convey distance, marked by social divisions such as class, gender, sexuality and ‘race’. Personal relations are also inflected by what Ortiz names counterpoints or antagonistic social positions. For example, while Princesses relates the story of the friendship between two women, their socio-political context impacts on their relationship in a double sense. They share a commonality as sex workers, but this commonality is fractured by the fact that Caye is a citizen and Zulema is an ‘undocumented migrant’. Between these poles of sameness and difference, their intimacy expresses both closeness and distance. A Little Bit of Freedom, too, shows the (im)possibility of transcultural intimate encounters within the nation state context. Situating his

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plot at the interstices of the nation by focusing on the encounter between ‘undocumented minor refugees’, Yavuz delves into Baran’s and Chernor’s desires, fantasies and feelings, depicting, for example, subtle moments of homoeroticism (see Gutiérrez Rodríguez 2005). Both films refrain from including conventional representations of heterosexual intimacies; they frame desires and yearnings that are usually not shown in the public spheres – in addition to giving voice to socially marginalised groups. Consequently, this representation of minor intimacies ‘voiced by minoritized subjects, often expresses a wish not to have to push so hard in order to have “a life” ’ (Berlant 2000: 129). In these encounters, transculturation is a transformative force, creating a momentary culture beyond national and ethnic belonging, in the midst of the violence produced by the illegalisation of certain migrant groups within the EU. As Princesses and A Little Bit of Freedom demonstrate, friendships are forged in the contact zones of multicultural neighbourhoods,13 for example in Tetuán, la Elipa and Entrevías in Madrid (Princesses) and St Pauli in Hamburg (A Little Bit of Freedom). These neighbourhoods epitomise cosmopolitanism from below: Madrid and Hamburg are global cities, nodes of multinational capital transactions, in which an informal personal service sector is rapidly expanding in parallel with the new economy’s demand for a low-paid labour force, often made up of migrants. While these circumstances shape transculturation in Europe, it is expressed in film by means of specific local features, which I will discuss next through ‘uncompromised transculturation’ in Princesses and the ‘limits of transculturation’ in A Little Bit of Freedom.

Uncompromised transculturation and Princesses Cultural theorist Alberto Moreiras states with regard to transculturation: As a radical concept, insofar as it is oriented toward a possible restitution, preservation, or renewal of cultural origins, and not toward a mere phenomenology of culture, transculturation runs into the theoretical wall that marks its conditions of possibility as heterogeneous with respect to itself: the critical concept of transculturation, paradoxically enough, seems to originate not in the anthropological concept but rather in a different, nontransculturated realm of (unexamined) truth: the realm of ideology. (2001: 187) The concept of transculturation implies an ongoing transformation of culture, which produces difference by reproducing itself in heterogeneous conditions. Thus, the concept of transculturation cannot be fixed, as it is intended to signify a process in permanent motion. Fixing this process by giving it a definitive name is deemed to fail, as its naming represents an a

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posteriori to the process itself. Thus, in a way, it names what was, but never what is. This tension between concept and event underlines Moreiras’s view of transculturation as a radical concept. Moreiras is interested in the epistemological dimension of transculturation and warns that the concept can be taken as a given, as an authentic representation of reality. ‘Transculturation’ can become a tool of ideology when it is used to minimise the antagonisms that it describes. Conceiving the ambivalent character of transculturation, Moreiras radicalises Ortiz’s concept by showing that it is not an outcome of a cultural compromise between different social groups, but that it is rooted in the impossibility of achieving this compromise. In order to be able to translate Moreiras’s understanding of transculturation as a process in which social inequalities, thought of as lines of separation, impede a genuine encounter between social groups marked by class divisions and racism, we need to distance ourselves from a romanticised notion of conviviality. Thus, transculturation comprises an ambivalent process of cultural contact. It does not entail the successful intermingling of cultures. Rather, transcultural encounters are unlikely to reach fulfilment as long as the historical and social contexts in which they occur are structured by social and economic inequalities.14 It is in this regard that transculturation articulates an ‘aporetic impossibility’ (Moreiras 2001: 190). Hence, transculturation encompasses a paradox: it refers to the possibility of encounter, while it is based on the structural moment of dis-encounter. As such it proposes an unsolved dilemma, where a compromise is doomed to fail, an ‘uncompromised transculturation’ (Archibald 2007: 100). ‘Uncompromised transculturation’ is attentive to the power relations under which the encounters occurred. Lacking fundamental economic, social and political resources, the means for equal participation are unevenly distributed along social lines of belonging. Hence, the contribution of minoritised groups to the transformation of the dominant culture is coupled to social and political struggle. As long as social hierarchies persist, transculturation is an unaccomplished project, one which is geared towards conviviality, but which is constantly put into question by inherent social antagonisms, impeding its realisation. Accordingly, the incorporation of minority cultures into dominant representation can lead to an appropriation or eradication, if the unequal material and legal conditions of their existence remain untouched. It is this approach to transculturation, in which a complacent rhetoric of diversity replaces political commitments to social justice and equal distribution of wealth, that Moreiras warns us of when he insists on the ideological use of transculturation. Transferring this idea to the European Union, we need to raise the question of how far society can be transculturalised if the spaces of transcultural encounters are governed by asylum and immigration policies. In A Little Bit of Freedom and Princesses the protagonists share the same streets and inhabit the same apartment buildings. In comparison to A Little Bit of Freedom, however, which sets the encounter between the two youngsters in a

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square that they frequent daily, Zulema and Caye’s first meeting is marked by the competitive dynamics of their profession. After Caye sees Zulema leaving with a client who was supposed to meet her, Zulema shares half of the earnings from this client with her. This gesture of workers’ solidarity in an environment affected by crude competition is the stepping stone to their friendship. At the end of the film, Caye reciprocates by buying Zulema a plane ticket to the Dominican Republic with the money she had saved for a breast augmentation. While the film explores the social networks and solidarity between sex workers, it also shows the competition and misogynist violence that they face. The last scene of the film, in which Caye says goodbye to her friend at the airport, reflects the asymmetries and ambivalences of transcultural encounters. Caye interacts with two policemen after Zulema has gone and says to them: ‘My friend is leaving because she wants to. She is leaving, no one has thrown her out. She is leaving to be with her son.’ This scene could be interpreted, as Luis Martín-Cabrera suggests, as an attempt to recognise the position of the other and the inequalities shaping these women’s friendship (2008: 128). This recognition, however, is voiced by Caye and not by Zulema. Zulema passes the border control and disappears; the audience remains uncertain about her destiny, but also, in particular, her views on the situation. Instead the camera stays with Caye, giving her visibility and voice. Zulema leaves Spain to escape from her life as an ‘undocumented migrant’ sex worker threatened by deportation and the physical violence of her clients. León de Aranoa’s focus on the Spanish character precludes the possibility of learning from Zulema’s experience. Zulema does not comment on her decision to go. Her representation evolves along a series of clichés about Dominican women as ‘transnational mothers’, ‘sex workers’ and ‘victims’ of physical violence. However, insights are constantly provided into Caye’s mind, making her portrayal more complex. This becomes apparent in a scene where both women are sitting in a bar, and Zulema announces that she has just been to the doctor for an HIV test. This information becomes irrelevant, as it only triggers Caye’s voice-over on memory, life and death. The bar scene epitomises the overall format and narrative structure of Princesses. Editing and camera movement posit Caye as the central character. Caye is the one with existential worries; Zulema’s role is to listen and show compassion. The long close-ups on Caye’s face reveal her emotions. The emotional investment of the audience lies with the principal character. The uneven representation of social positionalities marks the uncompromised character of the transcultural encounter between Zulema and Caye. They do not meet as equals and they are not represented in the film equally. In one scene, however, the roles are reversed. When Zulema is getting ready to meet her abusive client who has promised her a visa in exchange for sex, she challenges Caye’s assumption about ‘Dominican prostitutes who are just prepared to do anything for legal documentation’. In this dispute,

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Figure 5.1 Speaking and listening – Caye (Candela Peña) and Zulema (Micaela Nevárez) in Princesses (2005)

Zulema confronts Caye, the privileged Spanish (and European) citizen, with her own lack of choice and freedom: ‘What can’t be is that I am not allowed to go out in the streets or go to see my son, because if I leave I can’t get back into this country, that can’t be.’ In response to Caye’s statement that ‘a mother without papers is better than a dead mother’, Zulema says in a determined tone: ‘You don’t need to tell me what my son needs. You don’t know about these things, you don’t have the slightest idea.’ The scene introduces a new dynamic by giving Zulema the chance to counter Caye on the level of dialogue, but the cinematographic focus remains on Caye. The viewer sees her both struggling with and supporting her friend. Later on, Caye joins her friend in the bar where Zulema is meeting the abusive client. Caye seems to know how to tackle this situation, but, as Zulema stresses, she cannot even imagine it. This scene, nonetheless, illustrates the possibility of learning from each other. However, the promise of transculturation is disrupted. The ambiguity in this encounter is expressed as uncompromised transculturation, because, although these women meet and share intimate moments, they are separated by the political and social constraints that rule their lives.

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Figure 5.2

Zulema and Caye in Princesses (2005)

Limits of transculturation: A Little Bit of Freedom A Little Bit of Freedom starts with video footage of two old Kurdish women talking about a wild boar that lost her babies. Baran watches the material on his camera. An elderly Kurdish man walks in and becomes the centre of attention. ‘You are being filmed,’ one woman tells him. This footage serves as the film’s preamble and epilogue and frames the narrative of Baran’s numerous losses and memories. He has lost his parents, who were denounced by a Kurdish neighbour after taking care of a wounded guerrilla in their house; they were imprisoned and then disappeared. Baran meets the putative traitor in Hamburg, now a jobless, destitute and frail asylum seeker, and Baran is overcome by the desire to take revenge. He stalks the man and finds a way of getting hold of a gun. In one scene, Baran confronts the traitor with the gun; fearing for his life, the older man starts to cry and apologise. The same gun is used at the end of the film when Baran tries to rescue Chernor from his police captors. The film gives an insight into the fragmentation of the Kurdish community in Hamburg; it shows ‘the complexities of minority identities’ and a space ‘for imagining new alliances’ (Göktürk 2005: 2). These alliances are forged in the contact zones of the multicultural social networks of St Pauli. Every now and again, Baran navigates with his digital camera through the streets, capturing instances of encounters with neighbours, customers, friends and passers-by. He films his friend Alma, a refugee from Sarajevo, while she is telling him about her war-torn country. With his digital camera, Baran preserves not only his friends’ memories, but also his own.15

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Figure 5.3 Baran (Cagda Bozkurt) and his camera in Hamburg’s St Pauli (A Little Bit of Freedom 2003)

Baran’s present life in Hamburg is overlaid with memories through which he keeps his attachment with his family in Kurdistan alive. Every night before going to bed he watches the footage of his grandparents in Kurdistan, sent to him by his 14-year-old sister. Her picture hangs on the wall of his room. In one of the last scenes of the film, when Baran is desperately worried about Chernor, who is held in police custody, the camera focuses on his sister’s picture. Yavuz shows the audience how Baran’s family is present despite their absence; he also reminds us of what the future can hold or what the consequences could be for the young man and his family if he takes the wrong decision. Chernor also shows Baran photographs of his family in West Africa, whom he has not seen for years. The overlap of different spaces connected to memories articulates the multilocality (Göktürk 2005) that determines the characters’ lives in A Little Bit of Freedom. Loss, however, is not just connected to migration, as the film conveys through the fate of the only German character in the film, a homeless exsailor whom the boys affectionately call ‘Käptn’ (‘Captain’). His dispossession and ‘social loss’ resonate with Baran’s and Chernor’s status as minor ‘undocumented migrants’. All three characters do not have a permanent home. They live in a transit zone, waiting for confirmation of their asylum petition, being on the run from the police or living in the memories of past adventures. The characters also create new contact zones, transgressing national and ethnic boundaries; this is conveyed in transnational friendships and bi-national romance, for example, the one between Alma and Baran’s cousin Haydar. Through the depiction of these minor intimacies the

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Figure 5.4 Baran, Chernor (Leroy Delmar) and the ‘Käptn’ (Thomas Ebermann) in A Little Bit of Freedom

film presents the immediacy of cohabitation and the multilocal fabric of St Pauli’s transnational community. As Ortiz argues, transculturation is an outcome not just of conviviality, but also of domination. In his analysis he shows how the exchange of cultures can be based on (forced) encounters. In a similar way, Yavuz shows how the forging of transnational communities is related to the impact of global capitalism on local economies and social relations. Transnational migration and the movement of refugees emerge as reaction and response.16 The juncture between the local economy and its transnational character is exemplified, for example, in the scene where Baran pedals breathlessly through the streets of Hamburg. Here we see a ‘triple exposure montage sequence [...] conveying a cross-section of the neighbourhood by superimposing shots of city traffic with places that kebabs are delivered to, ranging from a Turkish bakery to a construction site and brothel’ (Göktürk 2005). Yavuz presents a city under construction and its demand for low-paid labour to build it and to cater to its gastronomic and sexual appetites. In a conversation with the boys, the Käptn recites one of Joachim Ringelnatz’s humorous poems: ‘There were two ants who wanted to travel to Australia / At Altona at the Chausee, their legs started to hurt / so wisely they didn’t continue with the last part of the journey.’ The poem is related to Baran’s and Chernor’s experiences on the streets of Hamburg: at the end of the film, though their legs do not hurt, the police put an end to their journey. Their dream of migrating to Australia remains unfulfilled; they

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have not even ventured beyond the confines of Altona and St Pauli. After the police arrest of Chernor, Baran tries to free him, but both boys are eventually caught. The last scene captures images of Baran’s digital camera, produced when he is arrested. The images move from the sky to a group of people watching Baran’s arrest and then to the top corner of two buildings, the theatre and the police station. This scene suggests that support can only be expected from the transnational communities. This is depicted, for example, in the scene in which different friends are trying to persuade Baran not to confront the police with a gun, as they fear for their friend’s life. By representing the impact of asylum policies on the everyday life of Baran and Chernor, A Little Bit of Freedom demonstrates the limits of transculturation. While this film engages with the creative potential of transnational communities, it also shows their limits as a transformative force. The limits of transculturation remind us of the ambivalences produced in societies in which cross-cultural encounters are an ordinary feature of social life, but are restricted or denied by legislation and policing. This ambivalence is articulated in both Princesses and A Little Bit of Freedom.

Ambivalences of transculturation Princesses and A Little Bit of Freedom engage with transculturation when they depict in detail how working conditions and the constraints of asylum and citizenship law impact on the protagonists’ lives. They also show how the characters deploy creative coping strategies and find new ways of transgressing structural barriers in their everyday intimate encounters. Transculturation in these films can be read as the simultaneous possibility and impossibility of reciprocal cultural and social transformation. In this regard, I have discussed Princesses as uncompromised transculturation and A Little Bit of Freedom in terms of the limits of transculturation. Princesses portrays the aporetic character of the friendship between Caye and Zulema. This is articulated on the one hand through the legal division between citizen and ‘undocumented migrant’ and on the other through the expression of solidarity based on shared working conditions as sex workers. In this ambivalence, their friendship is forged within a framework in which transculturation can only be understood as an unfinished project. As long as the division between citizen and ‘undocumented migrant’ governs society, their respective positions signify considerable differences with regard to freedom of movement and access to the labour market, health and education. Caye can approach the policemen in the airport without fear of being deported, whereas Zulema pre-empts deportation by leaving the country. A Little Bit of Freedom depicts the limits of transculturation as Baran’s and Chernor’s friendship is constantly threatened by detention and deportation. In a similar manner to Princesses, this film depicts the ambivalences in which transcultural encounters occur. On the one hand, A Little Bit of

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Freedom draws attention to contact zones in Europe, engaging with the transformative potential of creating new spaces of conviviality with and between migrant and diasporic communities. On the other hand, it illustrates the pressures which ‘undocumented migrants’ face in their everyday lives. Transculturation under these circumstances is only lived within limits. Princesses and A Little Bit of Freedom demonstrate that, while being repressed, transculturation in the form of minor intimacies is constitutive of the social fabric of European societies.

Notes I would like to thank Shirley A. Tate and Christian Klesse for their comments on earlier drafts of this chapter. 1. I refer here to Paul Gilroy’s discussion on convivial culture in After Empire (2004). 2. ‘Migration regime’ refers to the system of rules, principles, practices, policies and political and public discourse that formally and informally regulate entry into a country and also determine the rights and duties of migrants in relation to various spheres of social life (education, health, etc.). It also regulates participation in public life, for example with regard to citizenship and social inclusion. 3. The study was first published in English in 1947 as Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar (New York: A.A. Knopf). 4. In his correspondence with Fernando Ortiz, Melville J. Herskovits criticised the interpretation of Malinowski’s use of acculturation. Herskovits underlines his view that the use of this term in his research entails exchange between cultures, and in particular non-European cultures (Santí 2002: 262). 5. Between 1955 and 1968, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) established intergovernmental contracts with Spain, Greece, Turkey, Morocco, Portugal and Tunisia. The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) held workers exchange programmes with Hungary, Poland, Cuba, Angola, Mozambique and Vietnam. 6. Immigration to Spain from other EU countries and Eastern Europe as well as from Latin America, North and sub-Saharan Africa has steadily increased since the beginning of the 1990s (ENI 2008). 7. West German films with migrant characters include Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher (1969) and Angst essen Seele auf/Ali – Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Helma Sanders’s Shirins Hochzeit/Shirin’s Wedding (1975), Tevfik Başer’s 40 qm Deutschland/ Forty Square Meters of Germany (1986) and Bernard Safarik’s Das kalte Paradies/The Cold Paradise (1986). For a detailed discussion see Seeßlen (2000), Göktürk (2000 and 2002), Burns (2006 and 2007) and Rings (2008). 8. After the fall of the Wall in 1989, Germany experienced an increase in xenophobic attitudes and anti-immigrant violence, but also saw a growth of anti-racist campaigning. The daughters and sons of migrants were instrumental in the protests against racism and became visible in the public sphere and popular culture. Since then, their contributions to cultural, media and academic discourses have continued to challenge and contest Orientalising and racist stereotyping (Gelbin et al. 2001, Göktürk 2001a, b, Projekt Migration 2005). In this context, see also Serap Berrakkarasu’s documentary Töchter zweier Welten/Daughters of Two Worlds (Germany 1990). 9. For a discussion of these films see Santaolalla (1999, 2002 and 2005), Nair (2002), Flesler (2004) and Ballesteros (2005 and 2006).

Transculturation in German and Spanish Cinema 129 10. In the first year after its release, Princesses had 1,160,000 spectators and was awarded three Goyas, the Spanish film prize, in 2005 (Sogecine 2008). 11. A Little Bit of Freedom was shown at international film festivals, including the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes (2003), and opened in German cinemas in April 2004. The low-budget production, which was a critical success, had received funds from the German Ministry of Culture, the regional film boards in Hamburg and Berlin and the television channel ZDF (Göktürk 2005). 12. See also Sternberg, pp. 272–3, note 14, in this volume. 13. Mary Louise Pratt developed the concept of ‘contact zones’ as ‘social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination – like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived across the globe today’ (1992: 4). She contends that the metropolis has ‘habitually blind[ed] itself to the ways in which the periphery determines the metropolis’ (Pratt 1992: 6). The notion of contact zones is useful to rethink diasporic spaces within the context of EU asylum and migration policies. 14. For a discussion of the representation of antagonisms in Princesses see MartínCabrera (2008). 15. For a complementary reading of A Little Bit of Freedom see Sternberg (pp. 265–6). 16. The European Union received 1.58 million from a total of 9.68 million refugees worldwide in 2007 (UNHCR 2007).

Works cited Archibald, P. (2007) ‘Urban Transculturation’, Social Text 93, 25(4): 91–113. B-UMF (Bundesfachverband Unbegleitete Minderjährige Flüchtlinge/The Federal Association for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees). Online. Available at: http://www. b-umf.de/index.php?/Themen/bumf-themen.html (accessed 30 September 2008). Ballesteros, I. (2005) ‘Embracing the Other: Feminization of Spanish “Immigration Cinema”’, Studies in Hispanic Cinema 2(1): 3–14. ——. (2006) ‘Foreign and Racial Masculinities in Contemporary Spanish Film’, Studies in Hispanic Cinema 3(3): 169–85. Berlant, L. (2000) Intimacy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Berghahn, D. (2006) ‘No Place like Home? Or Impossible Homecomings in the Films of Fatih Akın’, New Cinemas 4(3): 141–57. Bhabha, H. (1994) The Location of Culture. London, New York: Routledge. Burns, R. (2006) ‘Turkish-German Cinema: From Cultural Resistance to Transnational Cinema?’ in D. Clarke (ed.) German Cinema since Unification. London, New York: Routledge, 127–50. —— . (2007) ‘Towards a Cinema of Cultural Hybridity: Turkish-German Filmmakers and the Representation of Alterity’, Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 15(1): 3–24. Coronil, F. (1995) ‘Introduction’, in F. Ortiz. Cuban Counterpoints: Tobacco and Sugar. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, ix–lvi. —— . (2005) ‘Transcultural Anthropology in the Américas (with an Accent): The Uses of Fernando Ortiz’, in M. A. Font and A. W. Quiroz (eds) Cuban Counterpoints: The Legacy of Fernando Ortiz. Oxford: Lexington Books, 139–56. Costa, J. (2005) ‘Un cuento (triste) de hadas’, El Mundo 31 August. Echart, P. (2007) ‘Apuesta de guión de Fernando León de Aranoa’, in J. D. Sanderson (ed.) Trazos de cine español. Seminario de Cine y Literatura. Universidad de Alicante.

130 Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez Alicante: Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, 93–107. Online. Available at: http:// www.cervantesvirtual.com/servlet/SirveObras/68027274878268165532279/02699 3_0030.pdf (accessed 1 June 2008). ENI (2008). Encuesta Nacional de Inmigrantes 2007, Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas. Madrid. Feenstra, P. (2007) ‘Fernando León de Aranoa, autor de un género: cámaras intimistas sobre la marginalidad en el cine español’, in B. Pohl and J. Türschmann (eds) Miradas glocales: Cine español en el cambio de milenio. Madrid: Iberoamericana Editorial, 201–16. Flesler, D. (2004) ‘New Racism, Intercultural Romance, and the Immigration Question in Contemporary Spanish Cinema’, Studies in Hispanic Cinema 1(2): 103–18. Fortier, A. M. (2007): ‘Too Close for Comfort: Loving Thy Neighbour and the Management of Multicultural Intimacies’, Environment and Planning D: Space and Society 25(1): 104–19. Gelbin, C., K. Konuk and P. Piesche (2000) AufBrüche. Taunusstein am Main: Ulrike Helmer. Gilroy, P. (2004) After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? New York: Routledge. Göktürk, D. (2000) ‘Turkish Women on German Streets: Closure and Exposure in Transnational Cinema’, in M. Konstantarakos (ed.) Spaces in European Cinema. Exeter, Portland: Intellect, 64–76. —— . (2001a) ‘Migration und Kino: Subnationale Mitleidskultur oder transnationale Rollenspiele?’ Springerin 7(2): 42–7. —— . (2001b) ‘Turkish Delight – German Fright: Migrant Identities in Transnational Cinema’, in D. Derman, K. Ross and N. Dakovic (eds) Mediated Identities. Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 131–49. ——. (2002) ‘Beyond Paternalism: Turkish German Traffic in Cinema’, in T. Bergfelder, E. Carter and D. Göktürk. The German Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute, 248–56. —— . (2005) ‘Yüksel Yavuz’ Kleine Freiheit’, TRANSIT. Inaugural issue on ‘Migration, Culture, and the Nation State’. Online. Available at: http://german.berkeley.edu/ transit/2005/index.html (accessed 1 January 2008). Gutiérrez Rodríguez, E. (2005) ‘Anhelos diaspóricos y la Pequeña Libertad: Sexualidad, migración y precariedad’, in Grupo de Trabajo Queer (ed.) El eje del mal es heterosexual: Figuraciones, movimientos y prácticas feministas queer. Madrid: Traficantes de Sueños, 73–86. —— . (2007) ‘The “Hidden Side” of the New Economy: On Transnational Migration, Domestic Work and Unprecedented Intimacy’, Frontiers: Journal of Women Studies 28(3): 60–83. Herzfeld, M. (1997) Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation state. New York: Routledge. Lewis, G. (2005) ‘Welcome to the Margins: Diversity, Tolerance, and Politics of Exclusion’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 28(3): 536–58. Malinowski, B. (1995) ‘Introduction’, in F. Ortiz. Cuban Counterpoints: Tobacco and Sugar. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, lvii–lxiv. Martín-Cabrera, L. (2008) ‘Antagonismos postcoloniales: De la conversión cultural en La vida aquí al cosmopolitismo radical de Princesas’, in I. Rodríguez and J. Martínez (eds) Postcolonialidades históricas: (In)visibilidades hispanoamericanas/colonialismo ibéricos. Barcelona: Anthropos. Molina Gavilán, Y. and T. J. Di Salvo (2001) ‘Policing Spanish/European Borders: Xenophobia and Racism in Contemporary Spanish Cinema’, Ciberletras 5. Online.

Transculturation in German and Spanish Cinema 131 Available at: http://german.berkeley.edu/transit/2005/index.html (accessed 20 March 2008). Moreiras, A. (2001) The Exhaustion of Difference: The Politics of Latin American Cultural Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. —— . (2007) ‘Freedom from Transculturation: A Response to Priscilla Archibald’, Social Text 93, 25(4): 115–21. Nair, P. (2002) ‘In Modernity’s Wake: Transculturality, Deterritorialization and the Question of Community in Icíar Bollaín’s Flores de otro mundo’, Post Script 21(2): 38–49. Ortiz, F. (1995) Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. —— . (2002 [1940]) Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y la azúcar. E. M. Santí (ed.). Madrid: Cátedra. Polat, A. (2004) ‘En Garde ... Anmerkungen von Regisseurin Ay şe Polat’, in NordOstsee-Magazine Flensburg. Online. Available at: http://www.flensburg-szene. de/kino-flensburg-nordfriesland/en-garde-maria-kwiatkowsky.htm (accessed 1 December 2007). Pratt, M. L. (1992) Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge. Projekt Migration: Ausstellungskatalog des Projektes Migration2 (2006), Kölnischer Kunstverein, 29 September–1 January. Köln: Dumont. Redfield R., R. Linton and M. J. Herskovits (1936) ‘Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation’, American Anthropologist 38(1): 149–52. Rings, G. (2008) ‘Blurring or Shifting Boundaries? Concepts of Culture in TurkishGerman Migrant Cinema’, GFL: German as a Foreign Language Journal 1: 6–39. Santaolalla, I. (1999) ‘Close Encounters: Racial Otherness in Imanol Uribe’s Bwana’, in R. Fiddian and I. Michael (eds) Sound on Vision: Studies on Spanish Cinema. Abingdon: Carfax, 113–24. —— . (2002) ‘Ethnic and Racial Configurations in Contemporary Spanish Culture’, in J. Solomos and J. Wrench (eds) Contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice. Oxford, Providence: Berg, 55–71. —— . (2005) Los ‘Otros’: Etnicidad y ‘raza’ en el cine español contemporáreneo. Madrid: Ocho y Medio; Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias. Santí, E. M. (2002) ‘Introduction’, in Fernando Ortiz: Contrapunteo y Transculturación. Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 17–89. Seeßlen, G. (2000) ‘Das Kino der doppelten Kulturen/Le cinema du métissage/The Cinema of Inbetween: Ein Streifzug durch ein unbekanntes Kino-Terrain’, epd Film 12: 1–10. Sogecine – Sogepaq (2008) ‘Cine Noticias’. Online. Available at: http://www.sogecinesogepaq.com/ (accessed 1 June 2008). UNHCR (2007) ‘Global Trends’. Online. Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/statistics/ STATISTICS/4852366f2.pdf (accessed 15 June 2008).

6 The Dark Side of Hybridity: Contemporary Black and Asian British Cinema Sarita Malik

Critical debate largely supports the idea that, compared with other parts of Europe, Britain has produced some of the most culturally dynamic and pleasurable examples of hybridity. ‘Hybridity’ commonly refers to ‘the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonisation’ (Ashcroft et al. 2003: 118) and, in post-colonial work led by thinkers such as Homi Bhabha (1994), is foregrounded as resulting in fluid and transient forms of cultural mixing or syncretism. With regard to migrant and diasporic cinema as an example of ‘hybrid’ cultural production, it is Britain that has set an important benchmark for the rest of Europe. Black and Asian British film has been at the forefront of this: internationally recognised productions set in multicultural Britain, narrated primarily through social realist frameworks, stand out as a success story in European cinema. These films deal with the experiences of Britain’s black and Asian diasporas and are mainly made by African and African Caribbean (referred to here as ‘black’) and South Asian film-makers, many of them British-born. Our understanding of these ‘new transcultural forms’ is dependent on locating them within the broader social and political contexts within which they have been produced. In fact, historically, these films have principally developed against a background of political antagonism and cultural conflict. For example in the 1980s, a decade of political turbulence, contestation over ‘race’ and national identity surfaced as a preoccupation of evolving forms of representation. Most notably, the growth of black and Asian British independent film workshops at this time became important to debates around Third Cinema as well as diasporic identity in relation to questions of ‘race’, ethnicity and media representation. The ‘cultural’ was explicitly located in relation to the ‘social’. Concerns of hybridity overlap with those regarding ‘race’, one of the many factors through which identities are formulated and contested. In representation, ‘race’ plays a constitutive role alongside other vectors of difference and supports an understanding of how black and Asian communities, as Britain’s 132

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two largest and most ‘visible’ ethnic minorities, have been engaged and constructed. The idea of migrant and diasporic cinema, at least within the UK context,1 is therefore tied to ethnic identity. Britain has a unique relationship with its black and Asian communities because of its colonial legacy, the British Empire having been the largest in history with parts of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean as its most important colonies. The mass migration of those from New Commonwealth countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the South Asian subcontinent (India, Bangladesh and Pakistan) to Europe and North America in the years after World War Two was a key historical moment in which ‘the West’ interfaced with non-white people. In the decades that followed, ethnic and racial consciousness became a property of particular sorts of social relations, connecting issues of citizenship, value pluralism and the role of community. Meanwhile, black and Asian groups generated (self-) representational practices and a distinct theory/practice interface within multicultural contexts. As John Akomfrah (2007), one of the founders of the independent film workshop Black Audio Film Collective, has explained, black and Asian film-makers in the 1980s found themselves discussing the ‘rhetorical value’ of defining part of their identity according to these politicised frames of reference – such as ‘black British film-maker’ – in order to open up those cultural spaces that had previously been closed. In this chapter, I want to discuss black and Asian film as an important variant of diasporic cinema in contemporary Europe and outline how differences within what was once collectively categorised as ‘black British cinema’ have been mobilised. I will highlight how this cinema is defined by and dependent on changing cultural, social and commercial agendas and consider the meaning of socio-political alterations during the 2000s. The splitting up of black British cinema into ‘black British cinema’ (to refer to British African/African Caribbean cinema) and ‘British Asian cinema’ (to refer to British South Asian cinema) suggests that a distinction can be made between different kinds of British cinema(s) within a broader framework of a national cinema. On the one hand, this multiple condition appears to support post-colonial notions of hybridity (based around untenability and anti-essentialism). Moreover, the reconceptualisation illustrates precisely that cultural, ethnic and national identity positions are not fixed, but can be successfully negotiated. On the other hand, these cinemas appear to be producing their own kinds of essentialism and are therefore vulnerable to the homogenising forces which hybridity is presumed to subvert. When one considers the striking similarity of themes (cultural/religious traditionalism vs. secular liberalism in British Asian cinema or social deprivation/borderline morality in black British cinema), it is clear that these films typically fit within certain styles and genres: social comedy, inter-ethnic romance, Bollywood-style melodrama (British Asian) and social problem, gangster or ‘urban youth’ film (black British) currently appear to suit the requirements; other genres such as war, heritage, fantasy, costume and horror do not. It

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might be argued, then, that since the late 1990s a new politics of uniformity has arisen, in which the representations of the hybrid that most often come to the screen are sanitised conventions. Such approaches to the representation of racial and cultural difference invite the criticism that these films are expedient only in an industry dependent on the reproduction of certain ethnicised and culturalised paradigms. This discussion aims to go beyond an emphasis on the simple pleasures of hybridity and consider its potential contradictions, risks and drawbacks. The challenge here is that the ‘rhetorical value’ of certain attributions has shifted since the 1980s, and the post-colonial mantra ‘diaspora, ethnicity, hybridity’ has been imbued with new kinds of anxiety. From the diasporic film-maker’s point of view, the complicated trajectories of defining oneself in hybrid or diasporic terms involves important trade-offs. According to John Akomfrah: If you define yourself like me, then you’re always being asked to somehow disavow something [...] so the disavowal is always either a temptation that you are offered or one that you feel is a real choice that you have to make. Because if you continue to say I will be this mestizo filmmaker, then you are effectively confining yourself to years of not working. [...] Those are the real concrete constraining features of being defined in this way or defining yourself in this way. (2007) If ‘black Britishness’ was utilised as a political strategy for access and inclusion in the 1980s, in today’s Britain it holds a different currency. Akomfrah again: When you valorise and overcelebrate the in-between, the interstices, you have to realise that it has dark sides and the implications are not always necessarily productive ones for people who have to inhabit that space on a daily basis – and I am talking purely on a filmmaking basis. (2007) The ‘dark sides’ that Akomfrah alludes to involve recognition of the underbelly of the hybrid, transcultural, diasporic experience. Black British and British Asian cinema (compared with a ‘purer’, i.e. ‘unmarked’ notion of British cinema) take on new meanings as critiques of multiculturalism become more intense in the United Kingdom and across the rest of Europe. These changing discursive and lived contexts are the background against which black and Asian British cinemas are formed and managed in the early twenty-first century.

Ideological and industrial concerns Since the 1990s, it seems impossible to speak of black British cinema in anything but separate terms from British Asian cinema. The politics of this are

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significant when we consider that these diasporas share the legacy of postcolonial migration to Britain roughly between 1950 and 1965. In fact, British Asian film-making has its roots in the black cultural politics of the 1960s and 1970s, and its earlier productions can be categorised along with British African Caribbean film-making as a ‘cinema of duty’ (Malik 1996), preoccupied with the task of telling forgotten or buried stories, writing unwritten histories and ‘correcting’ the misrepresentations of mainstream production (Bailey 1992: 38). Scholarly work, funding streams, policy approaches, cinema programmers, journalistic publication – but apparently not audiences outside the intellectual or art cinema community – had all supported this inclusive notion of ‘black British cinema’, which was predicated on the following ideals, described here by June Givanni: The vision was expansive. It embraced notions of ‘Third Cinema,’ cinemas of resistance, cinemas that existed in spite of social and economic or political pressure. They all seemed to have a common and shared position: not only to tell stories of experiences excluded from the agendas of Hollywood/Bollywood and European cinema, but also to find ways of subverting the conventions of filmmaking to serve their own specific project in storytelling. (2004: 62) Importantly, black British cinema had as its basis the notion of ‘political Blackness’, which depended on a ‘debiologised’ understanding of what could be identified as ‘Black’. The seamlessness of affiliatory cultural politics and identification across ethnic groupings made it an unusual and distinct case in Europe. These cross-cutting ties, stemming from a history of colonialism, an ‘othered’ Britishness and shared racism, produced a complex but unified black British presence in the cinema. As Pnina Werbner reminds us, it is perfectly possible for diasporas to be ‘complex or segmented [...] because members of such diasporas may unite together in some contexts, and oppose each other in other contexts. Their members’ identities in other words, are not fixed but situationally determined’ (2004: 900). The situation in which these diasporic identities were determined was characterised by an omnipotent racialisation of thought and debate, be it in relation to imperialism, immigration, nationalism and citizenship or through the trajectories of black struggle, equal opportunity, multiculturalism, cultural diversity and, more recently, community cohesion (Malik 2002: 32). On an industrial level, and in spite of notions of ‘independence’ through which these films operated, practical factors typically involved dependency on shifting political agendas of cultural policy and arts subsidy. In the 2000s, political, social and technological changes, as well as further diversification of the media environment, have made questions of identity highly salient. These include the critical shift that has taken place against the idea of multiculturalism towards a reconstruction of assimilationist

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policies. This official turn has been exemplified in, for example, the public statements of David Goodhart (2004), who has described Britain as ‘too diverse’, and Trevor Phillips (2004), the Chair of Britain’s Commission for Equality and Human Rights, who urged Britain to move on from the old order of multicultural policy-making of the 1980s. In its place, a new drive towards the idea of an absolute citizen, based around notions of commonality, integration and cohesion, has emerged as part of a broader politics of citizenship. This is an environment in which identity choices, including those for Britain’s black and Asian film-makers, have become highly charged. Within the national context, those few spaces and funding streams that explicitly supported the development of black and Asian British independent film in the 1980s, such as the Greater London Council, the ACTT Workshop Declaration of 1981 and Channel 4 television, no longer exist or have revised their policies; their practical legacy seems ephemeral in the 2000s. In 2003, the UK Film Council presented a new diversity policy as a response to the fact that only 1.6 per cent of the film and video production workforce came from ethnic minorities, although there were 4.6 million people from minority ethnic groups in the United Kingdom (9 per cent of the population and 12 per cent of total UK cinema audiences). Research has identified a persistent trend that UK minority ethnic-led production companies (categorised in the research as those that are not white) face particular barriers in spite of the industry’s continued claims that it values cultural diversity as a distinctive national asset (Pact and UK Film Council, 2004). The outcomes of these kinds of public policy responses to persistent patterns of exclusion and discrimination are also in tension with the shifting currency of ‘race’ in the United Kingdom and the increasingly market-driven agendas of the creative industries. Following the advances that were made by the first wave of black and Asian British film-makers, the second generations have tended to look towards the big independent television companies for more tangible opportunities since the late 1990s. While the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s were heralded as a cultural renaissance for black art, there has been a clear change of mood. The emphasis is now on the question of ‘survival’, just as the notion of multiculturalism is under attack, signalling a new time of uncertainty for the development of ‘ethnic-led’ film.

Market opportunities In the meantime, following a certain process of self-scrutiny about the politics of mainstreaming during the 1990s (Korte and Sternberg 2004: 7–47), British Asian cinema appears, at least on the surface, to have untied itself from the politics of cultural marginalisation. It has led the way in the contemporary commodification of South Asian popular culture, with Bhaji on the Beach (1992), the first feature of British Asian director Gurinder Chadha, marking the beginning of this movement. By the end of the 1990s, a new

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public image of ‘Asianness’ as cool, hip, flamboyant and desirable had developed, which also tied in to a strong financial drive to cash in on the so-called brown pound.2 The exclusionary processes and cultural silences that had historically been experienced by Britain’s Asian artists were now eclipsed by flashes of hypervisibility in which Asian Britons were becoming the incumbents of a globalised, modern kind of creative culture (see Aftab 2002). British Asian feature films produced since the late 1990s, particularly East is East (1999, dir. Damien O’Donnell) and Bend It Like Beckham (2002, dir. Gurinder Chadha), facilitated a mainstreaming of a previously marginalised area of British cinema and have been credited as significant examples of national, i.e. unprefixed, British cinema. Conspicuously, these high-profile, transnational films were significant at the box office, being among the most successful British films ever, acclaimed for reaching an audience way beyond the art-house and festival circuit. 3 South Asian cinema, with its links to the Indian subcontinent, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and beyond, is positioned as independent, commercial, transnational and, most of all, not necessarily fixed to the idea of ‘being European’. The development of a ‘pan-Indian’ cinema is notable here for its use of mixed sources of funding, production teams and actors from the UK and the Indian subcontinent. Although not always successful, pan-Indian cinema is commercially oriented and clearly designed to attract multiple international audiences; examples include Monsoon Wedding (India 2001, dir. Mira Nair), The Guru (UK 2002, dir. Daisy von Scherler Mayer), Bride and Prejudice (UK 2004, dir. Gurinder Chadha) and The King of Bollywood (India 2004, dir. Piyush Jha). Another way of classifying these films would be to subsume them under Hamid Naficy’s concept of an ‘independent transnational film genre’, a genre ‘which cuts across previously defined geographical, national, cultural, cinematic and metacinematic boundaries’ (2003: 203). Together with Indian directors such as Mira Nair, Deepa Mehta and Shekhar Kapur, British Asian directors such as Gurinder Chadha and Asif Kapadia, the director of the BAFTA-winning The Warrior (UK 2001) and later The Return (USA 2006) and Far North (UK 2007), are clearly positioned as film-makers with a transnational profile. Interestingly, this effect of globalisation appears to showcase the Asian diaspora just as anti-racist, internationalist politics are on the decline. We might relate this dynamic to Naficy’s observations about the politics of power within programming and curating, in which he suggests that the ranking of films in the film industry and at festivals is influenced by the relevant country’s position in world politics (discussed in Givanni 2004: 71). Films that are connected to the fast growing (economic) world power, India, are perceived as having high ‘cultural worth’, which translates into success, funding, reception and critical discourse; this is not the case for productions with relationships to Africa or the Caribbean, which are in (economically) weaker world positions. To think internationally, Bollywood, global

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Figure 6.1 For the global market – William Darcy (Martin Henderson) and Lalita Bakshi (Ashwarya Rai) in Bride and Prejudice (2004)

cinema supreme, has become an important point of reference for Europe,4 and the United Kingdom has the largest audience for Indian cinema outside India. As its impact strengthens, Bollywood is also increasingly institutionally recognised by the British film industry.5 In 2008, the United Kingdom (represented by UK Trade and Investment) and the Indian government successfully completed negotiations to enable a UK–India film co-production agreement to come into force. These developments within South Asian cinema – UK home-grown and imported – are factors of a phenomenal success story with regard to how the South Asian diaspora has come to occupy a prominent position within British cinema both in terms of production and also among audiences. Such developments, however, seem to go against the grain of what is actually a highly contested multicultural environment. As Clare Alexander points out in her discussion of South Asian popular culture, these can serve as ‘a cultural diversion from the pursuit of social justice and equality’ (2008: 4). The point here is that the relative achievements of British Asian cinema, significant as they are, do not come without their own limitations or dangers. For example, they may, rather paradoxically, serve to negate the basis of claims for cultural support of migrant and diasporic cinema. New strategic appeals for visibility and access by minority film-makers now have to be measured against the few British Asian ‘successes’ that have triumphed against the odds. This is problematic for at least two reasons: first, because it is implied that these breakthroughs are indicative of a meritocratic industry (the idea that films will succeed if they are ‘good’), and, perhaps more fundamentally, that the societal aims of social equality initiatives have been achieved in a new ‘post-racial’ era; and second, because, in spite of the few successes that we can speak of, many of those who laid the foundations still go unnamed

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or have proceeded to less film-based careers: Yugesh Walia, Ruhul Amin, Ahmed A. Jamal, Isaac Julien and Julian Henriques are just a few. High-profile successes can also actively obscure the real inequities that persist in an industry which, according to black British film programmer Gaylene Gould, is ‘fragmented, financially driven, and inherently racist’ (quoted in Givanni 2004: 74). British Asians are seen to have transcended the politics of normative social and cultural policy frameworks and to have ‘made it’ without being held back by patterns of social inequality within the industry or wider society. Persisting inequities, however, are more obviously marked when looking at how black British cinema, now the less visible part of Britain’s diasporic cinema, has developed since the late 1990s. Critically acclaimed, but commercially average, British films which might be regarded as ‘black’ because of their subject matter, perspective or creative personnel involved – such as Bullet Boy (2004, dir. Saul Dibb), A Way of Life (2004, dir. Amma Asante) and Kidulthood (2006, dir. Menhaj Huda) – have simply not achieved the same level of economic success, public attention or crossover appeal. Unlike British Asian cinema, these ‘modest’ black British films have not acquired a ‘transnational cinema’ status in terms of distribution or reception. Nor have they, following an earlier argument by Andrew Higson (1989), become recognisable exponents of national cinema by being acknowledged as distinctly ‘British’ on international film circuits. Certainly, British Asian cinema, represented by a small number of successful films, has become internationally and nationally established. Inequities within black and Asian British cinema open up the question not just of what kind of diasporic cinema gets produced and ‘succeeds’ in the United Kingdom today, but also of what is considered to meet the requirements of today’s world market, including the need for directors to be international entrepreneurs and their films to appeal to large, multiple and global audiences.

Recent black and Asian British films So far, I have addressed issues of commercial success, viability and market opportunities as privileging British Asian cinema. I would now like to assess the current situation by referencing some recent productions to consider the kinds of films that constitute British Asian and black British cinema and how they relate to subject matter, positioning, realist aesthetics/authenticity and the idea of social purpose. The last decade (1998–2008) has seen a number of black and Asian feature films whose themes and settings are typically related to the respective communities. Only a handful of black- and Asian-produced work has overridden this tendency by situating its thematic concerns and settings away from local community contexts.6 For example, A Way of Life is directed by a black British woman (Asante), but features no black characters; it focuses on a

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white teenage mother’s struggle to bring up her daughter in South Wales and her complicity in violent racism directed at a Turkish migrant. Asif Kapadia’s magic realist style, first launched with The Warrior, is re-established in the Arctic-based love story Far North. The black British artist Steve McQueen won the 2008 Camera d’Or in Cannes for his first feature film Hunger (2008), which depicts the final weeks of an Irish republican hunger striker. These films stand out as important exceptions from the kind of work that most black British and British Asian artists have produced since the late 1990s. Among the ‘community-based’ feature films are the gangster-themed production Rollin’ with the Nines (2006, dir. Julian Gilbey), Bullet Boy, a gang violence film modelled on Ken Loach’s 1969 film Kes, and the hip-hop music feature film Life & Lyrics (2006, dir. Richard Laxton). British Asian features include Anita and Me (2002, dir. Metin Husseyin), written by Meera Syal and based on her novel of the same title, the musical melodrama Bollywood Queen (2002, dir. Jeremy Wooding) and Love + Hate (2006, dir. Dominic Savage), a social realist drama based on a Pakistani Muslim girl’s relationship with a white boy from a racist family. Since 2000, there have also been a number of short films or self-funded features with extremely limited distribution; examples include Emotional Backgammon (2003, dir. Leon Herbert), Chicken Tikka Masala (2005, dir. Harmage Singh Kalirai) and Cherps (2005, dir. Kolton Lee). Like the earlier black British films Welcome II the Terrordome (1995, dir. Ngozi Onwurah) and Dancehall Queen (1997, dir. Rick Elgood and Don Letts), they fall into the ‘guerilla’ category of film-making, being privately funded and often distributed through personal and local networks and outlets. Among these seemingly diverse films, interesting trends have emerged, posing, for example, challenges relating to the question of authorship. A number of films defy the notion that ‘exilic/diaspora’ cinema (see Naficy 2001) primarily emanates from the film-maker’s experience of displacement and, to use the DuBoisian concept, ‘double consciousness’, because, while they are often preoccupied with issues of racialised belonging and identity, they are not produced by African, African Caribbean or Asian migrant and diasporic film-makers.7 The critical responses and cultural positioning of these various white and black-authored/directed films, however, point to the tenacity of authenticity-related and ‘burden of representation’ debates which have traditionally dominated certain kinds of work that are charged with representing the totality of the Asian or black experience (see Mercer 1990). In this sense, these films are racialised; an aspect which I am suggesting contains the way they are ideologically and industrially positioned. ‘Racialisation’ is a representational (as well as political and ideological) process in which the individual, group or cultural product becomes defined as ‘other’.8 Within an industrial context, this process involves categorising a production as ‘specialised’, cultural’, ‘minority’, ‘ethnic’, ‘culturally diverse’ or ‘urban’. For funders, distributors, programmers and audiences, these are critical terms that impact on how the films are typically regarded. This

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process of racialisation is important, therefore, not just when we are speaking about textual representation (for example, subject matter and screen story), but also when thinking about authorship and industrial matters.9 A further observation is that a number of recent films engage with ethnic ‘mixedness’. ‘Mixed-race’ Britons, according to census figures of 2001, are the fastest growing and youngest ethnic group in the United Kingdom, and films update questions of ‘race’ and racial difference to reflect this demographic development in British society and present overall a more layered approach to portraying ethnic diversity. Kidulthood, for example – like The Girl with Brains in Her Feet (1997, dir. Roberto Bangura), Respect (1998, dir. Oz Hutchins), Rage (2000, dir. Newton Aduaka) and Southwest Nine (2001, dir. Richard Parry) – identifies a new group of white, black and mixed-heritage teenagers. Issues of class rather than ‘race’ are also foregrounded, connecting these productions with other European cinemas. A clear comparison can be drawn, for example, between Kidulthood, Rage and La Haine (France 1995, dir. Mathieu Kassovitz), which is perhaps the best example of the French ‘cinéma de banlieue’ (Tarr 2005: 2). These films deal with social problems of adolescents and young adults and are set in working-class and multi-ethnic urban areas. This survey also highlights the preponderance of British cinema’s defining aesthetic of social realism for migrant and diasporic film-making. The social realist aesthetic can be problematic, particularly when the basis for the ‘realism’ is the same as that which is criticised in mainstream contexts for being dependent on ‘negative stereotypes’. In turn, an unresolved tension is produced between the making of these films and the preferred narrative associations and identities that are licensed. As Ken Williams, screenwriter of Life & Lyrics, asks: Is the use of the term ‘authentic’ when referring to black stories ‘a means of trapping black British film within the confines of social realism [...] are we being told, surreptitiously, that every film about black communities has to be socially realist when not every film involving white communities does?’ (Williams 2006). Although this predicament affects black and Asian British films, it seems especially the case for black British cinema. In British Asian films, dream-like, non-realist sequences are occasionally included in an otherwise realist text, particularly when alluding to Bollywood-style fantasy (Chadha’s Bhaji on the Beach is perhaps the best example here). What we can identify most of all among these films is a clear inclination to clone already proven successful formats, an obvious tactic when considering the broader commercial and globalised agendas with which today’s film-makers are faced.

Subject matter and (self-)positioning The dominant patterns of narration and thematic focus can loosely be identified as the culture clash comedy–drama (British Asian, often with reference

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to Bollywood) and the delinquency/urban youth movie (black, often with reference to commercial African American cinema). The ‘culture clash’ film, for example, is typically depicted from the perspective of a second-generation British Asian.10 It offers a satirical take on South Asian family life and its sexual politics, arguing the case for transgressive identities (interracial, inter-ethnic, homosexual) and assimilation into liberal, Western norms through a critique of ‘the older generation’s profligate consumption, false ethics, superstitious religiosity, blind prejudices and obsession with honour and status’ (Werbner 2004: 901). Some of the most high-profile diasporic films, including Bend it Like Beckham and East is East, and other more low-key films such as Love + Hate and Chicken Tikka Masala have shared these thematic preoccupations with family conflict and in-betweenness. Therefore, even in spite of the resistance some of them present to common tropes of female passivity and heteronormative masculinity, the films meet ‘culturalist’ representative expectations of what constitutes ‘Asianness’. Similarly, productions such as Rollin’ with the Nines and Bullet Boy, even though they address multiple issues and are intently moralistic texts, are primarily pitched and sold as ‘black films’ based on teen delinquency and gang culture, recurrent themes in how black masculinity in particular has been constructed in mainstream representation. There is a threat here that these kinds of cinemas may be perceived to have reverted to the tradition of the internal problematic in which minority ethnic communities are constructed as homogeneous and fixed, rather than revealing moments of challenge or functioning as antidotes to essentialist notions of ethnic identity. I am suggesting that the films under investigation here can be described as examples of ‘ethnicism’, a concept which Avtar Brah says [d]efines the experiences of racialized groups mainly in ‘culturalist’ terms: that is, it posits ‘ethnic difference’ as the primary modality around which social life is constituted and experienced. [...] This means that a group identified as culturally different is assumed to be internally homogeneous. [...] ethnicist discourses seek to impose stereotypic notions of common cultural need upon heterogeneous groups with diverse social aspirations and interests. (1992: 129) The multiple ideological and industrial layers of film culture and practice mean that even these ‘ethnicist discourses’ are not always produced in straightforward, intentional ways, but result from the cumulative effect of how these films are jointly positioned by a range of cultural stakeholders including creative personnel, marketeers, distributors, financiers and, indeed, audiences. The shifting ‘rhetorical value’ of ‘race’, itself a social construct, means that processes of commodification, incorporation and identification are all involved in how these ‘ethnicist discourses’ are mobilised and subsequently become institutionalised. This complicates the way we understand and

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receive diasporic films and is suggestive of a ‘dark side’ of hybridity. There is a further challenge presented here to the dominant assumption that, because some of these films have been critically and/or commercially successful and/ or are black- or Asian-produced, they have inevitably transgressed limiting racialised representations of the diasporas that they choose to foreground. As Naficy reminds us, all genres, including the one he defines as the ‘independent transnational film genre’, are ‘ideological constructs masquerading as neutral categories’ (2003: 203). I simply want to remark that, in spite of notions of ‘independence’ and ‘hybrid fluidity’, on which these films depend, they are, each in its own way, also contested and ambivalent texts, implicated in a struggle to produce alternative representations of the diaspora. East is East typifies some of the struggles that I am describing, because its racial politics suggests the possibilities of collusion with the ideologies of the mainstream (see Diawara 1996). The complexity of East is East resides, as with earlier British Asian films such as My Beautiful Laundrette (1985, dir. Stephen Frears), chiefly with the dialectical process at work between the British Asian (and specifically, here, British–Pakistani) community and those diasporic ‘intellectuals’ behind the making of these mainstream-targeted productions. By approaching its working-class characters and situation with a sense of moral realism, East is East tells an intensely principled tale about freedom over oppression.11 The establishing shot is of a street parade, but the visual anomaly – Anglo-Asian children participating in the Christian procession with their white neighbours – throws the issue of racial difference and Otherness into the heart of the narrative from the outset.

Figure 6.2 East is East (1999) – The Khan children, as British as their Salford neighbours

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East is East is overtly predicated on the narrative formula of a classic ‘between two cultures’ discourse. The struggle to acquire ‘Britishness’ in this trajectory is typically attributed to the supposed irreconcilable differences between an antiquated tradition of religious or cultural fundamentalism and a modern, enfranchised, secular lifestyle. In general, the British-born children do not see themselves as Pakistani – they call others ‘Pakis’, and refer to their migrant father as ‘Genghis’; they identify the mosque as an alien space, see Urdu as someone else’s language, and eat pork and drink alcohol with a passion. This prelude to more overt rebellion is largely drawn as comic, and is just one of the ways in which East is East hinges itself on the slippery line between laughing at and laughing with British Pakistanis (mock Pakistani accents, pidgin English, jokes about repatriation are all cued as points of laughter). The ambivalence becomes most intense in the darker moments of the film, when tyranny and oppression are specifically and explicitly located within the context of Islam and patriarchy (represented by George Khan, the Muslim father figure, arranged marriages, Arabic lessons and circumcision), whereas freedom and tolerance are seen to lie with George’s longsuffering English wife, Ella, and the ‘Western’ way of life. At the time of its theatrical release, this was awkward for many British Asians, who, while they may have found the film funny on one level, found it offensively stereotypical on another, especially when their non-Asian (or non-Pakistani) neighbours were also watching.12 The primary concern here is that the film is underpinned by a liberal assimilationist politics (a plea for tolerance from the older Pakistani community) and moral objection to the fabled horror of minority cultural and religious (specifically Islamic) lifestyles. This is the requisite trope which clinches the ‘culturalist’ expectation of a modern British Asian film. In terms of the film’s success, the fact that East is East offended some Asians was certainly less important than the fact that it appealed to a great number of non-Asians. By the time of the film’s release, mainstream audiences had already indicated that they were fans of the selfreferential British Asian comedic style presented in Asian-fronted comedy sketch shows such as the BBC’s Goodness Gracious Me (1998–2000). Because of overriding commercial agendas, the specificity of the racialised context was also, when considered expedient, downplayed; for example, East is East’s universality was emphasised in its promotion.13 As producer Leslee Udwin put it: ‘I always felt that this film had universal appeal. It’s about parents learning that they have to allow children to fly. That is the heartbeat and motor of the film’ (cited in Stringer 1999).14 Meanwhile, against a broader socio-political backdrop of the United Kingdom’s preoccupation with ‘gang culture’, ‘hoodies’ and gun and knife violence in the 2000s, we have seen a proliferation of low-budget ‘urban youth films’. Many of these have been directed by diasporic film-makers, feature black casts and have been classified as domestic black British films (they have majority UK funding). The growth of what is now popularly termed

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‘urban cinema’ – which both seeks to challenge and yet often depends on popular mythologies of ‘blackness’ – is another example of how this aspect of diasporic cinema is licensed in various ‘ethnicised’ contexts. ‘Urban’ suggests ‘cool and modern’, and this perception functions as a major point of entry for how ‘blackness’ is delineated in popular culture. At stake here is the persistence of racialisation (black British films returning through the back door of ‘race’), which brings with it the authenticity debate. As black popular culture has become increasingly visible within the context of wider shifts towards cultural populism, mass consumerism and cultural diversity, certain modalities of blackness have been sanctioned as a particular kind of spectacle. The recent spate of urban cinema supports and shapes the idea of black popular culture as both commodity and practice. The industrial logic that supports this movement is based around how urban culture is more widely sold in the marketplace (in particular, the way African American youth are aligned with expanding consumer markets and in relation to the UK hip hop and grime scene and developments in street slang). These films, in the first instance, appear to offer the promise of being commercially viable and finding a market. In spite of ‘the pitch’, the persistence of systemic and structural problems within the UK film industry, particularly when it has to deal with minority-led or minority-based work, means that only a limited few have achieved respectable distribution, exhibition or mainstream critical attention (such as national press features and reviews). What becomes a by-product of these black British films is that, within a UK context, they are imbued with a double significance because they can also be framed as cultural products with a social purpose. For those that attract institutional support, they demonstrate how social equality projects – visà-vis oscillating notions of multiculturalism, cultural diversity, social cohesion and so on – are ‘performed’ and managed in the national public sphere. For example, Kidulthood, like its contemporaries Southwest Nine, Rollin’ with the Nines and Rage, is themed around youth culture, urban politics and ‘real’ social problems for the third generation, many of them black Britons. Set in West London and based around a day in the life of its main protagonists, Trevor (‘Trife’), Jay and Moony, Kidulthood claimed to offer a hard-hitting story of Britain’s urban youth in general. But it also materialised at a time when the UK news agenda was filled with so-called black-on-black street crime and related crackdown measures enforced by the police, and when the media at large was being criticised for reaffirming stereotypes of black male criminality (see Gilroy 2003). The film’s distributor, Revolver, was supported by the UK Film Council to produce extra prints of this independent low-budget drama and target a youth market. Similarly, Bullet Boy, another feature which was released just a year before Kidulthood, tells the story of two brothers growing up in a socially deprived East London neighbourhood, and is themed around street violence leading to tragic consequences. Bullet Boy’s writer, Catherine Johnson, was Jamaican Writer in

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Residence at Holloway Women’s Prison. Institutionally backed by the UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund and the BBC, the production has been cited as a ‘practical demonstration of the RSA’s [Regional Screen Initiative] ability to build local trust’ (Holden 2006: 20–1). By foregrounding topical news issues, location shooting in the capital and being promoted as educational texts with clear moral messages, Kidulthood and Bullet Boy are important examples of the role contemporary black British films play with regard to serving the so-called social inclusion15 policy agenda within the UK film industry (see Hill 2004). The emphasis in both films is on ‘authenticity’ and on encouraging identification with the cultural specificity of contemporary British street life. Kidulthood’s strapline is: ‘Welcome to real life, welcome to the 21st century, Welcome to Kidulthood.’ Several key techniques are utilised to secure the impression of authenticity within a broader social realist framework. One is music, not just because it is central to popular youth culture and coming-ofage films,16 but also because the specific tracks tie in culturally with ideas of urban culture and reaffirm the film’s ‘street credibility’. Grime artists were invited to advise on the soundtrack, because, as director Menhaj Huda claims, where artists such as The Streets, Roots Manuva, Dizzeee Rascal and Shystie ‘are coming from lyrically and soundwise is the same place this film is coming from culturally’ (2006). Dialogue in the film and specifically the broad use

Figure 6.3

‘Keeping it real’ – the cast of Kidulthood (2006)

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of patois also indicate how vernacular codes are important textual devices for drawing in and positioning the viewer as ‘street-savvy’. The use of several nonprofessional actors is also important, as is Huda’s emphasis in interviews on his own experience as a teenager growing up in this part of West London. Another device used to create a sense of authenticity is location. The setting, London’s W11, allows the film to serve as a useful antidote to other British films made in the area, most obviously Richard Curtis’s Notting Hill (1999, dir. Roger Michell), which was criticised for being highly ‘inauthentic’ on account of its non-inclusion of black and other ethnic minority people. The mutations of this London space – from a socially disadvantaged ‘black area’ where race riots occurred in the late 1950s to the home of new Toryism and a coveted postcode for rich Londoners – positions Notting Hill as a politically complex and contradictory space in which obvious wealth lives besides social deprivation. The struggle to rework or rebrand this part of London might be regarded as an attempt, made explicit in interviews with the directors and writers, to recode official ‘race relations’ narratives and (under)representations of the diaspora in this space. By highlighting the negative or arguably more ‘authentic’ narratives of life in the millennial city (teen suicide, drugs, underage pregnancy, knife crime), Kidulthood continues a tradition of earlier black British films that challenge how the nation is typically imagined and represented in more commercially successful (non-black) British cinema (see Hill 1992: 16–17).

The critical distinction between black and Asian British cinema I have been arguing that we are in the thick of important political and industrial shifts, which we have been experiencing since the early 2000s. Significantly, many recent black and Asian films that have secured institutional support have been channelled through two defining policy discourses and agendas, social inclusion and commercial internationalism, which are mutually hoped to meet the social and economic (or ideological and industrial) needs of the UK film sector. These extra-textual matters are important in how we begin to evaluate what a black or Asian British film needs to ‘do’ in order to be considered successful. It is clear that theoretical concerns around black British cinema (as opposed to British Asian cinema) are now hinged on questions of survival and hints of a bleak future (Alexander 2002, Jones 2006). The two questions posed in a BFI worksheet (2006) entitled ‘The Future of Black Cinema’ (which excluded Asian from its definition) are: 1. Is the concept of black cinema out of date in a multicultural world? 2. Can black cinema survive in the twenty-first century? These questions, designed to assist those teaching black cinema, are framed within the prevailing discursive model when discussing racially defined

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cultural spaces. That is, they characterise the twofold ideological and industrial concerns of whether respective films a) ‘fit’ into the (contested) idea of multicultural Britain and b) make financial sense. Significantly, the critical framework around these films and their audiences, once such an important part of the ecology of ‘black British cinema’, has largely been eroded. This is indicative of a broader theoretical shift away from black art embracing critical theory to what Angela McRobbie, in an analysis of changes in black art in the 1990s, describes as ‘marked anti-intellectualism’ (1998: 57). But it is also part of a globalised cultural climate that holds intellectual and antipopular notions such as ‘oppositional film-making’, a central tenet of Third Cinema (as a direct alternative to First and Second Cinema), in low esteem. On the whole, there is less opportunity to be preoccupied with aesthetics than with accessibility, and less focus on community/societies than on audiences/networks; energies are directed towards avoiding the trappings of being perceived solely as a ‘minority’ (read inaccessible/unsuccessful/ unprofitable) film-maker.17 We are left, then, with those aspects of diasporic cinema in contemporary Europe that are hemmed in by new kinds of ‘culturalist’ expectations based around authenticity, social purpose and (commercial) success and still largely dominated by the representative politics that is expected of them. British Asian cinema, primarily through commercially oriented strategies using conventional narrative forms and structures with ‘crossover appeal’, has appeared to open up new possibilities for this particular diasporic cinema, but in so doing has also accommodated new expectations of what British Asian cinema now has to represent. Even if the basis of the political divide between ‘black’ and ‘Asian’ has been driven by their contrasting relationships with global audiences and the box office (it might be argued that British Asian cinema has attracted critical attention and been accepted as national cinema precisely because it has been financially successful), significant political and pedagogical openings are, in turn, presented. For example, the distinction between ‘black’ and ‘Asian’ might yet be used as the opportunity to encourage a more nuanced analysis of the precise aesthetic directions of different aspects of black and Asian British cinema. It could open up a discursive opportunity to explore what makes each migratory and diasporic cultural formation unique, how this is articulated in cinematic terms and how each community is (self-) positioned. Moreover, the reconceptualisation could even help us to understand better the character of marginalisation and access, omissions and commissions that each community, in quite different ways, experiences within today’s British cinema culture.

Notes 1. The emphasis on ethnicity and ‘race’ cannot be presumed to characterise all migrant and diasporic cinema in contemporary Europe. In the case of German

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2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

Turkish cinema, for example, the axis of difference is primarily defined around national and religious aspects. Bhaji on the Beach was more critically than commercially successful. It recovered its production costs through video sales. Both films also had success in other parts of Europe and the USA. East is East was produced on an estimated budget of £1,900,000 and grossed £7,251,243 at the box office. Bend it Like Beckham was produced on a budget of £3,500,159 and grossed £11,551,538 (Source: AC Nielson/EDI/Screen Finance/BFI). Many cinemas in Europe screen Bollywood movies; two television channels, RTL 2 (Germany) and Rai Uno (Italy), regularly air Indian films, and Indien-Magazin is a German magazine focusing on Bollywood. At the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, it was the Swedish Film Institute that held a Bollywood night. Bollywood films grossed £12.4 million in the UK in 2005, up from £8.1 million in 2003. In 2006, almost 16 per cent of all films released in the UK were Indian films, compared with 13 per cent that were British films. In 2003, Devdas (India 2002, dir. Sanjay Leela Bhansali) was nominated for a BAFTA award. In 2006, BAFTA organised a high-profile ‘Bafta Goes Bollywood’ showcase in London. In 2007, the International Indian Film Academy Awards were held in Yorkshire in the North of England. A similar trend can be observed in Turkish German cinema. Menan Yappo’s thriller Lautlos/Soundless (2003), Bülent Akinci’s Der Lebensversicherer/Running on Empty (2006) and Thomas Arslan’s Ferien/Vacation (2007) do not engage with diasporic subjectivities or themes. East is East, Love + Hate and Bullet Boy were directed by white British film-makers; Bollywood Queen and Love + Hate are white-authored and white-directed. See Barot and Bird (2001) for an analysis of the origins of the term ‘racialisation’. Distributor Eve Gabereau (2007) describes migrant and diasporic cinema as a niche cinema and how films such as Fatih Akın’s Head-On (Germany/Turkey 2004) and Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (Germany/Turkey 2005) are categorised, marketed and packaged accordingly for different European audiences. See also Berghahn in this volume. For a discussion of hybrid identity formation in East is East see also Berghahn, pp. 248–9. Mainstream reviews of East is East were mostly positive. Criticisms from within Asian communities could be found, for example, on the BBC’s Network Asia Message Board (November 1999) and on the letters page of the Asian newspaper Eastern Eye (12 November 1999). East is East’s ‘Asianness’ was underplayed in UK marketing campaigns; for the French market, the film’s title was translated as Fish and Chips. In spite of its eventual success, East is East had at first struggled to get industrial backing, a common issue for many black and Asian films in Britain. For example, Yasmin (2005, dir. Kenny Glenaan), which explores issues of religious difference and alienation in the context of post-9/11 society, could not find a UK distributor. Yasmin was theatrically released in several countries including France, Germany, Brazil and Switzerland; in the UK it was broadcast as a television drama on Channel 4 and occasionally shown at festivals. Social inclusion is an objective of existing ‘social engineering’ strategies (as laid out, for example, in the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport) and

150 Sarita Malik was part of a broader New Labour political agenda. It is criticised for failing to directly address issues of race and power. 16. For a discussion of migrant and diasporic youth films and genre, see Berghahn in this volume. 17. Black film criticism itself has become more focused on the commercial impact of diasporic films; see, for example, Wambu and Arnold (1999).

Works cited Aftab, K. (2002) ‘Brown: The New Black! Bollywood in Britain’, Critical Quarterly 44(3): 88–98. Akomfrah, J. (2007) ‘The Experience of Making Diasporic Film in the UK’, Conference Presentation at The Industrial Context of Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe, 13 January. Online. Available at: http://www. migrantcinema.net/podcasts/ (accessed 28 March 2008). Alexander, C. (2008) ‘The Problem of South Asian Popular Culture: A View from the UK’, South Asian Popular Culture 6(1): 1–12. Alexander, K. (2002) ‘Black British Cinema in the 90s: Going Going Gone’, in R. Murphy (ed.) British Cinema of the 1990s. London: British Film Institute, 109–14. Ashcroft, B., G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin (2003) Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge. Bailey, C. (1992) ‘What the Story Is: An Interview with Srinivas Krishna’, Cineaction 28: 38–47. Barot, R. and J. Bird (2001) ‘Racialization: The Genealogy and Critique of a Concept’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 24(4): 601–18. Bhabha, H. K. (1994) The Location of Culture. London, New York: Routledge. Brah, A. (1992) ‘Difference, Diversity and Differentiation’, in J. Donald and J. Rattansi (eds) ‘Race’, Culture and Difference. London: Sage/The Open University. Diawara, M. (1996) ‘Black British Cinema: Spectatorship and Identity Formation in Territories’, in H. A. Baker, Jr, M. Diawara and R. H. Lindeborg (eds) Black British Cultural Studies. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press, 293–306. Gabereau, E. (2007) ‘ “That’s a world music film for us”: The Distributor’s Perspective’, Conference Presentation at The Industrial Context of Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe, 13 January. Online. Available at: http://www. migrantcinema.net/podcasts/ (accessed 28 March 2008). Gilroy, Paul (2003) ‘A New Crime, But the Same Old Culprits’, The Guardian, 8 January. Givanni, J. (2004) ‘A Curators Conundrum: Programming “Black Film” in 1980s– 1990s Britain’, The Moving Image 4(1): 60–75. Goodhart, D. (2004) ‘Discomfort of Strangers’, The Guardian, 24 February. Higson, A. (1989) ‘The Concept of National Cinema’, Screen 30(4): 36–46. Hill, J. (1992) ‘The Issue of National Cinema and British Film Production’ in D. Petrie (ed.) New Questions of British Cinema. London: BFI Working Papers, 10–21. —— . (2004) ‘UK Film Policy, Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion’, Cultural Trends 13(2) 50: 29–39. Holden, J. (2006) The Big Picture: The Regional Screen Agencies Building Community: Identity and Enterprise. London: DEMOS. Huda, M. (2006) Interview, 1 June. Online. Available at: http://www.britishhiphop. co.uk/features/interviews/menhaj_huda_director_kidulthood_.html (accessed 13 March 2010).

Contemporary Black and Asian British Cinema 151 Jones, P. (2006) Teaching Black Cinema. London: British Film Institute. Korte, B. and C. Sternberg (2004) Bidding for the Mainstream? Black and Asian Film since the 1990s. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi. McRobbie, A. (1998) ‘But is it Art?’ Marxism Today, November/December: 56. Malik, S. (1996) ‘Beyond “The Cinema of Duty”? The Pleasures of Hybridity: Black British Film of the 1980s and 1990s’, in A. Higson (ed.) Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema. London: Cassell, 202–15. —— . (2002) ‘Money, Macpherson and Mindset: The Competing Cultural and Commercial Demands on Black and Asian British Films in the 1990s’, Journal of Popular British Cinema 5: 90–103. Mercer, K. (1990) ‘Black Art and the Burden of Representation’, Third Text 10 (Spring): 61–78. Naficy, H. (2001) An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking, Princeton: Princeton University Press. —— . (2003) ‘Phobic Spaces and Liminal Panics: Independent Transnational Film Genre’, in E. Shohat and R. Stam (eds) Multiculturalism, Postcoloniality, and Transnational Media. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 203–26. Pact and UK Film Council (2004) ‘Researching the Independent Production Sector: A Focus on Minority-Ethnic Led Companies’. Online. Available at: http://www. employment-studies.co.uk/pdflibrary/pactukfc.pdf (accessed 31 October 2008). Phillips, T. (2004) ‘Multiculturalism’s Legacy Is “Have Nice Day” Racism’, The Guardian, 28 May. Stringer, R. (1999) ‘Very Productive a Baby and an Acclaimed New Film’, The Evening Standard, 2 November. Tarr, C. (2005) Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Wambu, O. and K. Arnold (1999) A Fuller Picture: The Commercial Impact of Six British Films with Black Themes in the 1990s. London: Black Film Bulletin and British Film Institute. Werbner, P. (2004) ‘Theorising Complex Diasporas: Purity and Hybridity in the South Asian Public Sphere in Britain’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30(5): 895–911. Williams, K. (2006) ‘Keeping It Unreal’, The Guardian, 29 September.

7 Body Matters: Immigrants in Recent Spanish, Italian and Greek Cinemas Isabel Santaolalla

The increased visibility of migrant groups and individuals is currently perhaps the most striking feature common to Spanish, Italian and Greek cinemas. This development arose in the early 1990s and has since led to a sizeable body of so-called immigrant films in each country. Shared agendas in these films, as well as in journalistic and academic debates, legitimate the kind of wide-angle focus adopted here, particularly at a time when transnational dynamics demand more than ever a discussion of cinema – and, perhaps especially, European cinema – liberated from the straitjacket of national boundaries. Admittedly, stories, characters and situations in films dealing with immigration and diaspora in the three chosen countries are varied, as are the backgrounds and traditions with which they engage. And yet, even though a detailed analysis of form and content may show that there are as many ways of imagining immigrant and diasporic ‘others’ as there are of representing indigenous subjects, a number of resemblances demand attention. Notably, films dealing with these issues in all three countries seem to have followed similar pathways in narrative design and development that could be summarised as follows: an initial preference in the respective industries for concentrating on ‘social problem’ narratives and stories of victimisation, mostly identified with metropolitan locations, and often empathising with the plight of the immigrant; a subsequent move towards a more varied range of narrative and aesthetic choices, depicting immigrants no longer exclusively or primarily as victims, contextualising them in a wider range of private and public spaces; and, eventually, the emergence of selfrepresentations by migrant or diasporic film-makers aiming to normalise, celebrate and/or de-ghettoise minority ethnic stories. Given that large-scale immigration in the twentieth century only began in Spain, Italy and Greece around the mid-1980s, this last phase of film production is still in its infancy in these countries. Southern Europe lags 152

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behind, for example, Germany, the United Kingdom and France, where relatively well-established migrant and diasporic communities have become increasingly media-articulate over the last few decades. Conversely, migrant communities in Spain, Italy and Greece still have very limited or no access to and control over the channels of representation, with the result that, despite isolated cases, the projection of images about the migrant experience is still almost exclusively the preserve of non-migrant film-makers.1 Sandra Ponzanesi’s view that in Italy ‘films are intentionally made for a white Italian audience intrigued by the “other” but not yet well equipped for its understanding’ (2005b: 270) could equally serve as a largely valid description of Spanish and Greek cinemas. Comparable historical and geopolitical factors in these countries may explain the similar pace at which migrations and diasporas are finding expression on the big screen, as well as the parallels in storylines, character types and other aspects of representation. Especially noteworthy among these is the highly symbolic corporeality of the immigrant. Arguably, this emphasis on the body is explicable by two factors. Firstly, many films focus on the hardships of the newly arrived, often undocumented, immigrant struggling for survival in an intimidating host country, seeking to satisfy basic physical needs while often enduring racist or xenophobic violence. Secondly, the immigrant is frequently seen as ethnically – even ‘racially’ – marked, thus following a long Western tradition in which the term ‘race’ is applied to non-white people/skin/bodies. As Richard Dyer notes, ‘[a]s long as white people are not racially seen and named, they/we function as a human norm. Other people are raced, we are just people’ (1997: 1). As a result, the immigrant is often over-defined through the body.2 Through analysis of certain aspects of the representation of immigration, this chapter will attempt to assess whether, beyond merely superficial links, the cultural and ideological discourses from which those images emerge and within which they circulate are in any way akin to one another, and whether the needs and desires to which they may be responding or giving rise share common ground.

History counts Although current numbers of immigrants in Spain, Italy and Greece are not significantly different from those in other European countries, the newness and suddenness of the flow of incoming migration has taken these countries somewhat by surprise, rapidly changing their demographic make-up and forcing questions of individual and communal identity to the forefront of political, legal and sociocultural discussion.3 Moreover, until recently, all three countries had been the source rather than the destination of migrants. This significant difference in the migratory history sets Spain, Italy and Greece apart from other European countries.

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Additionally, all three have a history of interior migration (e.g. the stream of Southern Italians from the Mezzogiorno to the industrial North in the post-World War Two period, or of workers from Andalucía, Murcia and Extremadura to Cataluña in the 1960s and 1970s). The extent to which attitudes to immigration flows are conditioned by past experiences of interior and outgoing migration varies from country to country, as does their level of significance (or lack thereof) within the narrative of the nation. In all three countries part of that narrative centres on the memory of former days of glory, of their hegemonic role in Western civilisation – Greece and Italy in classical times, Spain during the early modern period – and the impact on the collective imaginary of the subsequent loss of geopolitical and/or cultural supremacy. Besides, Spain shared with Italy (but not with Greece) a revival of colonial ambition in Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which explains the fascination with the ‘Dark Continent’ that found expression in ‘Africanist’ trends in contemporary literature and painting, photography and film in both countries (Morales Lezcano 1990: 30, Ponzanesi 2005a: 165, Wood 2005: 13). Another important layer in the structure of national identity in these three countries is their varied and shifting position vis-à-vis Europe. Whereas Italy was a founder member of the European Community in 1952, Greece and Spain remained marginal to it for over three decades. Reconfigurations of national identity in contemporary Spain and Greece are conceivably marked by this long period of exclusion and the relatively recent accession to ‘firstclass’ European citizenship. Moreover, the common history of dictatorship in Greece and Spain has played an important role in shaping concepts of national identity. All three countries seem to be anxious to some extent over their Western European credentials, as if their very geographical location, in between the North–South or West–East divides, threatened their Europeanness. In Spain, the threat comes from Africa, and, as María Rosa de Madariaga points out, Spanish hostility towards the ‘Moor’ derives from past history (North African/Arab presence in Spain during the convivencia and reconquista) and cultural and geographic proximity: The Spaniard recognises himself [sic] too well in the other – the Moor – and this angers and disturbs him, leading him, in an effort to differentiate and affirm himself, to react violently against him. He must demonstrate to the other Europeans that the Spaniard is superior, that Africa does not begin at the Pyrenees. (Madariaga 1988: 585, my translation) Parallel sentiments are, according to Ponzanesi, traceable in Italy, where attempts by Italian fascist propaganda to present colonised peoples as different and subordinate ‘others’ were marked by a need to create a distinct national identity through opposition to black people, precisely because

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‘Italy’s close proximity to the black continent was not only motivated geographically and culturally, but according to many scholars, also genetically’ (2005a: 172). Unresolved questions of geopolitical identity are also present in Greece, where the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, later accession to the EU and the dismantling of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Balkans account for the fact that modern Greece is ‘marked by uncertainty as to whether [it] belongs to the “west” or to the “east” ’ (Lazaridis and Koumandraki 2001: 298–9). These complexities of identity in Spain, Italy and Greece are refined by further determinants. Firstly, Southern Europeans have commonly been perceived by Northern Europeans and others as somatically similar (swarthy, hirsute, of compact build). In fact, outsiders sometimes not only lump together Southern Europeans as a homogeneous group, but also include them along with Latin Americans in the category of ‘Latins’. Secondly, these three countries have historically had their own ‘indigenous others’. In Italy, as Mary Wood notes, ‘the role of the awkward “Other” was fulfilled by the Mezzogiorno and its inhabitants’ (2005: 142), in Spain by the Gypsy (Santaolalla 2002) and in Greece partly by long-existing minorities (e.g. Turks, Pomaks and Roma) and, perhaps more significantly, by the culturally and linguistically distinct ethnic Greek ‘returnees’ from Albania or the former Soviet Union.

The cinematic gaze and the ‘other’ There is often confusion about and overlap between the concepts of ‘race’ and ethnicity. The traditional definition of ‘race’ is that of a ‘group presenting certain similarities in somatic (biological or physical) characteristics which set them off from any other group’ (Comas 1958: 18), skin colour being one identifying attribute. However, this concept has been reexamined and contested, as deterministic nineteenth-century definitions have been refuted by genetics, and replaced by the concept of ‘ethnicity’, defined by cultural and socio-historical factors. Nevertheless, while scientifically obsolete, the term ‘race’ (now demanding inverted commas) is still in use as a means of referring to those circumstances in which individuals or groups are perceived as ‘other’ because of somatic difference – which is why Stuart Hall has referred to ‘race’ as ‘a discursive, not a biological, category’ (1993: 298).4 Writing on film has also moved beyond treating ‘race’ and ethnicity as mere elements of plot and characterisation, and now considers them as critical categories (similar to the treatment of ‘gender’ in feminist criticism). Robert Stam and Louise Spence (1983), for instance, advocate a methodology that identifies textual practices and intertextual contexts that turn ethnic difference into an ‘otherness’ that can be exploited within certain structures of power.

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Clearly, the scanning of the ‘racial’ body has a long history, as does the slippage between the exotic and the erotic.5 Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks offers a compelling account of the psychopathology underlying racial relations (1986 [1952]: 141–209). Inheritors of an enduring tradition, mainstream contemporary Western cultures have tended to scrutinise as well as simplify and fetishise their ‘racial others’. Edward Said’s groundbreaking study on Orientalism (1995 [1978]), further developed by Homi Bhabha (1983) and others, examines how the colonised is constructed by the coloniser as an ‘other’ who is alien, yet also visible and known.6 Tzvetan Todorov (1999 [1982]: 3), Julia Kristeva (1991: 1) and Gayatri Spivak (1992: 177) also address this question, and, drawing attention to the indivisibility of the ‘other’ and the ‘self’ within, call for committed engagement with the ‘other’ without. Even more recently, endorsing but also taking issue with Roger Silverstone’s Media and Morality (2008 [2007]), Daniel Dayan argues that, if presumptions cannot be made about the ‘self’, neither should they be made about the ‘other’ (2007: 120). It has often been argued that the various ‘racialised’ images to be found in mainstream European visual culture serve a common purpose, namely to allow the hegemonic observer to gain a sense of power by gazing at a fetishised and therefore controllable image of difference. The argument is apt to some extent, yet also somewhat reductionist, since it conflates many disparate individuals and/or communities, ignoring the fact that the process of fetishisation is ‘as anxious as it is assertive’ and that the knowledge produced by it is characterised by ambiguity (Bhabha 1983: 19). In common with other visual art forms, cinema constructs the body through images that are never innocent of ideology. Representation and spectatorship are moulded by power relations: looking is active, being looked at passive. Early identifications of the former as male and the latter as female have been questioned, originally through recourse to Lacan’s distinction between the ‘look’ (desiring) and the ‘gaze’ (objectifying), and subsequently in feminist and queer commentary.7 Being looked at – or, as Laura Mulvey (1975) put it, the attribute of ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ – has usually been identified as negative because, read as objectification, it indicates submission and lack of agency. But ‘being looked at’ may have a positive value. Other people’s looks may deny us power (because we have to relinquish or share control over what is being looked at), but, equally, they acknowledge our existence. The qualification is relevant here because it creates a potentially ambivalent situation for marginalised groups, whose struggle often includes appeals for enhanced social and cultural visibility, but who have little control over the way their images are constructed or looked at. Thus, the issue of visual dominance is key to this analysis of the cinematic representation of the foreign and ‘racialised’ body in Spain, Italy and Greece. Furthermore, the recurrent stories dealing with the predicament of immigrant characters may be usefully read in the light of reflections by Lilie

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Chouliaraki on media images of ‘distant suffering’ in developed Western countries (2006), as well as through Jane Arthurs’s later gloss. Arthurs speaks of the ‘politics of compassion’ emerging from an engagement of the ‘cosmopolitan spectator’ with mediated suffering that produces a ‘sense of an ethical connection with the other that could lead to humanitarian action’ (2007: unpaginated).8 It is, however, possible to argue that, having learnt ever since Freud not to separate pleasure from pain, we cannot discount the possibility that the spectator’s empathy with the ordeals of the immigrant may be complicated by sadomasochistic pleasure in contemplation of the character’s suffering. Corporeality, arguably, matters more than interiority when migrant characters are marked as ‘racially’ other. Unsurprisingly, in stories focusing on the arrival and early stages of life in the host country, the immigrant’s body often becomes the site of victimisation.9 Thus, while taking heed of the warnings of Santiago Fouz-Hernández and Alfredo Martínez-Expósito on the dangers of overinterpretation of the foreign body – that is, the insistence on reading the foreign body ‘in search of a rationale for its being’ (2007: 164) – it is nevertheless instructive to consider the representation of the physicality of ‘racially’ and ethnically marked migrant characters in Spain, Italy and Greece. Such a task invites more general speculation on reception, the target audience and codes of interpretation. Immigrant-oriented films in all three countries share common denominators, but local considerations must also be taken into account. It is in this sense important to bear in mind that the same meaning can be carried by different signifiers, so that the emotional or ideological function performed in Spain by an African may well be fulfilled, for example, in Greece by an Albanian.

Let’s go Latin In the context of Spanish cinema and the representation of migrant groups, Latin Americans – especially from the Caribbean – have borne the brunt of bodily visibility and sexual overload. Of particular interest is the figure of the black and mulatta Caribbean woman because, beyond her almost worldwide association with sensuality, she acquires distinctive significance in Spain: ‘It’s commonly maintained in America that Spain’s best export to the continent was the creation of the mulatta, and some say that the attraction felt by the Spaniards for these women is no more than a feeling of guilt arising from the damage caused by slavery during those centuries’ (Sulé 1999: 7). Thus, if the body of the mulatta is readable as a colonial metaphor, it is surely possible to interpret her repeated exposure on Spanish screens as to some extent a re-enactment of an imperial relationship. Despite their variety, Spanish films featuring Caribbean women share certain patterns, most commonly their portrayal as reassuringly (because familiar) exotic, sexually desirable characters. At one end of the spectrum,

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the Caribbean woman is reductively characterised as eye candy in unassuming comedies such as Adiós con el corazón/Good-bye from the Heart (Spain 2000, dir. José Luis García Sánchez) or Pata negra (Spain/Cuba 2001, dir. Luis Oliveros).10 At the other end, however, she occupies centre stage in socially engaged narratives about the hardships of migrant life in contemporary Spain. Films such as Iciar Bollaín’s Flores de otro mundo/Flowers from Another World (Spain 1999), Fernando León de Aranoa’s Princesas/Princesses (Spain 2005) and Pedro Pérez-Rosado’s Agua con sal/Salt Water (Spain/Puerto Rico 2005) critically address and challenge discourses surrounding the racialisation of the Caribbean body. Flowers from Another World follows the story of three women – Marirrosi from Bilbao, Patricia from the Dominican Republic, and Milady from Cuba – who have arrived in a remote and depopulated village following an invitation by the local men to visit and consider proposals of marriage.11 Though the stunning physique of Milady is ogled by the male villagers, the film abstains from aligning itself with that look, avoiding aesthetic choices that would have emphasised her body at the expense of her subjectivity. Nevertheless, in the course of the narrative, Milady’s body is marked by her experiences – in the most literal sense, when she is beaten by her partner Carmelo. There is no better visual expression of Milady’s progressive alienation in Spain than the stark contrast between her first and last appearances on the screen: from a dazzlingly self-assured, towering presence at the village’s central square as she descends from a four-by-four, to an apprehensive, cowering body, furtively driven away from the village by a local youth in a battered old car.

Figure 7.1 Flowers from Another World (1999) – The reverse ‘colonisation’ of Spain by the Cuban Milady (Marilyn Torres)

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Princesses follows Caye, a white Spanish prostitute, as she grows progressively closer to Zulema, an undocumented Dominican woman, also a sex worker, in Madrid.12 Though viewed from the perspective of Caye, Zulema’s story probably generates more sympathy from the audience than Caye’s (Zulema works as a prostitute to provide for a son left behind in the Dominican Republic whereas Caye’s motivation is – she claims – to save money for a breast enlargement). The profession of the women demands that they advertise their sexual availability. Zulema’s caramel-coloured, tall, slender and curvaceous body, together with her long black hair, her bright tight-fitting clothes and her swaying sexy walk, singles her out from the local prostitutes, yet her body is not gratuitously available for the spectator’s titillation and, in fact, the only moment of nudity occurs when Caye’s buttocks are exposed. Notably, however, it is Zulema’s body, even more than Caye’s, that bears the marks of her oppression: it is not only objectified and ‘used’ by clients, but also condemned to abuse by beatings and infection with AIDS. As it is her only weapon, Zulema in the end uses her body as an instrument for revenge by choosing to have unprotected sex – a conscious act of aggression – with the man who has repeatedly humiliated and assaulted her. Like their female counterparts, Caribbean men, above all Cubans, are typically portrayed in Spain as sexually potent and eager. Cosas que dejé en La Habana/Things I Left in Havana (Spain 1997, dir. Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón) directly addresses the hierarchical undercurrents driving the transatlantic traffic of ‘desirable’ bodies from Cuba to Spain by telling the parallel stories of the undocumented Cuban Igor and three sisters newly arrived from Havana, all of whom contemplate pairing off with a Spaniard as a strategy for survival in a hostile environment. Although Igor benefits from Spanish women’s fascination with Cuban men, he eventually foregoes financial security for love and sex with the young Cuban Nena, a choice that indirectly leads to a beating and repatriation. The film expresses the frustration caused by common stereotyped perceptions of Cubans through Igor’s comment to the newly arrived Bárbaro: ‘I’m bored with my role as a Cuban, cheerful even though dying, always dancing salsa, available whenever a girl demands sex.’13 An isolated but interesting instance of a sexually overloaded Latin American character in Italian cinema is found in Henrique Goldman’s Princesa/Princess (Italy/Spain/France/UK/Germany 2001), a film that, like Princesses, but more uncompromisingly, attaches the protagonist – the Brazilian transsexual Fernanda/Fernando – to the world of urban prostitution.14 Her negotiation of a complex sexual identity in Milan is a source both of tension and pleasure, as much for herself as for her clients, including Gianni, the heterosexual man who falls in love with her. Predictably in a story of prostitution, Fernanda’s body is displayed and abused. But, while clearly a site of oppression, it is also a vehicle for transgression, and visually

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dominates a narrative which avoids glamorisation of power-inscribed sexuality (as exemplified by the scene in which, through Fernanda’s eyes, we see a male client panting unappealingly as another prostitute fellates him in a nearby parked car). The film’s open ending, with Fernanda abandoning her plans to undergo the sex-change operation, leaving Gianni and returning to her madam, is readable as a conscious attempt to give her a degree of autonomy. Princesa’s choice may be ambivalent or even misguided (after all, she returns to selling her body in the streets, and her limited room for manoeuvre is expressed by the madam’s comment that ‘If you fuck up once more, I’ll take you to the airport and send you back to the jungle’), but it is, even so, an act of self-determination.

Out of Africa In common with Caribbeans and Latin Americans, Africans are also frequently over-defined through their body in the cinema. In Spain, they have all too often been used as a shorthand for hypersexuality in films like El rey del mambo/The Mambo King (Spain 1989, dir. Carles Mira) or Torrente 2: Misión en Marbella/Mission in Marbella (Spain 2001, dir. Santiago Segura), which, despite their comic mode, provide clumsy, problematic representations of blackness.15 Sub-Saharan Africans, in fact, tend to be hypersexualised in ways that set them apart even from North Africans. Though a relatively large number of films depicting immigrant life in Spain feature North African characters – usually in stories recounting the hardship of the experience or, in a few cases, inter-ethnic romance (for example in Manuel Balaguer’s El faro/The Lighthouse, Spain 1998, Llorenç Soler’s Saïd, Spain 1999, and Antonio Chavarrías’s Susanna, Spain 1996) – attention is not explicitly drawn to the body of the characters. Still, as external signifiers of ‘otherness’, the migrants are frequently the target of racist harassment, and their contact with white women is seen as a threat. It is thus no coincidence that all the inter-ethnic relationships mentioned above eventually founder.16 Spanish films such as Imanol Uribe’s Bwana (Spain 1996) and Montxo Armendáriz’s Las cartas de Alou/Alou’s Letters (Spain 1990) have also touched on anxieties about the potential ‘contamination’ of the nation’s ethnic constitution through stories focusing on sub-Saharan African characters. Bwana tells the story of the chance encounter on a deserted Spanish beach between a Madrilenian family and a semi-naked and famished sub-Saharan man, who speaks no Spanish and has survived a journey from his homeland on a raft. Bwana celebrates the allure of the black man’s physique, for example through display of his nudity in carefully chosen camera angles and lighting, and through positive identification with primeval energy, thus contrasting him with the physically unimpressive, ineffectual white man. At the same time, the African, unlike the Spanish characters, is denied a voice or a voice-over monologue and is thus, at best, reduced to the stereotype

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of the ‘noble savage’. On one level, the film’s linguistic strategy gestures to realism as it underscores the lack of a common language to enable communication between the African and Spanish characters; on another, the black man lacks any national, familial and psychological delineation. The latter impedes audience identification, including what Lola Young calls ‘crossracial readings’ (1996: 18), and prioritises the subject position of the Spanish characters, Dori and her husband Antonio. In the light of theories of the gaze, the erotic specularisation of the black man as an object of display – but not of psychological or emotional enquiry – nevertheless complicates audience response. I have argued elsewhere (Santaolalla 1999) that Bwana both rejects and to a certain extent embraces the discourse that identifies blackness with physicality and sexuality. The way in which the film tries to strike a difficult balance between both attitudes is evident in a number of sequences, including, for instance, the one in which the Spanish woman Dori dreams that, animal-like, the black man moves on all fours towards her and starts fondling her while she sleeps; the long shot of the naked body of the black man, observed by Dori and the spectator, saluting the sun at dawn, or, perhaps even more pertinently, the scene at the end of the film in which the black man’s athletic body is tracked by the camera as he runs, naked, like a hunted animal for his life, only to be caught up with by a group of skinheads who, we assume, will carry out their threat to castrate him. In this, as in many other films about victimised male and female immigrants, questions of pain and pleasure become entangled. Thus, while Uribe’s film offers a complex and multilayered critique of contemporary

Figure 7.2 Bwana (1996) – The desirable, sacrificial body of the black African male (Emilio Buale)

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Spain’s unreconstructed attitudes to ethnic difference, the very strategies through which the discourse of sympathy for the black man is conveyed may also to a certain extent be seen as problematic. The approach to otherness in Alou’s Letters differs from that in Bwana.17 Followed on his journey from clandestine arrival by boat on a Southern beach through a North-bound trek across Spain in search of a better life, Alou is right from the start portrayed as an ‘other’. The actor’s (Mulie Jarju) slender, muscular body and black skin are used to single out Alou from various other local and migrant characters encountered along the way. Beyond establishing Alou’s otherness visually, the film also relies on the use of a voice-over commentary in an African language – Alou’s oral rendering of the letters he has written to his parents. This device produces a paradoxical effect of simultaneous nearness (because of the letter’s confessional and intimate content) and distance (because of the linguistic alienation of the spectator, which can only be overcome through subtitles). The result is a delicate balance between detachment and empathy, an appropriate expression of the encounter with ‘otherness’. In portraying a love story across the ‘racial’ divide, as well as in other aspects, Alou’s Letters closely resembles Michele Placido’s Pummarò (Italy 1990), where we follow a young man, Kwa Ku, who travels from Ghana to Southern Italy and then to the North in search of his brother Pummarò. Like Alou, Kwa Ku strikes up a doomed relationship with a white woman. Kwa Ku’s body is not overtly constructed as a sexual object for the audience’s pleasure, but his mere physicality –his youthful, sexually active body – disturbs others, above all the racists who threaten him and seek to punish his white Italian girlfriend for, as Sandra Ponzanesi puts it, ‘having chosen a black guy, for being a whore and a betrayer of her own community’ (2005b: 274–5). Clearly, in Pummarò, Alou’s Letters and Bwana, as also in Sud Side Stori/South Side Story (Italy 2000, dir. Roberta Torre), a statement is being made about the perceived threat posed by the black body to the ‘body’ of the nation as a whole. No such fear arises in Bernardo Bertolucci’s L’assedio/Besieged (Italy/ UK 1998), a film about the infatuation of a solitary piano composer living in Rome, Mr Kinsky, with his African cleaner Shandurai. Although subordinated socially, Shandurai is not so in other ways, especially as she is the focal point of the narrative: the film begins by showing an episode of political violence in Shandurai’s unspecified native African country, which provides the backstory and explains her flight to Italy, at the same time allowing the spectator to imagine her troubled thoughts and emotions. Shandurai does not appear to be exaggeratedly objectified by the film, and we understand her taciturnity better than the solitary pianist’s eccentricity, which, denied explanation, remains a mystery. It would seem, though, that, unlike in other areas of popular culture and the media, eroticised black characters are relatively scarce in Italian cinema. One wonders whether this absence may be partly due to the iconicity of the

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sensuous Southern Italian character type, above all women whose ‘curvaceous, fleshy bodies [...] full lips and expressive eyes’ have populated Italian film screens for decades (Wood 2005: 166), thus perhaps pre-empting any need for a dark and voluptuous ‘other’. And if, as Wood argues, in view of the thriving economy of Southern Italy today the ‘Mezzogiorno is no longer Italy’s “Africa a casa” [Africa at home]’ (2003: 100), one may well wonder whether the imagery of the ‘other’ in Italian cinema may now have to be more consistently sought in the ‘other’ from abroad. Indeed, the presence of black figures would emphasise the whiteness of the dark Southerner, something that, given ongoing debates in Italy over darker or fairer versions of female beauty as the appropriate embodiment of contemporary italianità, would deserve more attention.18

Eastern Promises The erotic–exotic imaginary in Greece has found inspiration elsewhere, through historical associations with Turkey and the Middle East (and, to a lesser extent, Italy) and, lately, Eastern Europe. Among films dealing with the new immigration in contemporary Greece, those by Constantine Giannaris have earned wide recognition. Apo tin akri tis polis/From the Edge of the City (Greece 1998) and Omiros/Hostage (Greece/Turkey 2005) are especially relevant here as they deal with returnee and migrant characters in Greece: a Russian Pontiac – Sasha – and his friends in the former, an Albanian – Elion – in the latter. In both films the male body is often on display, more openly in From the Edge of the City, which deals with male prostitution in Menidi, a poor district on the outskirts of Athens. Through camerawork, costume, mise-en-scène and performance, the body of Stathis Papadopoulos, who plays the protagonist in both films, is eroticised, thus departing from usual practices in Italian and Greek cinema, which have not tended to glamorise the Albanian male. In both cases, however, the body of the migrant is also made to suffer physical violence: beatings in From the Edge of the City, sexual abuse and eventual murder in Hostage. As Dionysios Kapsaskis argues (personal communication), both films are politically and socially aware, but problematic in the sense that they aim at audience response blending empathy for the migrant’s plight with desire for his or her body, which is located at the lower end of unequal relations of power. Furthermore, as noted by Harry Karahalios, the migrant’s body is ‘exoticized and in demand yet offered at a cheap price’ (no date: 13). In From the Edge of the City, for instance, the accessibility of the bodies of the Russian Pontiacs is defined on two levels: as ethnic Greeks they are only relatively, rather than wholly, ‘different’ while, as hustlers, they are sexually active and available. On both counts, these returnees, as represented by Giannaris, are comparable to the Latin Americans in many Spanish films: exotic yet familiar, and hypersexualised.

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Figure 7.3 From the Edge of the City (1998) – The eroticised spectacle of Pontian masculinity (Stathis Papadopoulous as Sasha)

Here, Sasha, though emasculated economically and by an authoritarian father (a metaphor for the tyranny he suffers in Greece as a marginalised newcomer), is also portrayed as strong and desirable, expressing his identity through bodily display and sexual performance, both straight and gay. His body combines action and spectacle: the opening scene introduces him on skates stealing car radios, and then lying in bed at home, exposing his fit and powerful body. A few minutes later, he wears a T-shirt that reveals the firm contours of his muscular chest; on his way to work, he performs somersaults and then appears, unlike his fellow workers, naked from the waist up at the building site; in the shower, his buttocks are on view. These scenes are compounded by jokes being told elsewhere in the film about Russian Pontiacs and their outsize sexual members. In Giannaris’s Hostage the Eastern European male poses a threat to hegemonic national masculinity. Loosely based on the 1999 real-life incident of a bus-hijacking in Northern Greece by an Albanian worker who sought reparation for having been wronged by his Greek employer, the plight of the young Elion’s last few hours is here dramatised through focus on the physical and sexual. Elion has shamed a Greek police officer – his employer – through an affair with his wife that leads to her pregnancy, and the betrayed husband avenges himself by sexually abusing Elion. As Panayiota Mini argues, Elion must be punished because he ‘has exceeded his role as a body for labour and become a body for love and reproduction’ (2006: 75). For this, he must not only suffer metaphorical castration through rape, but, like the African male in Bwana, also die.

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The fate of the Eastern European man in these films is somewhat paralleled by that of his female counterpart. The Eastern European woman (especially Russian or Albanian, but also Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian) is conventionally identified with marginality, sexual trafficking and prostitution in Italian and Greek cinemas – as, indeed, more widely. In From the Edge of the City, though not the main object of visual enquiry, the Russian prostitute Natasha is defined almost exclusively through her body. At the brothel, Sasha is on one occasion seen approaching his eye to a peephole to spy on Natasha at work with a client. Here, audience expectations of sharing Sasha’s voyeuristic point of view are frustrated as the camera swerves away, but the opportunity for gratification arrives later; her naked body is accidentally seen in the shower by Sasha and, through his eyes, by the spectator, with the camera at one point offering a close-up of her intimate anatomy. A sordid milieu of prostitution and economic deprivation in Athens is also the backdrop for O dromos pros ti dissi/The Way to the West (Greece 2003, dir. Kyriakos Katzourakis), where the ex-USSR protagonist Irina manages to acquire at least a degree of agency and voice. The film is a blend of fiction and documentary in which, through close-ups, Irina addresses the spectator, voicing the pain of her oppression, and asks: ‘What do you care about our stories?’ Such a direct challenge clearly relates to the issue, outlined in the introductory pages, of the audience’s experience of ‘distant suffering’, since, as Papatheodorou notes, when Irina speaks into the camera she is directly undermining ‘our anthropologic curiosity and our philanthropic tendency’ (2006: 79). Without resorting to narrative self-consciousness, a number of Italian films also highlight the limited options available to the underprivileged Eastern European female immigrant. This is the case, for instance, in Armando Manni’s Elvjs e Merilijin/Elvis and Marilyn (Italy 1998), Carlo Mazzacurati’s Vesna va veloce/Vesna Goes Fast (Italy/France 1996), Francesco Munzi’s Saimir (Italy 2005) and Marco Tullio Giordana’s Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti/Once You’re Born You Can No Longer Hide (Italy/France/UK 2005). No such wealth of stories of sexual subjugation of Eastern European women exists in Spanish cinema.19 In fact, completely different in tone, and working against the grain of practices described so far, is the lesbian romantic comedy A mi madre le gustan las mujeres/My Mother Likes Women (Spain 2002, dir. Daniela Féjerman and Inés París). Here, Eliska is a welleducated young Czech musician who, seeking opportunities in Spain, falls in love with Sofía, an older Spanish mother of three. The predictable comic situations emerging from the daughters’ protests give way, eventually, to approval of the couple’s liaison, including a male friend’s willingness to enter a marriage of convenience with Eliska to enable her to remain in Spain with Sofía. This is a rather light, wish-fulfilment narrative, its value lying chiefly in de-victimising the Eastern European woman and de-dramatising

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homosexual relationships. With a light touch, the film gestures to the sexual dimension of the lesbian affair – for instance, through the lyrics of a diegetic song that includes the lines ‘my mother has a woman licking her belly’ [...] ‘woman is the essence of pleasure’ – but prioritises above all its emotional value, presenting it as worthy enough to justify deception as a safeguard against the law.

East is East More than Eastern Europe, Turkey and the Middle and Far East have been rich sources of exotic/erotic inspiration for Western cultures. Essential contributors to the Orientalisation of Italian screens are Ferzan Özpetek’s films Hamam/The Turkish Bath (Italy/Turkey/Spain 1997), Harem Suaré (Turkey/ Italy/France 1999) and Le fate ignoranti/The Ignorant Fairies (France/Italy 2001).20 Hamam follows the East-bound journey of Francesco, an unfulfilled Italian, who, despite all home comforts and sensible pairing with an ideal companion, travels to Istanbul to sort out a legacy, a move possibly readable as the unconscious yearning for a dose of exoticism and excitement. In Turkey, Francesco succumbs to the spell of old Istanbul and the homosocial space of the hamam that he has inherited, as well as to the homoerotic advances of the young Turk Mehmet. His embrace of difference will reward him with sensual and sexual pleasures not previously experienced, but at a high price. In this respect, Hamam is reminiscent of Vicente Aranda’s La pasión turca/Turkish Passion (Spain 1994). Neither film allows the ‘interracial’ affair to succeed: in Hamam, the Italian is murdered by the local mafia, in Turkish Passion the male Turkish protagonist is castrated and killed by the humiliated Spanish woman. Both films, however, show the body of the Turkish male as intensely desiring and desirable, Turkish Passion further defining him through domineering and aggressive heterosexuality. 21 Another film that touches lightly – though also somewhat cynically – on Western fascination with a ‘sensual’ East is Isabel Gardela’s Tomándote/Two for Tea (Spain 2000), where a Spanish girl is drawn to a Muslim Indian boy living in Barcelona and, through him, to the promise of the arcane sexual wisdom of the Indian tradition, only to discover that what for her was an aura of enigmatic sexuality only affirms his conservative views on the relations between the sexes. Also foregrounding the erotic appeal of the Indian, but devoid of the cynicism of Tea for Two, is Fernando Colomo’s El próximo Oriente/The Near East (Spain 2006), a cheerful eulogy of cultural and ethnic hybridity. The focus is on the pairing of Aisha, a Muslim girl of Bangladeshi origin, and Cain, a shy Spanish young man, who, despite Aisha’s father’s fierce opposition, strives to marry her in the knowledge that she is pregnant with the child of his brother Abel. The Near East, with its condoned interethnic romance, is significant for its inclusion, towards the end of the film, of the baby born to Spanish and Bangladeshi parents, clearly a metaphor for

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Figure 7.4 Discovering the Orientalist realm of the senses – Francesco (Alessandro Gassman) and Mehmet (Mehmet Günsür) in Hamam (1997)

Spain’s multi-ethnic future. However, in a slightly problematic earlier move, the film annuls Asian masculinity in two ways: first, by not including any young Asian men who could compete with the Spanish protagonist for the favour of the Bangladeshi woman; secondly, by putting an older Asian patriarch in a coma, thus removing his threat to the inter-ethnic union and allowing the females in the Asian family to pursue their dreams of integration and self-expression. The Greek film Politiki Kouzina/A Touch of Spice (Greece 2003, dir. Tassos Boulmetis), for its part, is a heart-warming bitter-sweet tale in which a man’s return from Athens to Istanbul triggers the memory of his happy childhood there, and the sudden traumatic separation during mass deportations of Greeks in the 1960s. The film is germane to this discussion because, even though it lacks sexual overtones, its huge success in Greece is no doubt partly attributable to the stereotypical image of the East as an enduring source of sensual and aesthetic pleasure. This is Orientalism Greek-style, a variant that is also self-reflective since the characters are both Greek and Turkish.

Migration revisited A Touch of Spice also reminds Greeks of their own previous diasporas and enforced homecomings. The Greek Turks who are forcibly repatriated to Turkey will most probably be connected, in the minds of present-day audiences, with legislation giving special immigration status to ethnic Greek

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Russian Pontiacs, as observed in the discussion of From the Edge of the City. Similarly, Nyfes/Brides (Greece 2004, dir. Pantelis Voulgaris) invites reflection on the country’s history of emigration through the story of a shipload of women leaving Europe in 1922 to find husbands in the United States. Interestingly, the film refuses to glamorise or eroticise them, favouring a realist aesthetics instead. The memory of national as well as transnational migrant history has also remained alive in present-day Italy, attracting the attention not only of sociologists and cultural commentators but also of film-makers and critics. Migrations by Southern Italians to the industrial North as portrayed, for instance, in Luchino Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (Italy/France 1960), have been seen as the precursors of current images of foreign immigrations (Small 2005: 245, Parati 2005). The meanings ascribed to the distinctive physique of Southerners in these films could well be said to be mirrored in productions about ‘racially’ marked immigrant groups in contemporary Italy. Films such as Gianni Amelio’s Lamerica (Italy/France 1994) or Emanuele Crialese’s Nuovomondo/The Golden Door (Italy/France 2006) are not directly dealing with recent immigration in Italy, but through subtle thematic and visual links between past and present migratory trends indirectly remind Italians that they, too, were once impoverished and marginalised by others. In these films, the body of the migrant/immigrant is not eroticised, but rather presented as vulnerable and victimised. In Lamerica, a trip to Albania by the brash Italian entrepreneur Gino, who plans to recruit the feeble-minded, 70-year-old Spiro (mistaking him for an Albanian) as a dummy chairman for a fraudulent company, turns into a descent into hell when he has all his possessions stolen. Devoid of his yuppie trappings, Gino loses his sex appeal and confidence, and is regarded as just one more body transported illegally to Italy. Only his mastery of Italian sets

Figure 7.5 Lamerica (1994) – Undifferentiated bodies: the Italian Gino (Enrico Lo Verso) among his ‘undesirable’ Albanian travel companions

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him apart from others. His appearance changes gradually and he becomes ever more identical to his fellow travellers, which is presented in the film as something clearly undesirable for Gino. His involuntary bodily ‘Albanisation’ mirrors Spiro’s progressive re-Italianisation. Lamerica demonstrates that the body of the ‘foreigner’ is indistinguishable from that of the ‘native’. Curiously, these reflections on the hidden ‘otherness’ in the ‘self’ as well as on the strong links between past and present migrations are largely unavailable in Spanish cinema. The experiences of Spanish emigrants abroad remain mostly unchronicled, as if the memory of those – often traumatic – experiences had been erased from the collective consciousness.22

Conclusion Beyond reflection on European attitudes to increased immigration, recent Spanish, Italian and Greek films use the foreign, ethnically marked body as a visual and narrative stratagem that pushes to the foreground of cultural debates the thorny question of national identity by exploring not only changing attitudes towards ethnic difference but also the shifting patterns of gender and sexuality. Often, in films from all three countries, the insertion of an ‘other’ in the film’s narrative acts as a catalyst for change through crisis and suffering. On the surface, representations of inter-ethnic encounters as well as of violence against immigrants, their deportation or death seem to lead protagonists from the majority culture to become aware of the predicaments of migrant individuals and communities within a largely inhospitable host society. More often than not, however, their heightened awareness is not about the marginalisation of the other at all, but about aspects of their own self, personal life and emotional strains. Audiences, too, undergo a cathartic experience through the ‘distant suffering’ of the migrant characters. But we might want to question whether, more problematically, we are also lured into complicity in the film’s sado/masochistic dynamics of pleasure in the contemplation of the simultaneously sexualised and suffering ‘foreign’ body.

Notes I am grateful to Panayiota Mini, Harry Karahalios, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Dionysios Kapsakis, Carrie Hamilton, Pauline Small and Peter W. Evans for their comments and input during the writing of this chapter. 1. In Spain only a handful of films have been made by non-Spanish directors, for example by the Argentinean Adolfo Aristaráin and the Cuban Juan Carlos Tabío, who are probably better classified as transnationally mobile than as migrant or diasporic directors. In Italy and Greece the situation is similar, except that in each case a ‘token’ diasporic film-maker – Ferzan Özpetek, of Italian Turkish origin, and Constantine Giannaris, with a Pontiac, Greek and British background – enjoys national and international recognition.

170 Isabel Santaolalla 2. For a further discussion of ‘whiteness’ and its ‘invisibility’ see Dyer (1988), hooks (1992) and Hill (1997). 3. Migrants in Spain come, mostly, from Spanish America (a legacy of Spain’s sixteenth-century colonisation of the continent), from the Maghreb (the result of later colonial links and geographical proximity), sub-Saharan Africa and, more recently, from Eastern Europe. In Italy, the largest migrant groups come from Eastern Europe (mostly from Albania, an Italian protectorate between 1939 and 1943, as well as from Poland and Romania), compounded by a significant influx from Africa. Similarly, in Greece, the largest immigrant contingent comes from ex-communist European countries (above all from Albania, including both the ‘ethnic Greeks’ who arrived after the opening of the Greek–Albanian frontier in 1987 and subsequent economic migrants, and from Bulgaria and Poland), followed by smaller numbers from Asia and Africa. The above-mentioned ethnic Greeks from Albania are sometimes referred to as ‘returnees’, a term also applied to those settling in Greece as a result of the mass ‘forced population exchange’ with Turkey in 1923, following long-standing disputes between the two countries rooted in Ottoman dominance over Greece. Another major group arrived between 1988 and 1994, when the political and economic collapse of the USSR resulted in the ‘repatriation’ of a large number of ethnic Greeks from Pontos on the Black Sea. Statistical information can be obtained from the MPI Data Hub (2008). 4. For more works on these two concepts see O’Donnell (1991), Modood (1997), Young (1999) and Wiegman (2000). 5. This has been addressed, among others, by Figueira (1994), Root (1996), Santaolalla (2000) and Huggan (2001). 6. The study of ‘difference’ is also central to psychoanalytical discourse. It is argued that, when the individual confronts the ‘other’ outside the ‘self’, the memory traces of discarding and ‘othering’ that enabled him/her to develop a sense of ‘oneness’ trigger simultaneous processes of recognition–fascination–desire and denial–fear–rejection, reminding him/her that ‘difference’ is a constituent part of the ‘same’. As a result, strategies of fetishisation of the ‘other’ are deployed as a mechanism for disavowing the fear of difference by means of objectifying and making it manageable and intelligible, thereby gaining a sense of control over it (Freud 1977 [1927]). 7. Particularly relevant here, for its analysis of the visual representation of the ‘racialised’ male body, is Kaja Silverman’s Male Subjectivity at the Margins (1992). 8. See also Boltanski (1999) and Silverstone (2008 [2007]). 9. See Peter Brooks’s notion of the ‘aesthetics of embodiment’ as the way in which the most important meanings in melodrama are inscribed on and with the body (1994: 17). 10. An interesting exception to the heteronormativity of these films is presented in Miguel Albaladejo’s Ataque verbal/Verbal Attack (Spain 2000). 11. For detailed analyses of this film see Camí-Vela (2000), Nair (2001), MartínezCarazo (2002), Carty (2003), Santaolalla (2004), Kim (2005: 171–203) and Ballesteros (2005). 12. For a discussion of the significance of intimate inter-ethnic encounters in Princesses, see Gutiérrez Rodríguez’s chapter in this volume. 13. The Caribbean male body is also central to the very interesting production Vers le Sud/Heading South (France/Canada 2005, dir. Laurent Cantet). 14. For a discussion of gender and sexual identity in Princess see pp. 208–9 in Williams’s chapter in this volume.

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15. More nuanced films are Alejandro Calvo-Sotelo’s Se buscan fulmontis/Seeking Fullmontis (Spain 1999) and Alberto Rodríguez’s El traje/The Suit (Spain 2002). 16. For an analysis of intercultural romance in Spanish cinema see Flesler (2004); for the representation of African immigrant masculinities see Ballesteros (2006). 17. For more detailed analyses of Bwana and Alou’s Letters see Ballesteros (2001: 205–32) and Santaolalla (1999). 18. Stephen Gundle analyses this dispute in his engaging study on feminine beauty and the idea of Italy (2007: 223–44). 19. Though increasingly a sizeable minority in Spain, Eastern Europeans, in general, do not feature prominently in the cinema. Until recently, the only two significant exceptions were José Luis Borau’s Leo (Spain 2000) and Eloy de la Iglesia’s Los novios búlgaros/Bulgarian Lovers (Spain 2003). Both link their Eastern European male protagonists to criminality and sex (an incest-like relationship in the former, homosexual prostitution and extortion in the latter). In 2009, however, Myna se va/Myna Leaves (Spain, dir. Sadrac González and Sonia Escolano), a lowbudget, independent film so far only screened at festivals, has added a disturbing portrayal of sexual violence towards Eastern European female immigrants. The film includes a sordid, uninterrupted sequence of thirty-three minutes in which the protagonist, a young girl from an indeterminate Eastern European country working as an au pair for a wealthy family, is repeatedly raped by a neighbour. 20. For a discussion of Hamam in the context of queer diaspora films, see pp. 207–8 in Williams’s chapter in this volume. 21. Turkish Passion recalls in this respect Virginie Wagon’s Le Secret/The Secret (France 2000). 22. Recent exceptions to the rule are Carlos Iglesias’s Un franco, 14 pesetas/One franc, 14 pesetas (Spain 2006) and Chus Gutiérrez’s Poniente/West (Spain 2002). Only a handful of films depict Spanish emigrations during different periods; Moyano confirms this cultural ‘amnesia’ in his book on the topic (2005).

Works cited Arthurs, J. (2007) ‘Deliciously Consumable’, Contribution to ‘New Femininities: Post-Feminism and Sexual Citizenship’. Online. Available at: http://www.lse.ac.uk/ collections/newFemininities/Arthurs.pdf (accessed 14 October 2008). Ballesteros, I. (2001) Cine (ins)surgente: textos fílmicos y contextos culturales de la España Postfranquista. Madrid: Fundamentos. ——. (2005) ‘Embracing the Other: The Feminization of Spanish “Immigration Cinema” ’, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas 2(1): 3–14. ——. (2006) ‘Foreign and Racial Masculinities in Contemporary Spanish Film’, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas 3(3): 169–85. Bhabha, H. K. (1983) ‘The Other Question ...’, Screen 24(6): 18–36. Boltanski, L. (1999 [1993]) Distant Suffering: Morality, Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brooks, P. (1994) ‘Melodrama, Body, Revolution’, in J. Bratton, J. Cook and C. Gledhill (eds) Melodrama: Stage, Picture, Screen. London: British Film Institute, 11–24. Camí-Vela, M. (2000) ‘Flores de otro mundo: una mirada negociadora’, in G. CabelloCastellet, J. Martí-Olivella and G. H. Wood (eds) Cine-Lit 2000: Essays on Hispanic Film and Fiction. Corvallis, Oregon: Oregon State University, 163–75. Carty, G. (2003) ‘A Cuban Perspective from within Spain: Cosas que dejé en La Habana (1997)’, in G. Rings and R. Morgan-Tamosunas (eds) European Cinema

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Inside Out: Images of the Self and the Other in Postcolonial European Film. Heidelberg: Winter, 63–73. Chouliaraki, L. (2006) The Spectatorship of Suffering. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage. Comas, J. (1958) The Race Question in Modern Science. Paris: M. Blondin. Dayan, D. (2007) ‘On Morality, Distance and the Other: Roger Silverstone’s Media and Morality’, International Journal of Communication 1: 113–22. Dyer, R. (1988) ‘White’, Screen 29(4): 44–64. ——. (1997) White: Essays on Race and Culture. London: Routledge. Fanon, F. (1986 [1952]) Black Skin, White Masks. London: Pluto Press. Figueira, D. (1994) The Exotic: A Decadent Quest. Albany: State University of New York Press. Flesler, D. (2004) ‘New Racism, Intercultural Romance, and the Immigration Question in Contemporary Spanish Cinema’, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas 1(2): 103–18. Fouz-Hernández, S. and A. Martínez-Expósito (2007) Live Flesh: The Male Body in Contemporary Spanish Cinema. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. Freud, S. (1977 [1927]) ‘Fetishism’, in On Sexuality. The Pelican Freud Library, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 345–57. Gundle, S. (2007) Bellissima: Feminine Beauty and the Idea of Italy. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Hall, S. (1993 [1992]) ‘The Question of Cultural Identity’, in S. Hall, D. Held and T. McGrew (eds) Modernity and Its Futures. Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press and The Open University, 273–325. Hill, M. (ed.) (1997). Whiteness: A Critical Reader. New York, London: New York University Press. hooks, b. (1992) ‘Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination’, in b. hooks. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End Press, 165–78. Huggan, G. (2001) The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. London: Routledge. Karahalios, H. (no date) ‘Dislocating the Immigrant Body in Constantinos Giannaris’ From the Edge of the City’, unpublished PhD section draft, University of Notre Dame. Kim, Y. (2005) The Family Album: Histories, Subjectivities, and Immigration in Contemporary Spanish Culture. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. Kristeva, J. (1991) Strangers to Ourselves. New York: University of Columbia Press. Lazaridis, G. and M. Koumandraki (2001) ‘Deconstructing Naturalism: The Racialisation of Ethnic Minorities in Greece’, in R. King (ed.) The Mediterranean Passage: Migration and New Cultural Encounters in Southern Europe. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 279–301. Madariaga, M. R. de (1988) ‘Imagen del moro en la memoria colectiva del pueblo español y retorno del moro en la guerra civil de 1936’, Revista Internacional de Sociología 46(4): 575–99. Martínez-Carazo, C. (2002) ‘Flores de otro mundo: la pluralidad cultural como propuesta’, Letras Peninsulares 15(2): 377–90. Mini, P. (2006) ‘Constantine Giannaris’ Hostage: Fear and Punishment for the Body of the Immigrant’, in A. Kartalou, A. Nikolaidoy and T. Anastopoulos (eds) Immigration in Greek Cinema, 1956–2006. Athens, Thessaloniki: Thessaloniki International Film Festival & Egokeros Publications, 73–5. Modood, T. (1997) ‘ “Difference”, Cultural Racism and Anti-Racism’, in P. Werbner and T. Modood (eds) Debating Cultural Hybridity: Multi-Cultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism. London: Zed Books, 174–2.

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Morales Lezcano, V. (1990) ‘El Norte de África, estrella del orientalismo español’, Awraq 11, anejo: 17–34. Moyano, E. (2005) La memoria escondida: emigración y cine. Madrid: Tabla Rasa. MPI Data Hub (2008). Online. Available at: http://www.migrationinformation.org/ DataHub/ (accessed 16 November 2008). Mulvey, L. (1975) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16(3): 6–18. Nair, P. (2001) ‘In Modernity’s Wake: Transculturality, Deterritorialization and the Question of Community in Iciar Bollaín’s Flores de otro mundo (Flowers from Another World)’, Post Script 21(2): 38–49. O’Donnell, M. (1991) Race and Ethnicity. London, New York: Longman. Papatheodorou, Y. (2006) ‘The “Third Interval”: The Way to the West and Amerikanos’, in A. Kartalou, A. Nikolaidoy and T. Anastopoulos (eds) Immigration in Greek Cinema, 1956–2006. Athens, Thessaloniki: Thessaloniki International Film Festival & Egokeros Publications, 78–83. Parati, G. (2005) Migration Italy: The Art of Talking Back in a Destination Culture. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press. Ponzanesi, S. (2005a) ‘Beyond the Black Venus: Colonial Sexual Politics and Contemporary Visual Practices’, in J. Andall and D. Duncan (eds) Italian Colonialism: Legacy and Memory. Oxford: Peter Lang, 165–89. ——. (2005b) ‘Outlandish Cinema: Screening the Other in Italy’, in S. Ponzanesi and D. Merolla (eds) Migrant Cartographies: New Cultural and Literary Spaces in Postcolonial Europe. Lanham: Lexington Books, 267–80. Root, D. (1996) Cannibal Culture: Art, Appropriation, and the Commodification of Difference. Boulder, Oxford: Westview Press. Said, E. (1995 [1978]) Orientalism. London: Penguin. Santaolalla, I. (1999) ‘Close Encounters: Racial Otherness in Imanol Uribe’s Bwana’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 76(1): 113–24. ——. (ed.) (2000) ‘New’ Exoticisms: Changing Patterns in the Construction of Otherness. Amsterdam, Atlanta: Rodopi. ——. (2002) ‘Ethnic and Racial Configurations in Contemporary Spanish Culture’, in J. Labanyi (ed.) Constructing Identity in Contemporary Spain: Theoretical Debates and Cultural Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 55–71. ——. (2004) ‘The “Road that Turning Always ...“: Re-placing the Familiar and the Unfamiliar in Iciar Bollaín’s Flowers from Another World (1999)’, Studies in European Cinema 1(2): 129–38. Silverman, K. (1992) Male Subjectivity at the Margins. New York, London: Routledge. Silverstone, R. (2008 [2007]) Media and Morality: On the Rise of the Mediapolis. Cambridge: Polity. Small, P. (2005) ‘Immigrant Images in Contemporary Italian Cinema: A Nation with a Clear Conscience?’ in J. Andall and D. Duncan (eds) Italian Colonialism: Legacy and Memory. Oxford: Peter Lang, 239–54. Spivak, G. C. (1992) ‘The Politics of Translation’, in M. Barrett and A. Phillips (eds) Destabilizing Theory: Contemporary Feminist Debates. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 177–200. Stam, R. and L. Spence (1983) ‘Colonialism, Racism and Representation’, Screen 24(2): 2–20. Sulé, J. (1999) ‘¿A qué va Pepe a la Habana?’, Mujer de hoy 14, 17–23 July: 6–9. Todorov, T. (1999 [1982]) The Conquest of America: the Question of the Other. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

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Wiegman, R. (2000) ‘Race, Ethnicity and Film’, in J. Hill and P. Church Gibson (eds) Film Studies: Critical Approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 156–66. Wood, M. (2003) ‘ “Clandestini”: The “Other” Hiding in the Italian Body Politic’, in G. Rings and R. Morgan-Tamosunas (eds) European Cinema Inside Out: Images of the Self and the Other in Postcolonial European Film. Heidelberg: Winter, 95–106. ——. (2005) Italian Cinema. Oxford, New York: Berg. Young, L. (1996) Fear of the Dark: ‘Race’, Gender and Sexuality in the Cinema. London: Routledge. Young, R. (1999) ‘Writing Race: Ethnicity as Otherness’, in F. Galbán and M. Bengoechea (eds) On Writing (and) Race in Contemporary Britain. Alcalá de Henares: Servicio de Publicaciones de la UAH, 17–28.

8 Gendering Diaspora: The Work of Diasporic Women Film-Makers in Western Europe Carrie Tarr

A number of recent Western European films about border crossings have featured the trajectories of contemporary migrant women in Europe, drawing attention to the increased feminisation of migration patterns and new types of female migrants in the era of globalisation and transnational capitalism (see Castles and Miller 2003). These films – which include Dirty Pretty Things (UK 2002, dir. Stephen Frears), Lilja 4-ever (Sweden/Denmark 2002, dir. Lukas Moodysson), Rezervni deli/Spare Parts (Slovenia 2003, dir. Damjan Kozole), Transe (Portugal 2006, dir. Teresa Villaverde) and Ghosts (UK 2006, dir. Nick Broomfield) – tend to highlight the ways in which migrant women may be the victims of such cross-border traffic, focusing on their vulnerability as exploited and often illegal workers or their trafficking as prostitutes. As Ljiljana Coklin points out, such films challenge the assumed notion of female liberation (the linear narrative transition from ‘oppression’ to ‘emancipation’) [...]: women’s economic independence and geographic movement remain controlled by corporate interests and the needs and desires of male ‘guides’ and ‘protectors’. (2006: unpaginated) These are not the only possible stories to be told about migrant women, however; notably they feature in films made by liberal, non-diasporic (mostly male) film-makers rather than by migrant or diasporic women. This chapter aims to identify the voices, images, experiences and events imagined and put together in the opening decade of the twenty-first century by women film-makers who are themselves of migrant origin, and to analyse the perspectives they have to offer through their films on the place and identity of migrant and diasporic women of different origins and different generations in post-colonial, post-communist Western Europe. 175

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In his work on ‘accented cinema’, Hamid Naficy argues that migrant and diasporic film-makers inscribe their ‘biographical, social, and cinematic (dis) location’ (2001: 4) within their films, both through their mode of production and through textual devices such as ‘fragmented, multilingual and critically juxtaposed narratives, lost characters, themes involving identity and displacement, and liminal and politicised structures of feeling’ (Tarr 2005: 14).1 Following Naficy, my concern here is to examine the extent to which diasporic women film-makers inscribe their migrant and diasporic narratives with female, feminist and queer perspectives and so challenge what Gayatri Gopinath has identified in relation to the South Asian diaspora: ‘the centrality of the [male–male or father–son] narrative as the primary trope in imagining diaspora’ (2005: 5). How do their films address conventional, heteronormative, patriarchal structures of kinship and community in national and diasporic cultures? Do they draw on female–female or mother–daughter narratives to explore the ways in which migrant and diasporic women negotiate their double, hybrid or transnational identities? Do they convey ‘the heterogeneity of the backgrounds and lived experiences’ of migrant and diasporic women (Raissiguier 2003)? And, finally, do they demonstrate that there are common elements to be found in diasporic women’s films originating in the context of different national cinemas and different diasporic cultural, historical and geographic epistemes and traditions?

Diasporic women film-makers in Western Europe Any analysis of the work of diasporic women film-makers in Western Europe will inevitably be partial. I am focusing here on feature films made in Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland in the years 2000–6 by directors who were born or brought up by parents born, variously, in Albania, Algeria, the Caribbean, Ghana, India, Iran, Italy, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey and the former Yugoslavia. A post-colonial context is particularly important with regard to the work of most diasporic women filmmakers in France and Britain (the countries that have the longest histories of diasporic women’s film-making), whereas in Germany and Switzerland the context largely derives from the history of non-post-colonial labour migration. In each case, women’s access to film-making was initially through short films and documentaries. In France in the early 1980s Farida Belghoul, who is of Algerian origin, made two significant semi-autobiographical short films, addressing the problems facing a second-generation Maghrebi female migrant, while Euzhan Palcy, a black Martinican film-maker, had an international hit with Rue Cases-Nègres/Sugar Cane Alley (France/Martinique 1983), a denunciation of the French colonial regime from the point of view of a young Martinican boy. Over a decade later Zaïda Ghorab-Volta, also of Algerian origin, made a critically acclaimed low-budget, medium-length fiction film, Souviens-toi

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de moi/Remember Me (France 1996), expressing a young woman’s discomfiture with, then acceptance of, her cultural hybridity (see Tarr 2000). Since then, the majority of diasporic women film-makers in France have been of North African origin, either of Arab/Berber descent (the ‘second-generation’ daughters of migrant fathers recruited as a cheap labour force during France’s ‘thirty glorious years’ of post-war prosperity) or of pied noir origin (the name given to European settlers in the Maghreb, most of whom left after independence).2 Rachida Krim, Yamina Benguigui, Yamina Yahiaoui (all of Algerian origin) and Zakia Tahiri (of Moroccan origin) have made feature films addressing the troubled identities of displaced Arab/Berber Maghrebis in France; while Charlotte Silvera in the 1980s, Dominique Cabrera in the 1990s and Karin Albou in the 2000s have given expression to the position of exiled pieds noirs. Palcy went on to enjoy a successful career in the United States, but there is to date a notable lack of other diasporic women filmmakers from France’s former colonies in the Caribbean, sub-Saharan Africa or South East Asia. Liria Begeja, whose mother was French and father an Albanian political refugee, began making films in the late 1980s.3 The majority of diasporic women film-makers in Britain are of Caribbean, South Asian or sub-Saharan African origin. In the mid-1980s several African Caribbean women film-makers – Maureen Blackwood, Martine Attile and Nadine Marsh-Edwards – were active members of the Sankofa Film and Video Collective, a black British workshop founded in 1983 and committed to the production of new histories and ‘herstories’; others – Avril Johnson and Clare Joseph – were members of the Black Audio Film Collective (1982–98) (see Fusco 1995, Mercer 1988). However, African Caribbean women film-makers have been less visible since the mid-1990s (see Malik, this volume). Women of other post-colonial migrant origins – Pratibha Parmar, a British Asian born in Kenya, Ngozi Onwurah, who is of Nigerian origin, and Gurinder Chadha, like Parmar a British Asian born in Kenya – made their first short films in 1986, 1988 and 1990 respectively, all on issues related to displacement and identity. Onwurah and Chadha subsequently directed their first feature films in the 1990s, Parmar not until the 2000s, along with newcomers Amma Asante, who is of Ghanaian origin, and Nigerian British Adaora Nwandu. The largest ethnic minority in Germany is of Turkish origin, the Turks having been drawn to Germany as labour migrants at the time of the country’s expanding economy in the 1960s. The first short films by and about women of Turkish origin date from the beginning of the 1990s, with work by Serap Berrakkarasu, Ayşe Polat and, later, Seyhan Derin (see Eren 2003); in the 2000s Polat has gone on to make feature films, together with newcomers Sülbiye Günar and Buket Alakus. Another German woman filmmaker, Angelina Maccarone, whose father was an Italian migrant (Italians still made up the largest contingent of economic migrants in Germany in the late 1960s), has also made films addressing issues arising from migration to Germany.

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In Switzerland, where women’s film-making has in general been slower to develop, women of migrant origin such as Nadia Fares (half-Egyptian), Anna Luif (of Hungarian background) and Ingrid Wildi (half-Chilean) did not make feature films addressing issues arising from the presence of migrants or diasporic communities in the period under investigation.4 However, in the 2000s Andrea Štaka, who was born in Switzerland to Yugoslavian (Bosnian and Croatian) parents, has focused on the lives of migrants from the former Yugoslavia, both in her documentary Yugodivas (Switzerland 2001), which centres on five women of Serbian descent starting to make a new life in New York, and in her first award-winning feature film Das Fräulein, discussed below. Her work reflects the fact that migrants from the former Yugoslavia are now Switzerland’s largest migrant group, waves of labour migrants from the 1960s onwards having been joined since the 1990s by an influx of asylum seekers from war-torn Bosnia and Kosovo (Efionayi et al. 2005). The corpus of feature films made by these film-makers in the years 2000–6 consists of twenty-two films in all – eight French, seven British, six German and one Swiss – which fall loosely into three categories. Six are coming-of-age films centring on the problematic identities of young migrant or diasporic women, some of which are addressed elsewhere in this volume (see Berghahn).5 Seven focus on the experiences of men or of non-diasporic women, an indication that diasporic women film-makers do not want their work to be pigeonholed or ghettoised. This eclectic group includes two important British films, Amma Asante’s A Way of Life (UK 2004) and Ngozi Onwurah’s Shoot the Messenger (UK 2006), whose provocative analysis and denunciation of racism appear to be specific to diasporic women’s film-making in Britain, as well as Gurinder Chadha’s Bollywood-style update of a Jane Austen novel, Bride and Prejudice (UK/USA 2004), which depicts the attempts of an Indian family in Amritsar to find suitable husbands for their four daughters across the South Asian diaspora.6 The largest grouping, however, and the focus of this chapter, consists of nine films which explore the identity and the place in Europe of an adult migrant or diasporic woman or of a group of women at least one of whom is of migrant origin. These films, then, are all ‘women’s films’, that is, films privileging female subjectivity and female agency, which address issues relevant to women. I will consider in turn those films which explore the place of migrant and diasporic women in relation to national and diasporic communities, those which foreground the figure of the migrant mother, and those whose focus on cross-cultural lesbian relationships contributes to a queering of diasporic cinema in Europe (see also Williams in this volume), though the borders between these categories are permeable.

Women’s place in the community The patriarchal regulation of women’s roles, women’s bodies and women’s sexuality has traditionally been crucial to the construction of both national

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and diasporic identities, and women who challenge such regulation are often denounced for opening up their community to criticism in the wider society (Kalra et al. 2005: 59). A number of women’s films clearly foreground and question patriarchal notions of diasporic community identity by focusing on the individual desires and aspirations of migrant and diasporic women, be it in relation to the Jewish community in Sarcelles in Karin Albou’s La Petite Jérusalem/Little Jerusalem (France 2004), Arab/Berber Maghrebi communities in Toulon or on the outskirts of Paris in the television dramas Rue des Figuiers/Fig Tree Road (France 2005, dir. Yasmina Yahiaoui) and Permis d’aimer/Permission to Love (France 2005, dir. Rachida Krim), a more disparate community of exiles from the former Yugoslavia in Zurich in Andrea Štaka’s Das Fräulein (Switzerland/Germany 2005), or the British Asian community in Glasgow in Pratibha Parmar’s Nina’s Heavenly Delights (UK 2006). These films centre on the experiences of different generations of migrant and diasporic women and the ways in which they relate to their culture of origin. In so doing they provide both a woman-centred perspective on the history of immigration (via the older generation) and a view of what the future might hold for intercultural relations (via their children). I will focus here on Little Jerusalem, Fig Tree Road and Das Fräulein, since Permission to Love and Nina’s Heavenly Delights are addressed in the sections below. It is notable, however, that these latter two films construct diasporic communities which become increasingly open to intercultural contact through their eventual acceptance of the inter-ethnic love affairs of the female protagonists. This is less true of the first three films, each of which addresses a very different type of community. Little Jerusalem is set in the eponymous district of Sarcelles, a new town on the outskirts of Paris whose housing estates, built in the 1950s and 1960s, are the home of both Arab/Berber and Jewish migrants from the Maghreb. ‘Little Jerusalem’ itself is one of the largest and best organised Jewish communities in France (some 15,000 inhabitants). However, since the increase of anti-Semitic activity in France following the Second Intifada of Palestinians against Israel (beginning in 2000) – activity which is generally attributed to Muslim youths from the banlieues (the run-down outer city housing estates) – increasing numbers of Jews have chosen to make aliyah, that is, to emigrate to Israel (Ford 2004).7 Karin Albou, who is herself of dual heritage, with an Algerian Jewish father and a French mother, sets the narrative of Little Jerusalem against this troubled background. (In her earlier 1999 short film Aïd el kébir she addresses the unhappy, secret, adulterous affair of a young Muslim woman in Algeria.) The film highlights, in painstaking, sensuous detail, the rituals and religious ceremonies that give the Jewish community its distinct identity, both in the home and in community gatherings; but it also features two brief sequences involving anti-Semitic violence, including the setting on fire of the local synagogue, which ultimately make the extended family at the centre of the film decide to start a new life in Israel. The overarching

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framework of the narrative, then, is the difficulty faced by displaced North African Jews in finding and maintaining a home in France. The protagonists of Albou’s film are Laura, a philosophy student, and her older, married sister Mathilde, a primary school teacher, who negotiate very different trajectories in relation to the diasporic Jewish community. The deeply religious Mathilde, who is never seen outside the boundaries of ‘Little Jerusalem’, is struggling with her sexuality because she fears that sexual pleasure is incompatible with her faith. When she discovers that her orthodox husband has been unfaithful, the wise words of the woman at the local mikvah (Jewish bathhouse) enable her to come to terms with her desires and renew her marriage. In contrast, Laura, who regularly ventures outside ‘Little Jerusalem’, both through her trips to the university in Paris and through her nightly walks past the neighbouring Arab quarter in Sarcelles, constantly seeks to escape the pressure to conform and the close surveillance exercised by her family. The constraints on her life are visually represented by the film’s dark palette of colours and repeated images of walls, windows and buildings blocking her view. Laura’s rebellion takes the form first of devotion to the work of the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, then of a secret, highly transgressive love affair with an Arab, an illegal migrant (and former journalist) whom she meets at the local primary school where they work as cleaners. When she discovers that her lover’s religion, and the pressure exercised by his Islamic Algerian family, will not allow him to pursue the relationship further, she is driven to attempt suicide. Eventually, however, she chooses not to leave for Israel with the rest of her family, but to face the world alone

Figure 8.1 Tensions within the diasporic Jewish family in Little Jerusalem (2004)

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in France, with her mother’s ring to remind her of her origins. Despite her closeness to Mathilde, she cannot be satisfied with the life of a traditional, orthodox Jewish woman. The sisters’ widowed mother has a less central role in the film, but functions as a bridge to the family’s former homeland through her superstitious practices (aimed at finding a husband for Laura) and her transmission of nostalgic memories of life in Tunisia. A woman who has already had to cope with deracination and exile, she accepts her son-in-law’s decision to leave behind an anti-Semitic France and agrees to make aliyah, even though it means separation from her younger daughter and committing her grandchildren to repeat the cycle of displacement and loss. Little Jerusalem thus offers a fairly bleak portrayal of a France irrevocably divided into separate ethnic communities and unable (or unwilling) to provide a safe haven for the community of ‘Little Jerusalem’, as well as of a patriarchal diasporic Jewish community which has chosen not only to cling strongly to its traditions but also to remain isolated from the rest of French society. Though Laura aspires to find a place in a more open, multi-ethnic society, the film ends ambivalently with a shot of her on a travelator in the Parisian metro, alone and barely moving as the world rushes past her. Albou’s representation of an orthodox Jewish community in France, while giving it visibility, also risks invoking majority French fears of ‘communitarianism’, that is, the existence of communities claiming specific cultural or religious identities, which is perceived to run counter to the country’s republican values of universalism, laicity and a common culture.8 Yasmina Yahiaoui’s Fig Tree Road, based on a screenplay by writer Soraya Nini, also focuses on migrants who have little apparent contact with majority French society, in this case a close-knit community of first-generation Maghrebis.9 Unlike Little Jerusalem, however, it constructs a predominantly female, secular community which is concerned with challenging patriarchal traditions from within rather than upholding them or rebelling against them, the only options envisaged by Mathilde and Laura. Fig Tree Road is an enjoyable comedy, set in a street in Toulon close to the Mediterranean, beyond which lies the residents’ former homeland. Its goodhumoured study of the migrant men and women living and working in or around Marfouz’s hairdressing shop and Fatima’s bar, the Taverne Bretonne (a reference to an earlier oppressed minority group in France), focuses on the points of tension between their lives in France and the demands of their culture of origin, manifest in the multiple shots of telephone calls to and from their family back ‘home’. The film opens with shots of a dangling telephone receiver against a background of the Mediterranean from which emanates a woman’s voice ordering her refractory 18-year-old daughter Noor to return ‘home’, an order that distressed Noor eventually refuses to obey. Fatima, an outrageous, independent, single woman unafraid of confronting the hypocritical attitudes of the local self-appointed spokesman for traditional

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Arabo-Berber Muslim values, retains contact with her disapproving family, who are nevertheless dependent on her sending them money. And Marfouz is bombarded by calls from his family wanting him to go ‘home’ to get married. It is his decision to give way to pressure and agree to an arranged marriage, despite his love for Djamila (a single mother without a work permit, and a belly dancer in Fatima’s bar), that sets up the film’s drama. Marfouz returns from Algeria with his young bride, Fadela, a naïve, (literally) dumb, veil-wearing woman from the countryside, and keeps her locked away in his flat above the shop, where Noor, Djamila and Mme Farrugia, an eccentric older pied noir widow who helps Djamila look after her child Daniel (and so provides a bridge to an earlier generation of migrants), also have flats. Fadela’s lack of freedom provokes all the women, even heartbroken Djamila, to boycott the hairdressing shop and rally to her rescue. They get hold of a copy of Marfouz’s key and secretly introduce Fadela to ‘Western’ ways and their own unorthodox lifestyles; and, when Marfouz puts on a new lock, they joyfully engineer her escape and lock Marfouz in instead, giving him a taste of his own medicine. The film ends with Djamila persuading a chastened Marfouz to allow Fadela her freedom, which begins with him doing her hair for her at last, thus allowing her to remove her veil; meanwhile Djamila goes to Fatima’s bar to drown her sorrows and enjoy sisterly commiseration and solidarity. The women’s rebellion against patriarchal Maghrebi traditions, vented most satisfactorily by Fatima (who is ‘allergic’ to the veil), is enabled by their position as independent diasporic women in France, distanced from traditional expectations of how Maghrebi women should behave, and influenced to some extent by Western feminist thought. But the liberation of Fadela is achieved by their own actions, not as the result of interactions with non-Maghrebis; and the film does not simply demonise the male character, but shows how difficult it is for him to disentangle himself from traditional discourses and how he, too, suffers from his position. The film foregrounds the identity and agency of a community of women of Maghrebi origin, and lingers lovingly on the sensuous aspects of their North African culture (belly dancing, music, food). At the same time, it also constructs Rue des Figuiers as an integrated transnational space, where white and Maghrebi French children play together, Fatima provides her multi-ethnic clientele with camp performances of French and Italian chansons, and Noor’s fears and desires take the form of a hilarious Bollywood-style fantasy sequence. By downplaying religious affiliations, privileging strong, liberated women, and demonstrating how cultural specificity is subject to change, Yahiaoui is able to show how a migrant community can retain its identity, yet also be integrated within a multicultural France. Andrea Štaka’s Das Fräulein10 depicts a very different, more fragmented, transitory community. It centres on three displaced women from the former Yugoslavia, of different generations and ethnic origins, who are attempting

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to make a life in Zurich (reflecting the director’s own family background). For Štaka, the film’s title, normally a rather condescending term for both a waitress and an unmarried woman, implies a state of transience or incompleteness, referring here to someone who is ‘not a girl and not a woman, a woman without a man, a Yugoslav woman without a home’ (Štaka 2006). The three women in question meet in a dismal, canteen-style restaurant in the city, frequented in part by a community of exiles from the former Yugoslavia. The restaurant is run by Ruža, an independent, single woman of Serbian origin, now in her fifties, who left Belgrade some twenty-five years earlier and whose lonely daily getting-up ritual opens the film. She is assisted by sixty-year-old Mila from Croatia, whose husband is spending her earnings on having a house built on the coast in Croatia for them to return to. They are joined by twenty-two-year-old Ana, who is of Bosnian origin, and whose arrival (she has hitchhiked to Zurich from Sarajevo) initiates the narrative. Ana’s zest for life and ostensibly carefree attitude act as a catalyst for change in the lives of the other women, who have been living their lives in exile without successfully adopting Zurich as ‘home’. However, it also masks the traumas that haunt her: the recent experience of the war in Sarajevo, the loss of her family, her brother’s suicide and her own suffering from leukaemia. Harsh, defensive and controlling, Ruža refuses intimacy with others and focuses only on keeping her business going, rigorously repressing memories of her past. When Ana organises a birthday party in her honour, she starts, reluctantly, to open up to life. As she dances passionately to familiar Balkan tunes, the precise, static image compositions initially associated with her give way to mobile, out-of-focus shots, captured with a hand-held camera, which underline her momentary self-abandon (Štaka 2006). She also begins an affair with her devoted Swiss neighbour and develops a motherly affection for Ana, expressed in their joyful snowball fight up in the mountains. Ruža’s new engagement with the world enables her at last to acknowledge and take pleasure in her memories, pinning old photographs of herself as a young woman in Serbia to her bedroom wall. As for Mila, who has allowed herself to be taken over by her husband’s dream of a return, she is galvanised by Ana’s provocative questioning into finally confronting her husband and refusing to spend any more money on the dream house, realising that her home is now in Switzerland where she brought up her sons. Ana’s own relationship to home and exile is, however, more complex. She is an example of what Kevin Robins terms the ‘new migrants of globalization’, those whose trajectories follow a ‘more random logic’ than previous waves of post-colonial or labour migrations into Europe (2007: 153), and whose experiences of exile and deracination are more intense, due to the traumas of persecution or war in their former, now unrecognisable homelands. Ana’s intense state of uprootedness is underscored by the fact that, unlike Ruža and Mila, she is literally homeless: she keeps her belongings in

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Figure 8.2 Ruža and Ana (right) in the mountains near Zurich in Das Fräulein (2005)

a public locker, spends her evenings in discos, dancing wildly to the techno beat, in order to pick up a lover and a bed for the night, and is ready to take to the road again at the end of the film. Her joie de vivre and ability to live for the present is ultimately driven by her fear of death and self-destructive refusal to face up to her fatal illness. She leaves the Swiss lover who wants to look after her, runs away from the hospital where Ruža arranged cancer therapy for her, and finally thumbs a lift in the direction of Geneva instead of returning to Sarajevo, where she could also receive treatment. Štaka uses grey rain-sodden imagery, abrupt cuts and black screens to visualise the wounds generated by displacement and exile, and to underline the bleakness, solitude and fragility of Ruža’s and Ana’s existence. But, like Little Jerusalem and Fig Tree Road, Das Fräulein also expresses the value of friendship between displaced women, even though in this case they belong to different generations and to ethnic communities that were at war with one another during the Balkan conflicts. It does not, however, point to a future when citizens from the former Yugoslavia would be able to integrate fully into the fabled affluence of Zurich.

Mothers as agents of social change Four of the films discussed here privilege the role of a mother figure: Yamina Benguigui’s first feature, Inch’Allah dimanche/Inch’Allah Sunday (France 2001), Rachida Krim’s Permis d’aimer/Permission to Love (France 2005), Buket Alakus’s Anam (Germany 2001), and Sülbiye Günar’s TV drama

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Saniyes Lust/Saniye’s Desire (Germany 2004). The role of the mother figure within diasporic communities tends to be complex and contradictory. Diasporic mothers are conventionally regarded as, or pressured into being, the carriers of culture, expected to bring up their children in the language and culture of their origin. Yet this culture is often viewed by their children as ‘tradition-bound and static in contrast to a progressive and liberal West’ (Kalra et al. 2005: 56). Furthermore, if diasporic mothers are often disempowered within the home by husbands who are themselves disempowered in the wider society, they are also potentially empowered in the wider society ‘where discourses of “rescuing” vulnerable and oppressed female members of a diasporic community run rife’ (2005: 52). How do these films, then, engage with the home as a site of struggle (Gopinath 2005: 14) and with the ambiguous relationship of diasporic mothers to tradition and modernity? Inch’Allah Sunday was inspired in part by Yamina Benguigui’s interest in the experiences of her mother as an Algerian immigrant in France in the 1970s, a time when economic immigration was halted but family regroupment allowed. (Her 1997 documentary Mémoires d’immigrés: l’héritage maghrébin had included a section on the memories and aspirations of women migrants of her mother’s generation.) The film centres on a young Algerian woman, Zouina, who is forced to abandon her own mother and leave Algeria with her children and mother-in-law to join her husband in Saint-Quentin, a small town in Picardy in the North of France (where Benguigui grew up). Her new home quickly becomes a site of silent rebellion as she is ignored or abused by her insecure, authoritarian husband and bullied by her traditional Algerian mother-in-law. On the Sundays when her husband and mother-in-law are absent making preparations for the festival of Eid, Zouina secretly escapes from the house with her three young children, and tries to locate another Algerian immigrant family living in the area, in the hope of sharing her predicament. At the same time, she starts to adjust to life in France, learning French from the radio and making contact with first a young, feminist-influenced, working-class neighbour, then the widow of a former pied noir general. On the last Sunday, when she eventually tracks down her compatriot, she is devastated to discover that the other woman does not share her openness to French culture, but continues to live as though she were in Algeria, closeted in the home with her daughter. Zouina’s despair is countered by the support of her French female friends (though not her comically portrayed racist next-door neighbour) and of the charming, dual-heritage bus driver who transports her and her children back home, where her disconcerted husband is waiting for her. The film ends with the promise of the beginnings of a dialogue with her husband, who agrees in future to let her take the children to school, an activity which will put an end to her isolation and confinement. It also shows the discomfiture of the motherin-law, the representative of traditional Arabo-Berber Maghrebi culture, whose prerogatives within the family have been successfully challenged.

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Figure 8.3 The family home as the site of migrant mother Zouina’s silent rebellion in Inch’Allah Sunday (2001)

Inch’Allah Sunday compares the lives of two young, isolated migrant mothers in the 1970s, and clearly approves Zouina’s decision to adapt to Western mores through her intercultural exchanges. It offers an exemplary portrait of a strong, sympathetic, intelligent, determined migrant mother, who is open to change, refuses to be a victim, and eventually manages to steer her way between tradition and modernity, creating her own agenda for communication and change. Rachida Krim drew on her own mother’s experiences in her first feature film, Sous les pieds des femmes (France 1997), the story of an Algerian woman activist in France during the War of Independence (see Tarr 2005). Permission to Love, a contemporary social drama set within the diasporic Maghrebi community of an outer Paris housing estate, also centres on a strong mother figure of Algerian origin. In this instance, Malika, a modest but independent widow with a teenage daughter, Lila, has to confront traditional community values when she falls in love with Jean, one of the chefs in the school canteen where she works. Despite her own unhappy marriage, Malika has arranged for Lila to marry the son of the local butcher, also of Algerian origin, and is aware that her relationship with a white Frenchman could put the plans for Lila’s marriage at risk. She also knows it could alienate her traditional parents, who have already disowned her sister, Djamila, for marrying a white Frenchman. When her secret is discovered and exposed by a malevolent Algerian co-worker, not only does her ‘shameful’ behaviour cause Lila’s wedding to be cancelled, but Lila runs away in disgust, and her parents and circle of Maghrebi women friends begin to question their relationship with her. Malika’s desire for personal fulfilment seems to be

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irrevocably at odds with expectations of marriage within the community and maternal sacrifice. Loving mother Malika at first decides to give up her love for Jean in order to regain her daughter. But she then discovers that she has been deceived by those around her: her parents are each still secretly seeing the daughter they had ostensibly rejected, Lila had only accepted the arranged marriage in order to please her mother (and had sacrificed a budding relationship with a white French youth to do so), and her prospective son-in-law is having an affair with a white Frenchwoman, despite arrangements for his marriage. Both distressed and heartened by her new awareness of the community’s hypocritical attitudes towards marriage and inter-ethnic relationships, Malika, with support from her sister Djamila, eventually challenges traditional social taboos by accepting Jean’s offer of marriage. Their wedding party on Jean’s houseboat brings together both white and Maghrebi French families, and provides the site of Malika’s joyful reconciliation with Lila, as well as Djamila’s with her parents. Permission to Love shows how arranged marriages, associated here with first-generation migrants (Malika’s mother, as well as Malika herself), have become problematic for the Westernised younger generation in the diasporic community, since they conflict with liberal values such as the right to selfdetermination. Although the film does not suggest that marriage based on free choice and love is a guarantee for happiness (Djamila’s marriage has not lasted), it advocates a woman’s right to marry the man she loves, whatever his ethnic origins, and whatever the attitude of her parents or children. While the film begins with the women’s colourful preparations (music, costumes and dancing) for Lila’s doomed Algerian-style wedding, it culminates in an alternative wedding celebration which offers a joyful intercultural mix of Maghrebi and Western traditions. It thus optimistically suggests that love and openness to others can bring about shifts in traditional community values and lead to a more tolerant multicultural society. Anam, which combines the genre conventions of comedy, thriller and melodrama with social realist aesthetics, is dedicated to Buket Alakus’s own (Turkish) mother. It centres on a contemporary mother figure who is far removed from conventional depictions of Turkish German mothers found in films such as Aprilkinder/April Children (Germany 1998, dir. Yüksel Yavuz) or the earlier Yasemin by non-Turkish German director Hark Bohm (FRG 1988), where she is confined to the house, speaks only Turkish or Kurdish and depends on her children to establish a link with German society. The eponymous Anam works as an office cleaner, speaks fluent German and is friendly with two of the women in her cleaning team, African German Didi and white Rita (who may be of Italian origin). The narrative begins the day her world threatens to fall apart: she discovers that her husband is being unfaithful and that her son Deniz has become a drug addict. She reacts by kicking out her husband and, supported by her women friends, trying to track down her

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son. In the process, she comes across Deniz’s drug-addicted German girlfriend, Mandy, and decides to look after her, renaming her Melek (‘angel’ in Turkish). She also overcomes her modesty and accepts the friendly offer of a German police driving instructor to help her achieve her goal of learning to drive. Eventually, when Mandy gets killed, Anam drives Rita’s car to the underground squat where Deniz is living and, to save his life, shoots dead the drug dealer, Hassan. In a final sentimental scene, Deniz hugs her muddy feet, acknowledging that he owes his life to his mother’s courage. The film’s melodramatic and thriller aspects contrast, sometimes rather awkwardly, with its comedic elements, notably in the episodes involving the two other cleaners. These scenes offer enjoyable moments of multiethnic female solidarity, as when the three friends challenge the racism of their German co-workers, or when, in the company of Anam’s daughter and Mandy, they start dancing to the music of a Bollywood film, or when Rita drives them all along the beach. The main thrust of the film, however, is Anam’s trajectory from conventional if working German Turkish wife and mother to active, independent, liberated woman who eventually casts off her headscarf (following Mandy’s analysis of its significance as a sign of patriarchal subjugation). Not only does she heroically save her son’s life, she also demonstrates, more subversively, her ability to care for the destitute Mandy and her readiness to enter into a relationship with the sympathetic non-Turkish German policeman. Like the maternal heroines of Inch’Allah Sunday and Permission to Love, then, she opts to pursue the path of integration, open to the opportunities life in Europe affords her. Given that the three films address the need for migrant mothers to escape the restrictions imposed by community expectations, they run the risk of invoking problematic Eurocentric discourses which suggest that migrant women need to be ‘rescued’ from the oppressive patriarchal culture embodied by their extended families. Certainly, they tend to construct gender divisions according to Manichean oppositions. The figure of the migrant husband is either absent (in Permission to Love), authoritarian (in Inch’Allah Sunday) or, as in Anam, demonised on account of his infidelity and his hardhearted attitude toward his son. However, the authoritarian men (the father in Permission to Love, the husband in Inch’Allah Sunday) are also shown to be alienated and suffering and, eventually, capable of change. And in each case the migrant mother is able to ‘rescue’ herself, in part through contact with others outside the immediate migrant community, in part through the support of female friends and relatives (the two categories overlap). She is thus represented as a powerful agent of social change, whose intercultural and female friendships enable her not only to liberate herself but also to support her children’s aspirations towards integration within a wider multicultural community. The films’ narratives and relatively upbeat endings thus avoid the miserabilism often associated with what has been referred to as a ‘cinema of duty’ (Malik 1996).

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Saniye’s Lust, on the other hand, is about a Turkish German woman who is already well integrated but apparently unable to become a mother. The film opens with the wedding of Saniye, a clerk in a firm of architects in Berlin, to Tom, a German site manager for the same company, complete with Turkish music and dancing. The narrative then follows their life from ecstatic happiness to separation, the result of Saniye’s increasingly intense desire to get pregnant. Saniye gets on well both with her Turkish German family (to whom she speaks Turkish) and with her nonTurkish German friends. But, after she becomes aware of Tom’s infertility and enters the world of reproductive medicine, her passionate desire to have a baby progressively alienates everyone around her. She continues with in vitro fertilisation treatment without Tom’s permission, even after a miscarriage; by the time she gets pregnant, however, Tom has moved in with another woman. Saniye recovers from her despair and signs up for a training course at work. The film ends ambiguously, cutting from Tom looking at the ultrasound scans she has sent him of their unborn baby, to Saniye waiting. Saniye’s Lust goes further than the other three maternal narratives in constructing a Turkish German woman who is able to integrate unproblematically into German society, both in the workplace and in the home, and whose subsequent alienation and solitude is due to her desire to become a mother rather than to her ethnic background. Though Saniye’s desire may be partly attributable to the fact that in Turkish communities children are considered more important in the constitution of a happy family than in white Western communities, it is nevertheless a desire to which women across all cultures can relate. Günar thus uses the film to demonstrate the potential commonality of women’s experiences rather than the specificity of the experiences of migrant or diasporic women.11

Queer female subjectivity If most of the films discussed so far foreground homosocial female spaces, they also position their female protagonists as unproblematically heterosexual: though they may not conform to dominant images of subaltern migrant or diasporic women, they do not transgress sexual taboos. At the same time, films by migrant, diasporic and other film-makers in Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland that foreground representations of migrant or diasporic gay men often sideline or elide queer female subjectivities.12 This final section focuses on two films, Angelina Maccarone’s Fremde Haut/ Unveiled (Germany 2005) and Pratibha Parmar’s Nina’s Heavenly Delights (UK 2006), which provide cultural visibility for lesbian migrant or diasporic women. Their representations of inter-ethnic lesbian desire in a diasporic framework have the potential, as Gopinath points out, to unmask and destabilise the heternormative assumptions of both diasporic and national

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communities through their focus on ‘the impure, inauthentic, nonreproductive potential of the notion of diaspora’ (2005: 11). Angelina Maccarone’s first feature film, Alles wird gut/Everything Will Be Fine (co-written with Fatima El-Tahib, Germany 1998) had involved an African German woman. In Unveiled she centres on a displaced Iranian Muslim woman, Fariba, who is seeking asylum in Germany because she has been denounced as a lesbian by her lover’s husband, and faces imprisonment and worse if she is captured in Iran. The film’s starting point is a critique of the Iranian state’s violent, patriarchal attitudes towards women and notably its criminalisation of lesbianism. But, by tracing Fariba’s subsequent experiences in Germany, it goes on both to highlight ignorance and intolerance in German society and to take pleasure in the unsettling, joyful, non-normative, inter-ethnic love affair which develops between Fariba and Anne, the German woman she meets while working illegally in a Sauerkraut factory. Fariba’s position as a lesbian asylum seeker is complicated by her need to disguise her identity again, as she had in Iran. In the film’s opening sequence, when she hears the announcement that the plane has left Iranian airspace, she rushes to the toilet to remove her headscarf, block the airvent with it and smoke a cigarette, an assertion of a new-found freedom. However, the latter is short-lived; upon her arrival in Germany, she is held in the airport detention centre for trying to enter the country with forged documents, and her application for asylum is subsequently refused. She then makes the bold decision to assume the identity of fellow Iranian detainee Siamak, who has committed suicide. Fariba thus transforms herself from apparently Westernised woman into apparently straight male Siamak, at the cost of daily putting on a masculine mask (a play on perceived notions of lesbian ‘butchness’). Her successful performance of masculinity enables her to acquire a temporary permit to stay in Germany and a place in a refugee centre in the country; but it also underlines the trauma and loneliness of her situation and the difficulty she faces in developing close, intimate relationships. Blonde, feminine Anne, a straight single mother who is attracted to Siamak/Fariba, helps her escape immigration controls, tones down her German friends’ racist behaviour, and eventually – having guessed at her secret – joins her in a brief but tender, loving affair. The film’s utopian moment comes when Anne abandons her male German friends in favour of the excitement and pleasure of her transgressive, cross-cultural, lesbian relationship with Fariba. However, when Anne’s former boyfriend discovers Siamak’s ‘true’ gender and sexual identity and denounces her to the police, Fariba is immediately arrested and deported back to Iran. As the plane enters Iranian airspace, she makes the difficult decision to resume her identity as Siamak as the only way to escape persecution. Unveiled is a political film which uses the trope of the traumatised asylum seeker to protest at the persecution of lesbians in Iran. Its main focus,

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however, is on discourses of ethnic and sexual difference in Germany, showing how the racism Fariba experiences as an isolated foreigner in a provincial German community is compounded by the homophobia generated by the discovery of her cross-dressing and lesbianism. It thus constructs queer female subjectivity as a threat to traditional, heternormative, patriarchal society, which has to be eliminated. Nina’s Heavenly Delights takes a rather different perspective. Parmar’s previous documentary films had included Khush (1991), which gives a voice to diasporic Asian queers (see Otalvaro-Hormillosa 1999). In her first feature film, a romantic comedy set in Glasgow, she focuses on a lesbian British Asian woman, Nina, and her renegotiation of her place within her family and community on the death of her father. Nina had left home to avoid an arranged marriage, but now aspires to take over her father’s place, first in the family restaurant, The New Taj, then in the final of the TV cookery competition for ‘Best Curry in the West’. She aims to do so with the assistance of Lisa, the daughter of the new Scottish owner of the restaurant (who won it from her father as a gambling debt), before Lisa finally sells up; but she assumes that she must keep her sexual orientation, proscribed within traditional diasporic Asian society, a secret. Having fallen in love with Lisa, however, like Malika in Permission to Love, Nina discovers that she is not the only one with a secret: Lisa is a lesbian, too, Nina’s brother is married to a white Scottish girl and her little sister belongs to a Scottish dance troupe. Nina’s sexuality thus turns out to be just one of several taboo areas which divide the younger, more Westernised generation from the parents’ generation, the conservatism of which is embodied in the figure of Nina’s widowed mother, who endorses the principle of arranged marriages and ostensibly believes in duty over love. Eventually, however, when the mother is confronted with Nina’s feelings for Lisa and realises that Nina needs her approval if she and Lisa are to triumph in the curry competition, she reveals her own longstanding, transgressive love for family friend Raj. Nina and Lisa’s success in the competition thus becomes the occasion for all her surprised children to ‘come out’, and for her, too, to get together with Raj. Nina’s Heavenly Delights is firmly set within the well-established, Englishspeaking diasporic Glasgow Asian community, its narrative punctuated by the cooking and eating of curries and news items from the community radio. But the community is one which, despite its fidelity to tradition, is open to outside influences and change. Nina’s best friend Bobbi is an openly gay Asian man who runs an all-male dance troupe, and whose drag queen performances are also woven into the narrative. And the final sequence takes the form of a Bollywood-style jazz and Scottish-inflected song-and-dance number which involves the entire cast. Thus, unlike Fariba and Anne’s brief lesbian liaison in Unveiled, Nina, Lisa and Bobbi’s queer sexuality acts as a positive catalyst for a wider freeing up of the community from its conventional mores, encouraging everyone to follow the

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Figure 8.4 Nina, Bobbi and Lisa’s queer sexuality leads to the celebration of difference in Nina’s Heavenly Delights (2006)

advice Nina’s father gave to his daughter when she was a child, namely ‘Go with your heart!’ Parmar thus offers a cheerful, utopian vision of the erosion of traditional diasporic Asian (and Scottish national) family values in favour of a different form of family, a tolerant, multicultural community in which everyone, heterosexual or homosexual, Scottish or Asian, is able to follow his or her heart within a fluid, tolerant, transnational space.

Conclusion The films discussed here, despite differences due to the specificity of their historic and geographical contexts, offer what Sujata Moorti describes as ‘a feminine mode’ of imagining diaspora (2003: 356). That is, they privilege the ways in which migrant and diasporic women negotiate between multiple cultural affiliations in domestic, intimate spaces, underlining the ways in which ‘processes of dislocation, affiliation and displacement’ are gendered (Moorti 2003: 357). Two films, Das Fräulein and Unveiled, depict individual women migrants whose experiences of deracination and homelessness are heightened because of the traumatic experiences that motivate their journeys. Unable to negotiate a permanent place in relation to either dominant or diasporic communities, they move on or are forced to return. The other seven focus on women within apparently settled diasporic communities and create spaces where they work through their troubled, transnational relationship to tradition, modernity and citizenship. All the films

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set in the present stress the importance of female independence through work, be it in the low-paid service sector (cleaning in Anam, working in bars, canteens or restaurants in Fig Tree Road, Permission to Love, Das Fräulein and Nina’s Heavenly Delights) or in agriculture (Unveiled); middleclass women who are students or teachers (Little Jerusalem) or who work in an architect’s office (Saniye’s Lust) are still the exception. And all of them, to a greater or lesser extent, destabilise the conventional distribution of gender roles and challenge traditional, patriarchal, diasporic discourses on women’s place within the community. Their heroines may not demonstrate the range of roles desired by Catherine Raissiguier, who asks for ‘alternative, complex, layered images of immigrant women, the single working mothers, the political organizers, the teachers, students and civil servants displaced by global economic forces’ (2003). But they forcefully counteract dominant imagery of migrant and diasporic women as passive victims, constructing strong, active female subjects whose largely homosocial affective ties enable them to forge visions of changing transnational, multicultural communities.

Notes 1. See Naficy (2001: 289–92) for a full list of features. 2. Migrants from France’s former colonies in the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia) also include harkis (Algerians who fought for France during the 1954–62 War of Independence) and those escaping the Algerian civil war of the 1990s (see Hargreaves 2008). 3. It is worth noting that the French film industry has a long history of funding films by non-French film-makers (see Jäckel in this volume), including women from Eastern Europe, such as Agnieszka Holland (Poland), and from North and subSaharan Africa, such as Yamina Bachir (Algeria) and Fanta Régina Nacro (Burkina Faso). However, these film-makers do not necessarily make films in France. 4. Anna Luif’s Madly in Love, a film about the love affair between a Tamil man and a European woman, was released in Switzerland in 2010. 5. Films in this category include Ayşe Polat’s Auslandstournee/Tour Abroad (Germany 2000) and En garde (Germany 2004) (though the Kurdish Turkish adolescent is the secondary rather than the primary protagonist in the latter film), Sülbiye Günar’s prize-winning television film Karamuk (Germany 2002), Gurinder Chadha’s international blockbuster Bend it like Beckham (UK 2002), Buket Alakus’s Eine andere Liga/Offside (Germany 2004), another film in which football provides a young ethnic minority woman with a sense of her cross-cultural identity, and Zakia Tahiri’s co-directed television film Pour l’amour de Dieu/For the Love of God (with Ahmed Bouchaala, France 2006). Marjane Satrapi’s award-winning animated film Persepolis (with Vincent Paronnaud, France 2007), based on her original graphic books, provides a critical perspective on her childhood in Iran, schooling in Austria and later exile in France. Other coming-of-age films featuring diasporic adolescent girls have been based on novels by diasporic women writers, for example Samia (France 2000, dir. Philippe Faucon) on Ils disent que je suis une beurette by Soraya Nini, and Anita and Me (UK 1996, dir. Metin Hüseyin) on the book of the same name by Meera Syal.

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6. The other four are Liria Begeja’s Change-moi ma vie/Change My Life (France 2001), Adaora Nwandu’s Rag Tag (UK/Nigeria 2006), Zaïda Ghorab-Volta’s Jeunesse dorée/ Golden Youth (France 2002; see Tarr 2005: 281–3) and Emily Atef’s Molly’s Way (Germany/Poland, 2005). The first two centre primarily on men, respectively Maghrebi male prostitutes in Paris and the gay romance between a West Indian and a Nigerian British youth (see Williams in this volume); the latter two focus on non-diasporic women, respectively French and Irish. Atef was born in Berlin and is half-French, half-Iranian. 7. According to an article in the Jerusalem Post (2006), from 2000 to 2005, 11,148 Jews made aliyah from France, with a 35-year high of 3,300 immigrants in 2005. 8. See, for example, Halbronn (2002). 9. Yahiaoui is a TV journalist whose work includes numerous reports on issues relating to minorities in the banlieue. 10. The film won the Golden Leopard at the 59th Locarno International Film Festival in 2006. 11. In email correspondence with Daniela Berghahn (13 May 2008), Günar acknowledges that she was strongly influenced by her producer in depicting Saniye as an integrated modern woman, in order to avoid clichés about Turkish women in Germany. In retrospect, she regrets not having made the story more ethnically specific. 12. Films by diasporic women film-makers addressing diasporic male homosexuality include Begeja’s Change My Life, Tahiri’s Origine contrôlée/Made in France (with Bouchaala, 2001; see Tarr 2005: 171–3) and Nwandu’s Rag Tag.

Works cited Castles, S. and M. J. Miller (2003) The Age of Migration. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Coklin, L. (2006) ‘Migrant Women: Corporeal Transgression and Cultural Border Crossings in Contemporary Cinema’, Abstract of unpublished paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, 12 October. Online. Available at: http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p113928_index.html (accessed 30 May 2008). Efionayi, D., J. M. Niederberger and P. Wanner (2005) ‘Switzerland Faces Common European Challenges’, in Migration Information Source: Fresh Thought, Authoritative Data, Global Reach, February. Online. Available at: http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?id=284 (accessed 9 June 2008). Eren, M. (2003) ‘Travelling Pictures from a Turkish Daughter: Seyhan Derin’s Ben annemin kiziyim/I’m My Mother’s Daughter’, in E. Rueschmann (ed.) Moving Pictures, Migrating Identities. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 39–54. Ford, P. (2004) ‘Anti-Semitism Rising, Jews in France Ponder Leaving’, Christian Science Monitor 22 June. Online. Available at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0622/ p01s03-woeu.html (accessed 30 May 2008). Fusco, C. (1995) ‘Black Filmmaking in Britain’s Workshop Section’, in M. T. Martin (ed.) Cinemas of the Black Diaspora: Diversity, Dependence and Oppositionality. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 305–17. Gopinath, G. (2005) Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Cultures. Durham, NC, London: Duke University Press.

Diasporic Women Film-Makers in Western Europe 195 Halbronn, J. (2002) ‘Le communautarisme dans tous ses états’, Hommes et Faits, 9 April 2002. Online. Available at: http://www.hommes-et-faits.com/edito/edito_08. htm (accessed 9 June 2008). Hargreaves, A. G. (2008 [1995]) Immigration, ‘Race’ and Ethnicity in Contemporary France. New York: Routledge. Jerusalem Post (2006) ‘Pourquoi est-ce que les Juifs français quittent la France?’ French edition, 12–18 September, 808, 19, in ‘Analyses Israel 03–10-2006’, The International Solidarity Movement. Online. Available at: http://www.ismfrance.org/news/article.p hp?id=5542&type=analyse&lesujet=Racisme (accessed 9 June 2008). Kalra, V. S., R. Kaur and J. Hutnyk (2005) Diaspora & Hybridity. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage. Malik, S. (1996) ‘Beyond “the Cinema of Duty”? The Pleasures of Hybridity: Black British Film of the 1980s and 1990s’, in A. Higson (ed.) Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema. London: Cassell, 202–15. Mercer, K. (ed.) (1988) Black Film, British Cinema. London: ICA. Moorti, S. (2003) ‘Desperately Seeking an Identity: Diasporic Cinema and the Articulation of Transnational Kinship’, International Journal of Cultural Studies, 6(3): 355–76. Naficy, H. (2001) An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press. Otalvaro-Hormillosa, S. (1999) ‘The Homeless Diaspora of Queer Asian Americans’, Social Justice 26(3). Online. Available at: http://www.devilbunny.org/social_justice. htm (accessed 30 May 2008). Raissiguier, C. (2003) ‘Troubling Mothers: Immigrant Women from Africa in France’, Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies 4. Online. Available at: http:// www.jendajournal.com/issue4/raissiguier.html (accessed 30 May 2008). Robins, K. (2007) ‘Transnational Cultural Policy and European Cosmopolitanism’, Cultural Politics 3(2): 147–74. Štaka, A. (2006) Das Fraulein: Presskit. Online. Available at: http://www.dasfraulein. ch (accessed 2 April 2008). Tarr, C. (2000) ‘Where Women Tread: Daughters and Mothers in Souviens-toi de moi and Sous les pieds des femmes’, in J. Freedman and C. Tarr (eds) Women, Immigration and Identities in France. Oxford, New York: Berg, 153–69. ——. (2005) Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France. Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press.

9 Queering the Diaspora James S. Williams

In a recent overview of queer migration scholarship, Eithne Luibhéid makes the crucial point that queer migration is at once a set of grounded processes involving heterogeneous social groups and a series of theoretical and social justice questions that implicate – but also extend beyond – migration and sexuality strictly defined, refusing in the process to attach to bodies in any strictly identarian manner (2008: 169).1 Yet queer migration scholarship is also directly informed by an understanding of sexuality as constructed within multiple and conflicting relations of power, including race, ethnicity, gender, class, citizenship and geopolitical location. For this reason it engages with histories and subjects that reflect both alienation from white gay communities and histories of multiple diasporas forged through colonialism and transnational capitalism. Much of the expanding and pioneering body of scholarship reveals that queer migrants comprise essentially ‘impossible’ subjects with unrepresentable histories that exceed existing categories, thereby requiring scholars to foreground and challenge regimes of power and knowledge that generate structures of impossibility where particular groups are concerned, and to re-examine how individuals negotiate them. Overlapping, palimpsestic histories of imperialism, invasion, investment, trade and political influence create ‘bridges for migration’ between and among nation states (Luibhéid 2008: 173).2 It is precisely because of this fact that scholars attend increasingly to contradictions, relationality and borders as contact zones, and to the construction of identities, communities, practices, hegemonies and alternatives linked to local, national, regional and transnational circuits. Yet, while the study of queer migration has clearly helped to advance general scholarship on the increasing emergence of multiple, hybrid sexual cultures, identities, identifications, practices and politics, it remains nevertheless largely tied to the North American context, where the LGBTQ migrant (i.e. Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender/Queer) typically finds himself/herself situated in the contradiction between the heteronormative social relations mandated for immigrants of colour by the individual state’s policies and the 196

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liberal state’s ideology of universal sexual freedom. Little research has yet been done on how these themes and questions manifest themselves in the very different context of the nation states of Europe, still less in cinematic terms. I would like, therefore, to consider here the Western European situation by taking some key gay/queer films produced recently within a range of national and ethnic traditions and analysing them in the light of important common themes, in particular nationhood, citizenship and community. While my initial point of focus will be Maghrebi French (beur) film, this chapter will also examine examples of German Turkish, Italian Brazilian and British black or Asian queer cinema. Of vital importance will be the need to understand how the different tendencies of gay/queer diasporic cinema correspond to the particular specificities of each national context, whether that be, for instance, the requirement of assimilation and a shared universalism ‘beyond’ difference, as in the French republican tradition; the inescapable weight of twentieth-century history on immigrant life in reunified Germany, which has only in the last few years formally recognised itself as a country of immigration; the ongoing confusion around immigration in Italy, which only experienced significant flows of migrants comparatively recently (from the 1980s on) and is now considered a ‘border country’, in particular by those fleeing North Africa; or finally, in the case of the United Kingdom, the politics of post-colonial multiculturalism versus nationalism and ingrained, class-bound racism. I will concentrate on films that negotiate a range of spaces, limits and borders (familial, social, sexual, geographical, political) and address directly or indirectly the complex links between formations of gender and sexuality and national or ethnic difference. As we shall see, in addition to the underlying themes of displacement, exile and dislocation they sustain varying narratives of freedom and desire, transformation and abjection. The cinema of directors classified as ‘transnational’ has been increasingly associated with exceptional cultural configurations, while the film-makers’ fluid geo-national position has been regarded as a guarantee against rigid, stereotypical systems of thought and cognition. My objective in this chapter, however, is to focus less on the cultural exceptions and the identity of the film-makers than on the cinematic paradigms established by the films themselves. Moreover, rather than simply searching for ‘positive’ images, I aim to assess how these films extend and inflect the notion of a ‘queer diaspora’, particularly concerning the representation of nationhood and citizenship. By approaching the films expressly on their own terms, I hope to avoid the potential risks of queer theory, which, in its utopian and universalising forms (including even the influential work of Judith Butler), can, as Joseph A. Massad has carefully argued, sometimes confuse sexual practice with identity. For, by failing to appreciate cultural formations whose ontological structure is not based on the hetero–homo binary, queer theory can end up forcibly ‘including’ those non-Europeans who are not actually either

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gay or lesbian into Western-defined notions of subjectivity and freedom (Massad 2007: 39–42). Alert to such dangers, I hope ultimately to establish some major points of convergence and divergence in contemporary queer film-making and so reveal its dynamic contribution to the core issues of diasporic Western European cinema.

‘Good’ citizen versus queer citizen To be both black or beur and queer in France has often rendered the subject doubly invisible, and the few representations of gay beur life that have been attempted in contemporary French cinema have usually been either merely tokenistic or clichéd. Mehdi Charef’s early groundbreaking Le Thé au harem d’Archimède/Tea in the Harem (1985) set a precedent of young male beurs from the banlieue engaging in ‘le petit bezness’ (i.e. sex work), or at least pretending to (here robbing unsuspecting male clients to obtain easy money).3 Charef’s follow-up Miss Mona (1987) featured a tormented, straight Maghrebi immigrant forced to work as a gay prostitute while at the same time forging a tender relationship with a transvestite gay French male, the eponymous ageing Mona (see Tarr 2005: 36–41). More recent examples of this tendency include Un fils/A Son (2003) by Amal Bedjaoui, about a male prostitute who is also a transvestite, and Jacques Nolot’s Avant que j’oublie/Before I Forget (2007), which stars Nolot himself in the main role as an older, HIV+ gay man who buys in interchangeable beur delivery boys-cum-prostitutes for quick blow jobs (which he performs). These films are emblematic of a larger trend within gay French cinema that treats fundamental aspects of gay beur experience as ultimately secondary to the main narrative interest. Examples include Gaël Morel’s otherwise fine portrayal of tormented masculinity and teenage love, À toute vitesse/Full Speed (1998), about Samir, a beur of Algerian descent, who sees his close friend Rick die and then tries to find a new male love, with tragic results. Samir corresponds to the Arab stereotype of both the isolated individual with overactive libido and the social deviant with a predisposition to crime and violence. Similarly, Morel’s later, homoerotically charged tale of three brothers, Le Clan/Three Dancing Slaves (2004), features a beur as the one openly gay character Hicham, whose desires for the youngest of the three brothers, Olivier, are quickly superseded by the latter’s desire for another white boy. Much the same occurs in Robert Salis’s Grande école (2004) with its subplot of the chance sexual relations between the upper-class protagonist Paul and a young handsome beur, Mécir. Such recurring portrayals fall depressingly in line with Cyril Collard’s Les Nuits fauves/ Savage Nights (1992), where the relationship between the bisexual white director Jean (Collard) and a young man of Spanish immigrant background, Samy (arguably a stand-in for a man of Maghrebi origin), is never accorded equal status with that between Jean and his white girlfriend Laura.4 As such, Savage Nights does no more than repeat the lesson of Collard’s earlier short,

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Alger la Blanche (1986), which charted the impossible relationship between a white adolescent (Jean) and a young beur (Farid) who eventually escapes to Algiers. In the last few years, however, there has been a concerted move to represent gay beur experience in France both more positively and with more differentiation. This is partly because there are a growing number of important Maghrebi French actors willing to play gay characters, notably Salim Kechiouche, Yasmine Belmadi and the award-winning star Sami Bouajila. In André Téchiné’s mainstream drama Les Témoins/The Witnesses (2007), for example, Bouajila plays the married beur police officer Mehdi who, in the Paris of 1983/4, and thus on the cusp of AIDS era, suddenly finds himself passionately attracted to a younger white man in a relationship that, for as long as it lasts (the young man is doomed to die from the virus), shares centre stage. Moreover, male characters from immigrant or ethnic minorities have become a common feature in the growing trend of French transvestite cinema. One thinks most obviously of Pigalle (1994, dir. Karim Dridi) and Change-moi ma vie/Change My Life (2001, dir. Liria Begeja), the latter about a young male transvestite prostitute consumed by drugs (Sami), who encounters by chance the older depressed white actress Nina, with whom he forms a close and mutually supportive emotional bond. Yet beur transvestite films also find a place in French cinema’s most popular genre, comedy. Chouchou (2002), directed by Merzak Allouache and starring the popular Jewish Moroccan comic actor Gad Elmaleh alongside bankable white stars such as Alain Chabat and Claude Brasseur, is a comedy dealing with immigration and gay lifestyle. The film recounts the misadventures of an Algerian cross-dresser and self-styled exile (Chouchou), who arrives one day from the Maghreb in a Paris suburb sans papiers and pursues his dream of becoming a woman. By placing a queered immigrant/post-colonial protagonist at the heart of the narrative, Allouache is attempting to turn the French comedy genre inside out. Indeed, as Will Higbee has argued, Chouchou, which attracted over three million spectators in France, is exemplary for using a popular genre to attract mainstream audiences while still maintaining a focus within the narrative on protagonists whose difference has the potential to challenge and subvert (2007: 90). Higbee makes the excellent point that, just like French beur directors, Allouache and his fellow Algerian émigré director Mahmoud Zemmouri pursue issues of displacement and identity in their films in order to challenge fixed, essentialist notions of cultural or national identity (2007: 89). Yet, despite its provocative start, Chouchou plays out as a rather reactionary film in the high camp tradition of Edouard Molinaro’s La Cage aux folles/Birds of a Feather (France/Italy 1978). For all its overt invocations of multicultural France (the working-class Parisian banlieue with multiracial choir, the mixed lay and Catholic congregation, the interracial gay club l’Apocalypse in Paris, the mixing of lower-class immigrant and white, high bourgeois worlds), the film culminates in the utterly safe

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narrative of a suburban Catholic marriage between Chouchou as ‘étranger’ and his upper-class French lover Stanislas de Latour-Maubourg (Chabat). In other words, the heterosexual limits of the genre are never transgressed. However mildly humorous and endearing, the film is ultimately as halfhearted as Chouchou’s rather lame miming of the signature song in the nightclub. A more progressive instance of the beur transvestite comedy is Origine contrôlée/Made in France (2001), directed by Ahmed Bouchaala and his wife Zakia Tahiri, a Moroccan actress now settled in France. It features a young, outspoken and occasionally violent beur called Youssef, the beautiful transvestite Algerian prostitute Sonia, and a straight, white, middle-class and quintessentially indigenous (‘de souche’) executive, Patrick, who gets mistaken for Ali Berrada, an illegal and transvestite Algerian immigrant, after a cross-dressing party. Unable to plead his case, Patrick suddenly finds himself being forcibly deported to Algeria. On the way to the airport, however, and still in high heels, a pink bolero and dress with fitted bosoms, he decides to escape with the likewise condemned Youssef and Sonia. While on the run in the Lyons area, Patrick falls in love with Sonia, who reveals herself to be a man seeking to become a transsexual. In a service station they learn that Patrick is suspected of murder, at which point the three return to Paris and give themselves up to the police. Patrick is eventually acquitted and the film ends with him saving his two friends at the airport. Although lacking in real dramatic suspense and certainly far-fetched in its construction of a new, ad hoc inter-ethnic family, Made in France is nevertheless an incisive social commentary on the widespread oppression and prejudices that exist in France. Indeed, it addresses head-on both sexual and racial stereotypes as well as the systemic racism of the authorities and justice system and the issue of ‘authentic’ French citizenship, along with its converse, deviancy. The only answer, the film suggests, is to play the system. Having learned that appearances – whether of gender or race – can be deceptive, Patrick finally manipulates the prejudice of police agents at the airport to persuade them that the travellers they see ‘who look like Arabs’ are in fact members of a terrorist group about to assassinate them if they do not release their prisoners, Youssef and Sonia. Yet the film leaves wide open the question of the ultimate destination of these characters: for Youssef possibly Algeria, since he wishes finally to engage with his roots; for Sonia probably Geneva, because she wants to obtain a sex-change operation. For all three, however, France would not appear to be an option. Tarik el hob/The Road to Love (2002) by the gay director Rémi Lange is a low-budget take on the road movie that works deliberately outside the comic dimensions of Origine Contrôlée. It charts a young man’s journey to self-recognition and sexual awakening as both gay and Arab in the explicit context of a queer Arab diaspora. Karim, an apparently straight university student of Algerian descent living in Paris, is inspired by an assignment

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to carry out a sociological quest to find gay Muslims. After several false starts he meets flight attendant Farid, with whom he goes to Marrakesh to video-document the homosexual practices of the Maghreb. The more the story enters into the traditions of Egypt and the Maghreb, the more Karim becomes the subject of his own film as well as the object of desire for Farid. The amiable Farid eventually offers him a gold ring of ‘marriage’ – the moment the gay ‘virgin’ Karim had clearly long been waiting for – and in the closing credits the two are seen dancing together in a romantic, celebratory manner. In foregrounding affirmative attitudes within Islam towards homosexuality, the film makes explicit reference to the Egyptian tradition of same-sex marriage between working-class Zegala men in the Siwa Oasis. The pair also visit Jean Genet’s tomb in Larache, where Karim reads a short biographical passage from Genet, used by Farid as a dedication in the book of homoerotic Persian poetry he had earlier given Karim (Le Vin, le vent, la vie by Abu-Nuwas). In it Genet describes his discovery of same-sex desire for young men in Greece and the Arab world, and thus he functions here, as in Savage Nights, as a benevolent queer paternal figure. (The film is also

Figure 9.1 Reading his girlfriend’s farewell letter, dreaming of his new man – Karim (Karim Tarek) in The Road to Love (2002)

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notable for the presence of Abdellah Taïa, the first openly gay autobiographical writer to be published in his home country of Morocco.) The Road to Love can seem at times a little plodding and predictable, yet what is significant here is that, as Denis Provencher puts it, Karim becomes the ‘bad’ French citizen since he turns to a model of sexual identity that does not seek to erase either queer or North African references to difference (2008: 58). This is to be directly contrasted with the eponymous character of another slightly earlier variation of the French gay road movie, Drôle de Félix/Adventures of Felix (2000), a commercially and critically successful film directed by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau. There, the mixed-race and HIV+ Félix is happily settled and integrated in the northern town of Dieppe with his long-term white partner. He decides one day to embark on a five-day journey hitch-hiking to Marseilles to track down his biological father, whom he has never met, and so rekindle his Maghrebi roots. We see at play here not only the necessary move away from one’s home city in order to achieve self-discovery, but also the trope of the return to one’s homeland, here codified as the Fatherland. The film is an account of the very different people, gay and straight, white and black/beur, that Félix meets along the way and who constitute for him a new, imagined form of French family (his ‘little brother’ in Chartres, his ‘grandmother’ in Brioude, his gay sexual ‘cousin’ in the Ardèche, etc). Félix remains the ‘good’ citizen because he does not display overt signs of ethnic or sexual difference (Provencher 2007: 48). Indeed, he is successfully discouraged by all the characters from looking for his real father, since they remind him that the road to acceptance, love and integration involves the ability to look inside himself and to establish familial-type connections with his compatriots (Félix eventually gives up on his search and heads off to Corsica on holiday with his boyfriend). As Provencher states, Félix is ultimately repositioned as part of a larger French family and national space based on the traditional republican values of liberté, égalité, fraternité that refuse to highlight – and indeed wilfully ignore – individual differences related to gender, class, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation (2007: 48). The question still remains to be answered, therefore, of how to become a fully-fledged French citizen with both representational rights and civic rights if one is both beur and openly queer. The much awaited Beurs appart’ (2007), the title of which plays phonetically on ‘beurs à part’ (i.e. ‘apart’ or ‘unique’), is a short from Lange’s expanding gay production company, Les Films de l’Ange. The film is attributed to the fictitious ‘L’Iskander’ and scripted by the noted young gay writer Hugo di Verdura. It offers a tantalising glimpse of the first explicitly self-defined gay beur space in French cinema, created by two young gay beurs who decide to leave the banlieue and achieve their dream of sharing an apartment in the city. For all its promise, however, the short fails as a romantic comedy because of its lame comic clichés and stereotypes, wooden dialogue and poor acting. It is also at times irritatingly coy and titillating with its half-naked cute boys

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and odd self-conscious references to French cinema. Actively exploiting pornographic iconography in its marketing, it relies on some of the narrative conventions of soft-core gay porn, such as purely functional establishing and bridging scenes and sequences revolving exclusively around narcissism. As such, it may be compared with beur porn websites and blog spots that revel in the rich linguistic folds of verlan (i.e. speaking backwards, or à l’envers) and actively reverse the derogatory insults of Sarkozy-speak, most notably ‘racaille’ (‘scum’), Nicolas Sarkozy’s notorious term for the youths of the cités when he was Minister of the Interior just days before the Paris riots of 2005. Racial and interracial gay porn in France is very clearly polarised and formalised, catering mainly to a white clientele and trading on the fantasy of enormously endowed tough immigrant thugs, the ‘lascars de la cité’, who are ready to be dominated by the white visitor with the financial capital to dominate (one such site proclaims: ‘Viens dominer les racailles de cité et devenir le maître de ces keums’ [= mecs (guys) in verlan]’ – ‘Come and dominate the scum of the estates and become their master’. This is sex tourism of the forbidden secret zones of the French urban ghettoes. A far more suggestive and far-reaching film about the complexity of gay beur experience, precisely because it is placed in a wider sociocultural context, is Wild Side (2004) by Sébastien Lifshitz. It puts into play three distinct stereotypes of marginality: a young beur hustler (Djamel), a Russian sans papiers (Mikhail) and a transsexual prostitute (Stéphanie). Lifshitz’s earlier films, such as Les Terres froides/Cold Lands (1999) and Les Corps ouverts (1998) (with Belmadi in the lead role as Rémi), had invoked the stereotype of a predatory Arab male sexuality in order to chip away at the archetype of dominant virility and so point to the vulnerability beneath the macho bravado (see Rees-Roberts 2007: 147). Wild Side focuses instead on Stéphanie’s return to the North to look after her dying mother, a journey that provokes flashbacks to her earlier childhood as a boy. Both Mikhail and Djamel come to visit her, and after her mother dies the three return to Paris wrapped around each other asleep in the train carriage with sunlight pouring in through the window. This is a utopian moment pregnant with the complex promise of a new form of commonality and community. Yet this is a decidedly post-romantic film and certainly offers no easy solutions. Djamel, who has left his birth family though still remains in contact with certain members, is lost and frustrated without the security of his new ‘family’. Mikhail suggests the three should live together in order to escape isolation and alienation, but the aspiration to what Nick Rees-Roberts terms ‘an oppositional “horizontal” mode of interpersonal commitment outside kinship’ has still to be realised (2007: 154). That said, this is a new hybrid form of romantic triangle that works in and through social and cultural difference and is based on mutual respect and care. Human identity is presented as at once fraternal and erotic, contingent and in flux, shared and communal. The deliberately undramatic style in which this idea is articulated – enigmatic, uncompromising and detached

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at times to the point of documentary objectivity – is also what makes it so compelling. It allows Wild Side to avoid the dangers of an ‘issue film’ and as such recalls Lifshitz’s earlier Presque rien/Come Undone (2000), a film centred around the male gaze and the exposed male body, where answers to the narrative are left deliberately lacking (the film reveals ‘almost nothing’ and goes, as it were, ‘nowhere’) and where the tone is engaged without being in any way histrionic.5 An obvious precedent for Wild Side, not simply on account of the extraordinary cinematography of Agnès Godard which it also features, is Claire Denis’s J’ai pas sommeil/I Can’t Sleep (1994). Inspired by the infamous case of the 1980s serial killer Thierry Paulin, a young gay immigrant from Martinique who was also an HIV+ drug-user and transvestite, the film takes place in the queer zones of Montmartre and juxtaposes interracial queer sexuality with immigration. Breaking with the form of the traditional mystery or serial killer film and denying any stable point of view (the film is composed of long uninterrupted takes, often at a slowed-down pace), Denis effectively de-dramatises the horrific violence perpetrated by Paulin, who is given here the androgynous first name ‘Camille’. Other stories are also interwoven into the principal narrative, such as that of Camille’s ‘good’ brother Théo, a jobbing musician. The overall effect is of a collage of marginalised people in the post-colonial metropolis: immigrants (Martinicans, Lithuanians, Russians) and social outsiders like gays. That said, there is no attempt by Denis to engage directly with Camille’s often volatile gay relationship with his white lover Raphaël. In fact, despite providing a powerful sense of exile and cultural displacement, especially with its rich musical soundtrack, I Can’t Sleep ultimately says very little about the lives of gay immigrants in France, who appear visibly alienated and alienating. Indeed, the film reads more as a defiant and provocative challenge by Denis to the

Figure 9.2 Listening and translating (Yasmine Belmadi, Edouard Nikitine, Stéphanie Michelini) – new ways of being in Wild Side (2004)

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rules of political correctness, driven at times by a rather disturbing and fetishising fascination for the bodies of black men. The same might also be argued of J’aimerais J’aimerais (2007) by the French–Gabonese singer and film-maker Jann Halexander, one of the rare instances in France of a film by an out-gay African director. This is a highly personal independent short about a marginalised black man (Halexander) falling in impossible love with a black Catholic deputy, Philistin de Valence, in the social and cultural outback of the Vendée. The outcome of this hyperstylised and mannered film (which also features Halexander’s own songs) is bleak and bloody, ending as it does in the wanton and brutal murder of the deputy. It is to be contrasted with another experimental short involving Halexander, this time only as actor, Statross le magnifique (2006), directed by Rémi Lange. This self-consciously light and voyeuristic exercise in gay style – a multi-ethnic, neo-Gothic fantasy outside space and time whose only serious political reference (to perceived anti-Semitism) is presented parodically – is packaged, as if in direct denial of Denis, as ‘Sexe ... Race ... Mort’. The results are no more advanced or liberating, however.

Gay homelands, or the lure of origins How does the ambivalent state of queer diasporic cinema in France compare with that produced in Germany? The most significant film in this area is Lola + Bilidikid (1998) by the Turkish director Kutluğ Ataman, about the lives of young Turks in Berlin’s gay and transvestite scene. Murat is a 17-year-old German Turkish gay man who is trying to come out in the tradition-bound confines of his immigrant family. He gets drawn into a new and fascinating world of cross-dressers, in particular his estranged older brother, the enigmatic Lola, reigning queen of the Turkish gay set and drag queen/cabaret performer appearing in a show called ironically ‘Die Gastarbeiterinnen’ (‘The Women Guest Workers’). Lola (whose name conjures up both Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Lola, West Germany 1981, and Josef von Sternberg’s Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel, Germany 1930) is herself involved in a confusing and combustive relationship with the macho gay hustler Bilidikid, who dreams of making her a ‘whole’ biological woman in order for their relationship to become ‘heterosexual’. This desire for ‘renaturalisation’ is constructed as a result of the recurring homophobia and normative sexuality that his family and the immediate environment of the diasporic community impose on him (see Kilicbay 2006: 109).6 Lola decides, however, to remain a drag queen and she suffers a tragic end: her murdered body is found floating in the Landwehr Canal (where the body of the Jewish activist Rosa Luxemburg was also dumped in 1919). Murat and Bilidikid end up wrongly taking revenge on a group of neo-Nazi thugs in the deserted space of the Olympic Stadium, an error for which Bilidikid pays with his own life. The identity of Lola’s murderer is finally

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Figure 9.3 The heterosexual imperative – Bilidikid (Erdal Yildiz) seducing Lola (Gandi Mukli) in Lola + Bilidikid (1998)

revealed (her closet elder brother, Osman), at which point Lola’s mother flees from the family apartment, closely followed by Murat. With its consistent and rather mawkish lurchings into melodrama, which detract from the sharp and often spiky camp humour, the film offers no way forward out of the entrenched homophobia and lingering xenophobia and racism of post-unification Germany, which is still haunted by fascism and the ghosts of former Empire. A subplot concerns the older and wealthy white German architect Friedrich and his domineering, racist, aristocratic mother, who tries to destroy her son’s relationship with a Turkish rent boy, Iskender. Lola’s abjected body is imprinted with the normative codes of a national identity that turns her into a scapegoat who has to be erased because of her ‘denaturalisation’ of both gender and national identity. The single unifying force in present-day Germany, it seems, is the remorseless pull of capitalism. The final ambiguous scene brings together two of Lola’s transvestite circle expressing their disgust with Berlin and bidding Germany farewell. However, upon suddenly retrieving a priceless brooch (thrown away earlier by Iskender after Friedrich’s mother had tried to buy him off with it), they resolve to hoard it as their taxi speeds on towards the Siegessäule (Victory Column), which was also pictured in the opening shots and thus frames – and encases – the film. Is life more positive when gay Turks are able to pass beyond the borders of Germany and return to the Motherland? Auslandstournee/Tour Abroad

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(2000), directed by Ayşe Polat, is another gay reworking of the European road movie that carries echoes of Wim Wenders’s Alice in den Städten/Alice in the Cities (West Germany 1974), in particular with its stopover at Wuppertal. It portrays the 42-year-old Turkish folk singer Zeki, whose name echoes that of Zeki Muren, a Turkish music star and pioneer of a successful queer/camp musical style. After touring Germany and other European countries for fifteen years, Zeki now journeys across Europe to Turkey in search of the mother of Senay, the 11-year-old daughter of a work colleague who has suddenly died. The search ultimately fails because Senay’s mother, who abandoned her when she was still a baby, is not prepared to take care of her daughter and runs away the moment she lays eyes on Senay. When Zeki finds himself in turn rejected by his own mother in Istanbul due to his long absence and the fact that he still remains unmarried, he decides to return to Germany with Senay and assume the role of affectionate foster-father. The nostalgia of a final return to one’s homeland has proved a false promise, and home will thus remain for Zeki and Senay an unfulfilled desire and fantasy. However, there is now the possibility of a new kind of found family, although this ambition represents for the moment more a gesture and statement of intent. Unlike in Adventures of Felix, there is no guarantee of what the new terms of family – and with it social integration within the new Europe – will actually involve. This leads us to another Euro-Turkish film that raises similar issues of nostalgia, motherland and identity but in an Italian context. Hamam/Steam/The Turkish Bath (Italy/Turkey/Spain 1996), directed by Ferzan Özpetek, tells the story of the dashing white middle-class architect Francesco who travels from Rome to Istanbul to sew up family business following the recent death of his estranged aunt.7 He discovers that his inheritance is a decaying Turkish bath (hamam) in the city’s old quarter. He is so taken by life in Istanbul and in particular that of his hosts (the family of his aunt’s servants) that he decides to stay and restore the hamam. From letters and friends’ accounts he discovers that his aunt was a remarkable and passionate woman whose insights and meditations uncannily reflect his own current emotional experience. He soon begins to lose his inhibitions and, although always aware of the family’s young daughter’s attraction to him, falls in love with Mehmet, the beautiful young son and custodian of the hamam, who ushers him into the sultry world of the Turkish baths, emblematic of men’s erotic love and desire for one another. When Francesco’s Italian wife and business partner Marta arrives in Istanbul to divorce him, she finds him much changed, ‘unbound’ and more ‘human’ (he now speaks Turkish and wears baggy pants), a fact consolidated by her discovery – at the same time as that of the viewer – of his physical intimacy with Mehmet. After violent disputes, the two willingly agree to separate. Yet, just after Marta leaves in a taxi for the airport, Francesco is killed by an anonymous thug presumably working for a powerful female property developer. The last frames of the film see Marta now

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herself installed in Istanbul and ensuring the female family line by presiding over the hamam. Such is the power and ultimately fatal noose of modernization, encoded as female in the film. Turkey is a land where visible desire between men appears fated to be destroyed. This subtle and sensual film, the first of its kind set in Turkey, is primarily about a man’s journey of self-discovery by recognising the influence of the past on the present. While it is certainly true that Francesco’s transcultural homoerotic experience hybridises him in such a way that he becomes open to bisexual desire, the film itself is more interested in the bounds and physical spaces of homosociality than in homosexuality. Indeed, no name is given to the men’s homoerotic desire, which takes place quite naturally in a society that is still sexually segregated. Elisabetta Girelli has rightly questioned whether Özpetek offers a ‘new’ point of view, since Hamam’s construction of Turkishness seems embedded in an essentially Orientalist discourse. The film conforms, after all, to a long male tradition of the Westerner ‘undressing himself’ sexually in the Orient, and its image of Turkishness, of which the hamam is the most potent symbol, rests on Western notions of Oriental difference, antiquity and alternative lifestyle (Girelli 2007: 24). Francesco’s discovery of his latent homosexuality is indissolubly linked to his embrace of Turkishness, thus aligning sexual and national Otherness in opposition to Italy’s supposed heterosexual norm. Girelli convincingly argues that Hamam’s treatment of Turkey is ultimately ambivalent, privileging Italian subjectivity while containing inside references to Turkish culture (the film, in fact, shows a variety of Turkish customs and ceremonies such as circumcision rites, a wedding, and a belly dancer in a restaurant) (2007: 35). Girelli is right to suggest that the film’s deployment of Orientalist fantasy has a political dimension, for it provides a means to preserve an image of difference in the face of levelling globalisation. Yet the film’s final image of a matriarchy that effectively will not brook the development of homoerotic desire into anything that might be construed as a gay identity is yet another clear warning of the dangers of any idealisation of one’s ‘natural’ homeland.8

Queering boundaries: The space of the in-between A very different and ultimately political perspective on queer diasporic life in Italy is provided by Princesa (Italy/Spain/France/UK/Germany 2002), directed by Henrique Goldman, about the life of the 19-year-old Brazilian transvestite Fernanda, who arrives in Milan to work as a prostitute under the name of Princesa in order to finance her sex-change operation. Using non-professional actors and actual transvestites, the film is a slow but moving individual account of a young transvestite’s wish to be ‘normal’ within Western European society.9 A quiet bourgeois life as a housewife is promised by Fernanda’s former client Gianni, with whom she falls in love and who agrees to divorce his current wife and pay for her operation. Yet Fernanda

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soon realises that this dream for stability is illusory, and she decides in the end to return to her former madam, Karin (also a transsexual), and resume her life as a prostitute with her ‘natural’ family on the outskirts of the city. This ending is not as negative as it may appear, however, for it also marks the triumphant self-affirmation of a queer character who has successfully negotiated her migrant status as ‘foreigner’ within Italy and who chooses of her own accord to occupy the space of the eternal ‘in-between’. The same is true of the film itself, which, in the sober manner of Wild Side, moves critically between drama and documentary and evacuates the voyeuristic gaze, replacing it with an intense, all-embracing and erotic vision. This is humane, urgent film-making of remarkable restraint and rigour, yet eight years on from its original release one wonders how its defiant story of queer migrant self-identity will fare in an Italy that, under new anti-immigration policies, is becoming increasingly intolerant of difference (most notably in the case of the Roma, whose camps around Rome and other major cities were threatened in 2008 with demolition). We turn finally to Britain. All began so well in 1985 with the groundbreaking My Beautiful Laundrette, directed by Stephen Frears from a script by Hanif Kureishi, which featured the brilliant interracial male seduction scene and kiss (the first ever on the big screen in the UK) between a young British-born Pakistani, Omar, and his white childhood friend Johnny. Frears’s inspired and provocative low-budget film playfully reworks an earlier 1960s tradition of social realism in British cinema in order to capture the many contradictions of the get-rich-quick 1980s when Thatcherism was in full steam (the

Figure 9.4 Fernanda (Ingrid de Souza) working the streets of Milan on her own terms in Princesa (2002)

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notorious – and later repealed – Section 28, which sought to control any attempt to ‘promote’ homosexuality in education, would be inserted in the 1988 Local Government Act). The film teases out with great sensitivity and humour the key threads of race, class and capital in the British social fabric. Omar’s wheeler-dealer uncle Nasser sums up the confusing post-industrial and post-colonial times very well when he declares: ‘In this damn country, which we hate and love, you can get anything you want.’ He sets Omar up with a run-down laundrette in South London and the instruction to turn it into a profit, which Omar (for whom success is defined by wealth) temporarily achieves with the help of Johnny, who is seeking to absolve himself of his previous life supporting the National Front. By revealing who does the wash and for whom, as well as what can and should not be washed, the laundrette functions as a concrete site of economic, social and sexual oppression, mobility, desire and potential equity. Watching the friendship between the two men develop against a backdrop of phobic bitterness and misunderstanding from family and friends, one feels the film is not just a statement of individual survival but also a confident belief in social change and cultural transformation.10 The exciting new era of queer cultural hybridity promised by My Beautiful Laundrette did not materialise, however, despite Isaac Julien’s ambitious independent feature made six years later, Young Soul Rebels (UK/France/ Germany/Spain 1991), which used the narrative premiss of the murder of a gay black man to explore interracial desire between white and African Caribbean men in Britain. This film is again geographically and historically specific, set in the soul music scene of London during the period of patriotic street parties celebrating the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in June 1977. Julien captures brilliantly the rise in overt forms of British nationalism at the time, notably of white skinhead thugs, as well as the endemic racism of the police, yet he is also attentive to the workings of racism and homophobia within the black community itself. The film fails to take off in its portrayal of gay (and lesbian) desire, however, and it is the platonic relationship between the two best friends and soul boys Caz and Chris – the first black and gay, the second straight and of mixed heritage – that finally prevails, rather than the relationship between Caz and his white punk lover Billibud. Although critically acclaimed, Young Soul Rebels was never a commercial success and still remains rarely seen outside the art-house circuit. Indeed, Frears’s much later film, Dirty Pretty Things (UK 2002), a drama about illegal immigrant life in London, which also features the black British actress Sophie Okonedo, reveals how far the social situation has deteriorated in its depiction of the fractures, alienation and exploitation in contemporary Britain with its increasing paranoia about homeland security. The film ends with Okwe, a Nigerian exile, and Senay, a Turkish Muslim refugee, having to part ways and escape the country – he for Lagos, she for New York, anywhere but here.

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Yet the tide could now be turning. Nina’s Heavenly Delights (2006), directed by Pratibha Parmar, is the first mainstream lesbian diaspora film produced in the United Kingdom. Set in Asian Glasgow and portraying the burgeoning love between the closet lesbian Indo-Scottish Nina Shah and her young white friend Lisa, this is a purposefully feel-good film which works within the genres of social and romantic comedy in order gently to subvert them. The love between the two women is encouraged throughout by Nina’s outgay childhood friend and Bollywood drag queen Bobbi. As Carrie Tarr states in the present volume, the film offers the cheerful, utopian vision of a ‘tolerant, multicultural community in which everyone, heterosexual or homosexual, Scottish or Asian, is able to follow his or her heart within a fluid, tolerant, transnational space’ (p. 192). Another exciting gay film that challenges gender and racial stereotypes, again directed by a woman, is Rag Tag (Nigeria/UK 2006), by the British Nigerian film-maker Adaora Nwandu. It follows the two black male childhood friends Rag and Tag, who finally recognise the real nature of their love for each other despite enormous pressure from Tag’s Nigerian Christian family. In this sense the film goes further than Young Soul Rebels in its portrayal of black gay sexuality and strikes hard against the bigotry and stereotypes of the effeminate ‘batty boy’ encouraged by both the West Indian and Nigerian communities, where homosexuality is often dismissed as simply a ‘white disease’ and where men are required to ‘reprazent’ certain aggressive male roles. Rag Tag is extremely reserved in its representation of desire, although this did not prevent its respectful snogging scene being heavily condemned in Nigeria, where part of the film takes place. Despite its formal roughness and occasional clunkiness (it was shot cheaply and quickly on digital video), Rag Tag is an energising, intimate and lyrical film that was shown to great acclaim at the 2007 London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. It is symptomatic, however, of the general timidity and lack of vision in British cinema when it comes to issues of race that the film has still not found a distributor for commercial release in the United Kingdom.

Towards a cinema of queer transvergence? This brief analysis of queer diasporic cinema produced within different Western European social and cultural traditions has revealed a set of recurring themes, most obviously the conflict and tensions between gender and nationhood and the quest for identity and self-affirmation in the face of continuing marginalisation, racism and homophobia in the new Europe. All the films discussed underline the consistent need for movement and mobility, whether literal (notably in the narrative of the road movie) or metaphorical (the processes of fantasy and the idealisation of new families and communities). The different characters are forced to confront loss and sacrifice in order to move forwards and achieve a new queer (im)migrant identity, yet this identity can never be named as such and demands continually to be reconceived

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and re-established. It also comes with no guarantee of citizenship. There is thus no fixed or final destination point to these films, but rather a virtual and always precarious state of being ‘in trans’ (transformation, transsexuality, transnationalism, etc). Wild Side and Princesa prove the most successful because they continually interrogate and challenge the very forms and presuppositions of conventional mainstream film-making by working through and against style and genre. Which is to say, queer immigrant cinema at its most radical is defined formally by resistance and self-resistance. How could it be otherwise when ‘queer’ itself is not a stable term or concept? Indeed, in the view of some scholars we have already moved into the ‘post-queer’ era on account of the imminent signs of the ‘end’ of homosexuality. Roger Celestin, Eliane DalMolin and Lawrence R. Schehr, for instance, argue that the notion of post-queer, albeit a vague one, is not analogous to the turn of the post-modern or the avatar of the post-human, it is totally consonant with them, structured in the same way through a rejection (over time and through historical and cultural change) of master discourses, a refusal of simple identificatory mechanisms and simplistic notions of belonging, another mark of différance from earlier discourses. (2008: 4–5) In the case of France they invoke ‘a French specificity that articulates postmodernity on its own terms and that has effects even in the articulation of postcolonial “post-queer” discourses of the contemporary writ large’ (Celestin et al. 2008: 5). By the same token, contemporary versions of the ‘post-queer’, in France and elsewhere in the West, are not at all exempt from the processes and products that come from globalisation and transnational capitalism associated with the United States (Celestin et al. 2008: 6).11 To conclude, I would argue further that, in order to develop and resist being flattened out by mainstream global culture, queer diasporic cinema needs to proliferate and reinvent itself by purposefully transforming its themes, genres, structures and associations, thereby creating more ‘impure’, hybrid forms and (to return to a term used at the beginning) ‘bridges of migration’ between different cultural traditions. To take the case of gay beur cinema, it will clearly need to be far more adventurous and engaged in its themes and practice of style and form if it is to overcome the deleterious effects of commercial gay beur porn and address. It needs to develop, for example, important new subjects such as the existence of lesbian sexuality and desire in the banlieue, a still taboo topic even in the rare films, such as Abdellatif Kechiche’s L’Esquive/Games of Love and Chance (2004), that actually feature active beurettes. But queer diasporic cinema would also have much to gain from operating within a more pan-European dimension. I am thinking here not so much of its circulation (queer cinema enjoys, after all, a strong international niche market) but rather of its very production. Drawing

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on the etymological richness of ‘queer’ (literally ‘athwart’, from the IndoEuropean root twerkw), one might imagine, for instance, new queer crossover forms between beur cinema and Turkish German cinema that reconfigure the boundaries of mainstream and independent cinema. Such a vision of cultural and ethnic commonality would certainly require active support from major European funding bodies as well as a strong commitment from distributors willing to take greater risks. Yet such an expanded and revitalised notion of the cinéma du métissage could make possible new liberatory forms of transnational queer cinema and realise the ‘cinema of transvergence’ called for by Will Higbee, that is, a strategy allowing for a more fluid negotiation between positions of centre and margin that is based on both difference and interconnectedness (2007: 90). The alternative is an increasingly programmatic genre – ‘queer diasporic cinema’ – that will have lost its international relevance and contestatory power even before it has had a chance to be properly seen and heard.

Notes 1. Luibhéid draws on the pioneering work of (among others) Patton and SanchezEppler (2000). 2. Luibhéid is citing here a term originally proposed by Saskia Sassen. 3. For an excellent account of Le Thé au harem d’Archimède which places it in the context of the development of beur and banlieue film-making, see Tarr (2005: 31–6 and passim). Tarr also co-edited the fine introduction to this new field, the special issue ‘Beur is Beautiful’ of Cineaste 33(1) (2007). 4. For an analysis of gender and race in Savage Nights as they relate to Jean’s reactive narcissism, see Williams and Rollet (1998). 5. For an analysis of the radical ‘almost nothingness’ of Come Undone in the light of Denis’s later film Beau travail/Good Work (1998), see Williams (2004). 6. For another discussion of the relations between transvestism, motherland and national identification in Turkish German film, see Clark (2006). 7. On Hamam see also Santaolalla in this volume, p. 166. 8. Özpetek’s subsequent film, Le Fate Ignoranti/The Ignorant Fairies (2001), sought to move beyond this blockage by portraying overtly gay life in present-day Rome with its Rainbow Coalition of queer outsiders, including a transsexual, a lesbian political refugee from Turkey and an AIDS sufferer. Yet the film actually ends up reinforcing the homosexual/heterosexual dichotomy and marginalising the potential of political subversion posed by this new community. Moreover, the invocation of the World Pride 2000 celebration in Rome in the closing credits turns this momentous event into a peripheral element. Thus, however wellintentioned, the film stands accused of depoliticising queer politics in the interests of safe, middle-class (and straight) entertainment. For an alternative view of The Ignorant Fairies which argues that the film revises familiar cinematic forms and identity formations, see Duncan (2007). 9. There are echoes here of Neil Jordan’s highly influential The Crying Game (UK/ Japan 1992), a thriller set against the Troubles in Northern Ireland that explores similar issues of nationality, sexuality and gender and features the black transsexual character Dil.

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10. For a powerful account of the film’s exploration of the paradoxical nature of ‘third space’ diaspora identifications and how these are informed by gender and class, see Pascual (2002). 11. For a provocative view of the current crisis within queer theory, see Nunokawa (2007).

Works cited Celestin, R., E. DalMolin and L. R. Schehr (2008) ‘Toward the French Post-Queer’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 12(1): 1–7. Clark, C. (2006) ‘Transculturation, Transe Sexuality, and Turkish Germany: Kutluğ Ataman’s Lola + Bilidikid’, German Life and Letters 59(4): 555–72. Duncan, D. (2007) ‘Stairway to Heaven: Ferzan Özpetek and the Revision of Italy’, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 5(1): 101–13. Girelli, E. (2007) ‘Transnational Orientalism: Ferzan Özpetek’s Turkish Dream in Hamam (1997)’, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 5(1): 23–38. Higbee, W. (2007) ‘Beyond the (Trans)national: Towards a Cinema of Transvergence in Postcolonial and Diasporic Francophone Cinema(s)’, Studies in French Cinema 7(2): 79–91. Kilicbay, B. (2006) ‘Impossible Crossings: Gender Melancholy in Lola + Bilidikid and Auslandstournee’, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 4(2): 105–15. Luibhéid, E. (2008) ‘Introduction: An Unruly Body of Scholarship’, GLQ 14(2/3): 169–90. Massad, J. A. (2007) Desiring Arabs. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Nunokawa, J. (2007) ‘Queer Theory: Postmortem’, South Atlantic Quarterly 106(3): 553–63. Pascual, M. C. (2002) ‘My Beautiful Laundrette: Hybrid “Identity” or the Paradox of Conflicting Identifications in “Third Space” Asian-British Cinema of the 1980s’, Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies 26: 59–70. Patton, C. and B. Sanchez-Eppler (2000) Queer Diasporas. Durham, NC, London: Duke University Press. Provencher, D. (2007) ‘Maghrebi-French Sexual Citizens: In and Out on the Big Screen’, Cineaste 33(1): 47–51. ——. (2008) ‘Tracing Sexual: Citizenship and Queerness in Drôle de Félix (2000) and Tarik el Hob (2001)’, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 12(1): 53–61. Rees-Roberts, N. (2007) ‘Down and Out: Immigrant Poverty and Queer Sexuality in Sébastien Lifshitz’s Wild Side (2004)’, Studies in French Cinema 7(2): 143–55. Tarr, C. (2005) Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Filmmaking in France. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Williams, J. S. (2004) ‘ “O Heave! O Heave away, Heave! O Heave!” Working through the Author in Beau Travail’, Journal of European Studies 34: 44–59. Williams, J. S. and B. Rollet (1998) ‘Visions of Excess: Filming/Writing the Gay Self in Collard’s Savage Nights’, in O. Heathcote, A. Hughes and J. S. Williams (eds) Gay Signatures: Gay and Lesbian Theory, Fiction and Film in France, 1945–1995. Oxford, New York: Berg, 193–208.

10 Sound Bridges: Transnational Mobility as Ironic Melodrama Deniz Göktürk

Sounds can be superimposed just like images. Contrast and similarity bring out deep, subconscious connections and resonances in meaning. Just like in images. Béla Balázs, Der Geist des Films (1930)1

Genre and irony In a memorable scene in his cross-Balkan road movie Im Juli/In July (Germany 2000), the director Fatih Akın cast himself as a gum-chewing, chess-playing customs officer at a makeshift Hungarian–Romanian border, who would not let his protagonist Daniel pass the toll-gate: ‘No passport, no Romania!’ At this moment, Daniel’s lost travel companion Juli surprisingly appears out of a little hut on the other side of the border. Their unexpected reunion culminates in a strange rite of passage. The border guard/director conducts a wedding ceremony at gunpoint, declares them married, and opens the toll-bar – not before acquiring Daniel’s vehicle as a ‘present’. In this absurdist enactment of border control, the director’s cameo appearance and mockery of his own role introduce a moment of authorial self-irony, implying a tongue-in-cheek complicity with an initiated audience. Such ironic moments have become a trademark for Hamburg-based Turkish German director Fatih Akın’s film style. For his award-winning film Gegen die Wand/ Head-On (Germany 2004), he also acted in a short cameo scene as a drug dealer in Istanbul, but he ultimately decided to cut the scene,2 as he wanted to avoid replicating the brief role that he had previously played in his debut feature Kurz und schmerzlos/Short Sharp Shock (Germany 1998). In the following, I will argue that dramatic irony in Head-On operates on a different level than authorial self-insertion. My focus will be on cinematic structure and form, on the play with genre conventions, and on the use of music, particularly on the enigmatic musical interludes, which Akın’s subsequent music documentary Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (Germany/Turkey 2005) further illuminates. 215

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Like their director, the characters in Head-On have multilocal affiliations and frequently travel across borders. They show little concern with problems of acculturation; instead they briskly defy social expectations and resist incorporation into any community. Head-On proposes a dynamic perspective on traffic in and out of a ‘Germany in Transit’ – fundamentally reshaped by transnational migration, European integration and economic globalisation (Göktürk et al. 2007). Turkish popular culture provides an equally important source of inspiration. The question whether Head-On is a German or a Turkish film is not of interest here, however, nor is the yellowpress scandal around the lead actress and her subsequent nose job, or the critique of stereotyping along the lines of how this film fails to present a true picture of Turks in Germany.3 Narrative structure as well as acting and staging in Head-On signal a self-confident mobility that transcends conventional migration stories of leaving home and arriving in a new land. The interchangeable use of German, Turkish and English underscores the sense that these characters/actors have multiple codes at their command. In the improvisational dialogue in a five-star hotel high above Istanbul, for example, the conversation between Cahit and Selma switches into English at some points, including the famous line ‘She gives me love’, borrowed from a 1978 Grateful Dead song. Already the article in the name of the hotel ‘The Marmara’, a real site and favourite meeting place at Taksim Square, signals that English is the language of international tourism and business. Along similar lines, Head-On’s critical and commercial success epitomises a new trend in European cinema, namely a shift of some transnational directors out of the niche of ‘exilic’ or ‘diasporic’ cinema, aptly described by Hamid Naficy as an ‘accented cinema’ (2001), into mainstream popular cinema or the international festival circuit.4 Head-On is genre cinema in the era of air travel, appropriating global pop music as well as locally specific references, along with Turkish, German and American conventions of melodrama. Historically, melodrama reaches back to late seventeenth-century Italian opera and eighteenth-century French theatre, where it marked the beginning of a more popular stage entertainment for the urban proletariat and bourgeoisie, competing with official theatres linked to the aristocracy. Departing from the formal rules of classical French tragedy, melodrama corresponded with a new post-revolutionary class-consciousness, where expressive excess served as a means to unsettle hierarchies. The definition of ‘melodrama’ in the Oxford English Dictionary (1989) highlights the important role of music in the theatrical roots of the genre: Originally: a stage play, usually romantic and sensational in plot, and interspersed with songs, in which the action is accompanied by orchestral music appropriate to the various situations. Later (as the musical element ceased to be regarded as essential): a play, film, or other dramatic piece

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characterised by exaggerated characters and a sensational plot intended to appeal to the emotions. Also in Music: a dramatic work, or a part of one, in which the dialogue is spoken over a musical accompaniment. Melos is the succession of musical tones constituting a melody. Consequently, Thomas Elsaesser, in his seminal article titled ‘Tales of Sound and Fury’, states that melodrama in cinema is about ‘putting melos into drama’ (1987: 50). His emphasis on ‘style and articulation’ is crucial for our context, as it helps us to resist the all-too-easy collapsing of actor and role, fiction and social reality – equations that are common in critical or celebratory approaches to migrant or minority cinema, where staged and enacted representations tend to be read as mimetically representative of the experience of a disenfranchised group. If we resist the assumption of social realism, Head-On can then be read as a rehabilitation of melodramatic form and structure by reviving the stage tradition of interspersing the dramatic action with musical performances.

Head-On: Music, interruption and time–space compression Head-On opens with music. As the title of the film appears, we hear a voice counting: ‘bir, iki, üç, dört’ (one, two, three, four). Music sets in along with the first image of the film: a medium long shot of an orchestra of six, facing the camera. The musicians, dressed in black suits with bow ties, are seated in a row on chairs, centred by a standing female singer in a red dress who sings about going down to the stream to watch the fish while being ignored by Saniye with her waving hair. The musicians are located on the northern shore of the Golden Horn with a view across the water of the Süleymaniye Mosque and the fire observation tower in Beyazıt (first built in 1749, today located on the grounds of Istanbul University), architectural landmarks which might be read as emblematic of the proximity of religious and secular spheres in Turkish society. Boats are arriving and departing on the opposite shore. Luxurious red carpets, arranged asymmetrically on top of each other as in a carpet shop, fully cover the ground the orchestra is set on and appear to extend beyond the frame. The carpets create a stage for the open-air performance of the ensemble and unsettle the opposition between indoors and outdoors, suggesting also a conflation of public and private spaces, a fusion between theatrical stages and ‘real’ locations. Three subsequent close-ups of lights switched on with a harsh sound follow immediately after this scene, drawing attention to light as the source of projected images, and setting an altogether different stage where Cahit is clearing away beer glasses after a concert. The abrupt cut and switch in music, mood and language unsettle the spectator’s sense of place and geographic orientation. Chances are that this drama will not adhere to classical unities of action, place, and time. Subsequently, Cahit drives against

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the wall that lends the film its German and Turkish titles: Gegen die Wand or Duvara Karşı. Despite the head-on collision, he is quickly resurrected in a psychiatric ward – the place where Cahit and Sibel meet. Their crazy love story begins with her proposal of a sham marriage contract, shortly after she set eyes on him and heard his Turkish name. Does Sibel, whose wrists are bandaged after attempted suicide, recognise a kindred spirit in this self-destructive punk wearing a neck support? Does he seem like the right choice on her libertine path because her family would accept him as a fellow-Turk? The startling first encounter leaves these questions open. Such comic moments add to a dynamic pace of plot and character development, especially in the first half of the film. If the performance of the orchestra only occurred once at the beginning of the film, we could take it as an overture, an enticing establishing shot of Istanbul, signalling from the start that this is the place where the film is headed. However, the same intriguing and enigmatic tableau, showing the musicians on the shore of the Golden Horn, is repeated five more times at different points in Head-On, with the exact same framing of the orchestra, although in changing light, indicating different times of the day. The dramatic action spans at least four years, guessing by the age of the child at the end, but the six framing and interlude performances appear to occur within one day, adhering to a different logic of unity in place and time. While the camera remains static in these inserted sequences, the orchestra’s performance varies.

Figure 10.1

Musical interludes in Head-On (2004)

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The fourth interlude, a short clarinet solo by Selim Sesler with some orchestral accompaniment, conveys temporal and spatial transition in a highly condensed fashion, namely Sibel’s journey from Hamburg to Istanbul. The fifth orchestral interlude, which follows when Sibel has hit rock bottom, picks up on the same clarinet solo and parallels the fluid transition between Istanbul and Hamburg. At the beginning of the sequence, Sibel is lying on the street in the foetal position, badly beaten up and stabbed. Sesler’s clarinet sets in for an ‘ağır roman’ (slow Roma melody), with perfect synchronisation, just at the moment when light hits her bloody face. A cut reveals the source of the light – a taxi has stopped, and the driver gets out, pausing for a moment with a look of disbelief, before he discards his cigarette and starts to run – presumably to Sibel’s rescue. Without delving further into her fate at this highly dramatic point in the narrative, the next shot cuts back once again to the orchestra on the shore of the Golden Horn where Sesler is standing, playing his clarinet. The sky has turned a light pink, the shadows are growing longer, and the sun is about to set, signalling closure. The singer remains seated during this orchestral piece without lyrics. The next shot cuts to Cahit as he is leaving prison in Hamburg. The camera first captures him from behind, then at odd angles in two observational mirrors placed on the ceiling, and finally goes into a frontal close-up of his face, which is suddenly lit up with bright light as we hear the heavy door opening (and cutting into the other level of diegetic sound still continuing from the orchestra on the shore of the Golden Horn). The sudden lighting creates a visual match to the light that fell on Sibel’s face as she was lying in the street. A cut reveals Cahit’s friend Şerif, who is waiting for him on the other side of the street. The next cut back to Cahit’s face shows him lighting up with a smile. Subsequently, the sound switches to diegetic folk music playing in the kebab restaurant, where Şerif takes Cahit for a meal. Music is used in these sound bridges to forge a connection between the two separated lovers and seamlessly stitch together their different locations. The interludes thus audiovisually enact the experience of ‘time-space compression’, which, according to cultural geographer David Harvey (1990) is a central feature of our technologically mediated postmodern world. Particularly in these two instrumental sequences, Alexander Hacke’s sound recording increasingly foregrounds its electronic manipulation and mediation of the orchestra. As the film progresses, their tunes sound increasingly synthesised with echo, adding to an eerie distancing effect. The fourth and fifth orchestral interludes are masterpieces in narrative economy, each only about one minute long. In both sequences, sound continues across two shots that depict action in different places, thus providing a transition between two scenes. Sesler’s clarinet sets in before the image of the orchestra appears on the screen and continues into the next scene. But at this point we already know where the music is coming from. The brief

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Figure 10.2

Wedding in Hamburg: Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) and Cahit (Birol Ünel)

Figure 10.3

Brief reunion in Istanbul: Sibel (Sibel Kekilli) and Cahit (Birol Ünel)

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appearance of the orchestra signals an ironic interruption, a different level of awareness, inviting the spectator to step out of the illusionist enactment of the personalised story. In Thomas Elsaesser’s words: irony or pathos, [...] both in tragedy and melodrama is the response to recognition of different levels of awareness. Irony privileges the spectator vis-à-vis the protagonists, for he registers the difference from a superior position. [...] highly emotional situations are underplayed to present an ironic discontinuity of feeling or a qualitative difference in intensity, usually visualised in terms of spatial distance and separation. (1987: 66) Some reviewers have described the effect of the musical interludes in Head-On as Brechtian, a reference that also serves to establish Akın as a successor to Fassbinder in reconfiguring melodrama (Suner 2005). While I agree that the interruptions have the effect of distancing the spectator and inviting him/her to reflect on the dramatic action, I would also like to suggest two other frames of reference here. One is the music video aesthetic, globally popularised by MTV. Many of the songs in the soundtrack of Head-On were previously released not only as singles, but also as memorable music videos, self-contained short films, which have become highly influential for filmmakers of Fatih Akın’s generation. Some sequences in his film could be seen as an appropriation and re-illustration of classics of pop music, for example in the scene where Sibel is riding on the merry-go-round to Wendy Rene’s 1964 song ‘After Laughter (Comes Tears)’. Another complementary source of inspiration for the aesthetic of switches and inserts might be Indian cinema, aptly described by Lalitha Gopalan as a Cinema of Interruptions (2002), where the dramatic action is frequently interspersed with song-and-dance sequences that provide emotional relief, and underscore or counterpoint the narrative. It is in this sense that Head-On evolves as an ironic melodrama. The fusion of strategic distancing and emotional underscoring becomes especially evident in the interludes, which interrupt the excessive mobility of the dramatic action with static shots that allow contemplative moments. The direct address of the musicians introduces a different mode of performance by actors who stand in no relation to the dramatic fiction. Throughout the film, music is used very pointedly, reaching from major international hits such as Depeche Mode’s ‘I Feel You’ and Sisters of Mercy’s ‘Temple of Love’ to pieces by Turkish stars such as Sultana’s ‘Kaymak’, Sezen Aksu’s ‘Yine mi Çiçek’, Mercan Dede’s ‘Nar-I-Ney’ and Orhan Gencebay’s ‘Dönmeyen Yıllar’. This soundtrack underscores the emotions of the characters and generates affective responses in the spectator, comparable to the ways music was used in classical Hollywood melodramas of the 1950s and 1960s. In the orchestral interludes, however, the recurring frontal arrangement of the

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orchestra playing diegetic music breaks up conventions of mimetic realism. By putting the orchestra on the screen and showing us the source of the music, Akın stages and exposes the apparatus of melodrama. The repeated interruption of the linear narrative by the same tableau with significant variations reminds the viewer of the staged nature of the film as spectacle and provides a sense of distance and elevation onto another, maybe more universal, plane. Suspense is momentarily suspended, and the audience is put into a position of cosmic irony – as in Greek mythology when the fates amuse themselves by watching the mortals. But, of course, the spectators are mortal, too. The sixth and last piece played by Sesler’s orchestra sets in at the end of the film, as we see Cahit’s face from the outside of the bus that is pulling out of the station. Cahit is leaving Istanbul on his way south to Mersin alone because Sibel did not join him at the bus station. Whether he will settle at his birthplace or continue his journey is another question – the film as a whole does not support any reading of this scene in terms of going back to his roots.5 As the bus pulls out to the road, the voice of the singer sets in for one last time. The song addresses loss and longing: ‘I lost my love, blinded be my enemies, I am in despair, let the mountains be happy.’ The sun has set. The orchestra stands up, bows. The show is over. Has the audience watched a film with orchestral interludes, or a concert with cinematic inserts? The film cuts to the credits, accompanied by the closing song, a cover of Talk Talk’s 1986 hit ‘Life’s What You Make It’, performed by the Hamburg-based band Zinoba. This cover version was first introduced diegetically earlier on in the film when Cahit was sitting in the lobby of the Büyük Londra Hotel, waiting for Sibel to call, playing this tune on the piano. In both scenes, the idea of agency and free will claimed in ‘Life’s What You Make It’ serves as an ironic counterpoint to Cahit’s passive condition. The film has offered the spectator a few glimpses of these two people’s lives; their meeting, their sham wedding, their unintended love, their separation, their reunion and their subsequent parting. At the end, the spectator is invited to zoom out mentally from absorption in the enacted personalised story, and remember that there are many more stories out there – for those who migrate and those who stay put. The last shot of Sibel in particular, as she packs her suitcase and then sits down to stay in a small room, encapsulates the ambivalences of a mobile and a settled life, the ultimately irresolvable tension between desire, which drives perpetual movement, and responsibility, which requires at least provisional grounding. Visually, the narrative does not reach any closure, no image of a happy family is assembled in one frame, and we merely hear the sound of a musical clock, which accompanies the soft-spoken voices of a man and a child playing in the background and carries over into the next scene at the bus station where Cahit is waiting.

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We understand that – at least momentarily – responsibility weighs in more heavily than desire, or perhaps desire has faded. Otherwise, the film’s ending remains open. ‘Life’s what you make it’ also picks up on the earlier conversation between Cahit and the well-meaning psychiatrist in the clinic who quotes a line from a song, allegedly by The The: ‘If you can’t change the world change your world.’ Cahit pronounces his superiority by claiming to own that record already. His dismissive response to the doctor’s culturalist assumptions about the beautiful meanings of Turkish names and his reformist suggestion of going to Africa as a developmental aid worker is a good example of talking back at institutional paternalism (Gökt ürk 2002: 248–56). As the patient concludes the conversation by declaring that it is, in fact, the doctor who is stark crazy, guest and host switch places and forcibly reconfigure their power dynamics. The irony of Cahit’s rebuttal resonates broadly with a younger post-migrant generation’s aversion to the patronising liberal rhetoric of multicultural relativism and integration, a critique that has been sharply articulated by the trans-ethnic activist network Kanak Attak since the mid-1990s. Their manifesto states: Kanak Attak also distances itself from a definition of the ‘political’ that naively suggests that all that is needed is ‘dialogue’ and the peaceful ‘cohabitation’ between Kanaks and the majority of society via the Day of the Foreign Fellow Citizen and displays of folk culture and humanistic campaigns. When the weather is good and the conscience is bad, liberal Germans decorate their cars with stickers with messages such as ‘Foreigners, never leave us alone with the Germans!’ Kanak Attak is not a friend of such multiculturalism. (in Göktürk et al. 2007: 261) Head-On stages a similar critique of multicultural benevolence, incidentally in a conversation on English pop music, implying that shared points of reference can be found in the realm of travelling tunes rather than selfcontained traditions.

Ağır Roman: Heavy novel, slow melody A further contextualisation of the music used in Head-On requires an explanation of the phrase ‘ağır roman’. When Cahit is arrested after accidentally killing Nico in a jealous bar fight, Sibel comes home and puts the soundtrack of the film Ağır Roman/Cholera Street (Turkey/Hungary/France 1997, dir. Mustafa Altıoklar) into the player. Her tears respond to the tune of ‘Ağla Sevdam’ (Cry My Love), evoking a cult phenomenon from Istanbul. The DVD of Head-On features this song even more prominently as the title tune for the menu. ‘Ağır roman’ can be translated in two ways: as ‘heavy novel’

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as well as ‘slow Roma (Gypsy) melody’. Cholera Street (the film’s English title) is based on a novel of the same title by Metin Kaçan (1990); it tells the love story of the prostitute Tina, characterised by her name and accent as a non-Muslim, Rum (Greek) citizen, and the barber’s son Salih, a young and sympathetic gangster. The story is set in Kolera Street in Dolapdere (in the lower parts of Beyoğlu) – a shady neighborhood known for its numerous Roma population as well as musical entertainment and prostitution. As depicted in the novel, inhaling paint thinner or nail polish affords momentary escapes in these poverty-ridden streets where knives are carried loose and death lurks around every corner. Incidentally, it is near these perilous alleys that Sibel in Head-On ends up smoking opium, getting raped, beaten and stabbed. In Cholera Street, the crazy love, passionate intensity and selfmutilation of the two main characters ends with both committing suicide. The language of the book and its heavy use of street slang emulate this subcultural milieu. The prominent use of gypsy music in the film Cholera Street (with several interspersed song-and-dance sequences featuring Balık Ayhan, playing his darbuka – goblet drum – on the street) is clearly a major source of inspiration for Head-On. In fact, it is most likely this film that Fatih Akın had in mind when he claimed, in a conversation with Feridun Zaimoğlu, that he draws the inspiration for the proximity of comedy and tragedy from Turkish cinema: ‘Tragedy is much more painful if there is an element of comedy’ (Zaimoğlu n.d.). This confirms Akın’s strategy of mode switches and interruptions, which provide the spectator with moments of diversion and relief, thus making melancholia and violence more bearable. In addition to the choice of setting and the use of sound, the non-sequential narration in some sequences of Cholera Street as well as the interruption and lyrical commentary provided by a chorus-like trio of poets (the director Mustafa Altıoklar playing one of them) constitute further formal correspondences with Head-On. The reference to Ağır Roman thus programmatically sums up the formula for Head-On – the fusion of a heavy novel and a slow Roma melody. Cholera Street, a Eurimages-funded co-production, presents itself a nostalgic restaging of Beyoğlu, which draws on an older tradition of melodrama in popular Turkish cinema of the 1960s and 1970s with its specific practices of dubbing and frontal staging rather than point-of-view shots. As Erdoğan states, ‘Yeşilçam was a hybrid cinema; it produced a cinematic discourse blending Hollywood-style realism with an unintentional Brechtian alienation effect’ (1998: 266). The oscillation ‘between non-illusionism and classical realism’, including a ‘flatness of the image’ reminiscent of the Turkish shadow play Karagöz (Erdoğan 2002, 235–6) is characteristic of production techniques and stylistic conventions of popular Turkish cinema. Head-On feeds on this tradition, mediated through the re-enactment of such conventions with new production values in Cholera Street.

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Figure 10.4

Film poster Cholera Street (1997)

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Global gypsies? In 2005, one year after Head-On, Fatih Akın completed a documentary about the diverse music scene in Istanbul, which played successfully in cinemas in Berlin and Istanbul, and in the summer of 2006 also opened in some theatres in New York and Los Angeles: Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul. This film can be read as a companion piece to Head-On and complements my analysis of the musical interludes. Crossing the Bridge captures the music scene of Istanbul through the narration and mediation of Alexander Hacke from the experimental band Die Einstürzenden Neubauten. Hacke had previously collaborated with Akın on the sound in Head-On. In Crossing the Bridge, he acts in front of the camera as a bass player and sound engineer who sets out to explore and gather the sound of the city. He records musical performances, comments on them in a voice-over that adopts the mode of a travelogue, and at times plays along with the bands, seemingly enjoying himself. The documentary presents a diverse cross-section of performers reaching from the hip-hopper Ceza to long-time screen heroes such as Orhan Gencebay, a virtuoso bağlama player and star of arabesk music, himself an icon of migration as he brought folk music to an urban setting (Stokes 1992). Aynur Doğan sings in Kurdish and powerfully fills the space of an old bathhouse with her voice. Crossing the Bridge introduces the performers of the interludes in Head-On as the Roma clarinetist Selim Sesler and his orchestra, consisting of friends and family members. His son Bülent Sesler plays the kanun, a kind of zither. They are filmed in their living room, chatting and performing together with the Canadian singer Brenna MacCrimmon, who talks about retrieving these ‘Roma songs’ from old records found in Bulgarian villages, compiling a selection to perform with Sesler, and recording them on a CD titled Karşılama in 1998. In the same year, she also organised a Canadian tour for the group. Crossing the Bridge pays belated tribute to Brenna MacCrimmon, who had not been credited in Head-On, although all the interlude songs were chosen from her compilation. The songs were re-recorded for Head-On, performed by the same ensemble, but with a different singer, Idil Üner, an actress from Hamburg, familiar from several recent Turkish German films, including the role of charming Melek in Akın’s In July.6 Another CD of Roma or ‘Gypsy’ music, co-produced by ethnomusicologist Sonia Seeman in 1999 by the same label as MacCrimmon’s Karşılama, focused on the ethnic and musical diversity in Selim Sesler’s hometown Keşan in Thrace (Seeman 1998 and 1999). Roma are numerous in this town near the Greek border; in Crossing the Bridge, Hacke claims that they constitute about two-thirds of the town’s population. Roma people in this border zone were initially relocated in the population exchanges of 1923–4 from the area around Thessalonica and brought their music with them. ‘Ağır roman’ and other kinds of Roma melodies are characterised by a 9/8 rhythm

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Figure 10.5

Film poster Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (2005)

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and typically performed by improvisation (doğaçlama) in a fasıl (drinking and playing session) (Duygulu 2006). Thracian ‘Gypsy music’ incorporates a rich mix of Turkish, Greek, Roma and Bulgarian influences. This music serves as a case in point to demonstrate the cross-Balkan mobility and the hybrid fusion of multi-ethnic influences at the core of what is commonly considered Turkish music or culture. In Head-On, the songs of Roma origin played by Roma performers in the interludes epitomise the mobile spirit of this melodrama. How are we supposed to read the subliminal representations of Roma in Head-On? Are they once again exoticised as vagrant figures and perpetual migrants, as a stand-in for the German Turks who have transcended ethnic identification? Throughout the history of cinema, gypsies on the screen have tended to fulfil the projective needs of settled folks (Iordanova 2001: 213–32). Music has been one of the markers of Gypsy identity ever since Franz Liszt praised the pure musicality, the depth of emotion, and the virtuosity of improvisation in the Gypsy fiddler (1859). In his study on ‘Gypsiness’ in music and film, David Malvinni (2004) argues convincingly that these ideas of natural musicality were inflected early on with discourses of nationalism. While Liszt claimed Gypsy music as Hungarian music, Béla Bartók contested these claims of authenticity by pointing out that Gypsy music originated in urban cafés and, unlike Hungarian peasant music, could not be considered true folk music (Malvinni 2004). Adorno picks up on this critique in his controversial essay ‘On Jazz’: The relationship between jazz and black people is similar to that between salon music and the wandering fiddle players whom it so firmly believes it has transcended – the gypsies. According to Bartók, the gypsies are supplied with this music by the cities; like commodity consumption itself, the manufacture [Herstellung] of jazz is also an urban phenomenon, and the skin of the black man functions as much as a coloristic effect as does the silver of the saxophone. (2002 [1936]: 477) Instead of taking offence at racist stereotyping, as many readers of Adorno’s essay do, we may want to consider that what is at stake here is the deconstruction of folklorist romanticisation, an interrogation of assumptions about what is commonly considered natural, primitive and traditional. Akın and his crew might be inclined to second Adorno in his resistance to staging ethnic and national identity in folkloristic guise. They included the Roma performers in Head-On and Crossing the Bridge in a celebration of diversity, emphasising the multi-ethnic mix within Turkish music. Unlike the magical realism with which Emir Kusturica renders the Gypsies in his films Dom za vesanje/Time of the Gypsies (Yugoslavia 1988) and Crna mačka, beli mačor/Black Cat White Cat (France/Germany/Yugoslavia 1998), however, Akın stages Selim Sesler and his orchestra not as exotic, folkloristic figures,

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but as distinctly urban musicians in costume who appear to most spectators at first glance to be indistinguishable from performers of classical Turkish music. Who is the Gypsy here, or how Turkish is it? Turkish music appears to be Gypsy music and vice versa. It is precisely this convergence of intertwined traditions that challenges any nation-based definition of music and, more generally, of culture. At a time when European integration has provided a platform for the articulation of minority identities in Turkey, Crossing the Bridge projects upon Istanbul a utopian vision of polyphonic fusion and contingent coexistence. This localised celebration of sonic hybridity emphatically transcends binaries of an enlightened, civilised West versus a pre-modern East, commonly claimed in the rhetoric of ‘the clash of civilizations,’ to quote a mantra that has tended to breed the conflict that it predicts (Huntington 1993). The film Crossing the Bridge might have been one little element in the larger process of image-making that led to the European Commission’s 2006 designation of Istanbul as the European Capital of Culture in 2010 (Göktürk et al. 2010). In a non-exoticist way, the Roma performers thus become desirable figures in a play on stereotypes and multiple ironies of identification. Incidentally, the French Algerian director Tony Gatlif, ‘the only well-known cineaste of Romani origin’ (Iordanova 2003), who presented Gypsy music as world music in his itinerant documentary Latcho Drom/Safe Journey (France 1993), decided to cast Birol Ünel in his latest film Transylvania (2006). Publicity material from the Cannes Film Festival describes Tchango (Birol Ünel) as ‘an enigmatic character, free, with no borders nor house, a man who speaks several languages with his own particular accent’. Perhaps it has become an appealing trajectory for migrant film-makers and actors to inscribe themselves into ‘the uniquely transnational phenomenon of the Gypsy films’ (Iordanova 2003). In a documentary titled We Have No War Songs (Netherlands 1995, dir. and prod. Izzy Abrahami and Erga Netz), one of the Reyes brothers, known as The Gypsy Kings, sums up the utopian idea of nomadic freedom associated with Gypsies in the popular imagination by pointing out their non-attachment to territory, flags or other symbols of nationalism: ‘Our songs are about love, and about joy. They are never about war.’ It is worth mentioning here that eight to ten million Roma constitute the largest minority in Europe, but due to their lack of territorial affiliation they rarely figure in the nation-bound rhetoric about immigration, integration and multiculturalism. Another film by Tony Gatlif, Gadjo Dilo/The Crazy Stranger (France 1997), which in many ways conforms to the standard formula of interracial melodrama, ‘a pure and spontaneous liaison between a Romani girl and a man from the main (“white”) ethnic group’ (Iordanova 2003), also complicates exoticist fantasies and ironically stages the role of music in ethnographic representations of gypsy culture. Stéphane travels to Romania in search of Gypsy music, specifically in search of the singer Nora Luca, who his father

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used to listen to. As he goes around asking for her and making people listen to his cassettes with recordings of her voice, he meets Izidor and winds up in his Gypsy village. Nora Luca is not found, but music abounds. Izidor turns out to be a virtuoso fiddler who plays at weddings and funerals, and beautiful Sabina, who initially behaves in a very prickly way, eventually reciprocates Stéphane’s passion and even sings a Nora Luca song for him. In the end, the village is destroyed in a pogrom, and the two of them find themselves on the road, most probably to France. Stéphane gets out of the car, and, in an act of iconoclasm (or rather audioclasm), destroys his cherished cassettes. He smashes and buries them at the roadside, thus performing a funeral for his own idealisation of Gypsy music. As he has seen the reality and found Sabina, he no longer needs his archive of inherited recorded memories – he opts to live for the present moment.7 The Crazy Stranger enacts a quest for pure authenticity, and tradition is bound to run into multiple mediations. As Brenna MacCrimmon points out in Crossing the Bridge, the Roma musicians told her that they had previously not really valued the music they played, until she came along as a stranger from afar who took a keen interest in their songs and learned to perform them. Alexander Hacke plays a comparable mediator role in Crossing the Bridge. In fact, the film as a whole provides an international stage for some previously unknown musicians alongside big stars who were only known to a Turkish audience. Subsequently, the music of many of these performers became readily available on CDs in stores across Istanbul and globally on the Internet.8 Through mediations of this kind, local diversity is revalorised in the realm of world music, world cinema and the global culture industry (Roberts 1998: 62–82). In this broader horizon, multilingualism and hybridity are not necessarily a result of recent migration to Western Europe, but can also grow out of much older regional histories of contact and circulation. As artists from migrant backgrounds, such as the director Fatih Akın, increasingly tap into global networks, they discover polyphonic diversity, borrowings and reinscriptions, not only in so-called host societies, but also at the heart of supposedly contained homelands.

Travelling tunes, moving bridges Migration is commonly framed as a monolinear narrative of leaving one’s home, surviving the hardships of a journey and settling in a new country. Consequently, the focus in social analysis and cultural policy has been on fitting migrants into the parameters of one nation state, either the ‘host’ country or the country of ‘origin’. Regimes of ethnicity and diversity tend to be underwritten with ethnocultural identifications about belonging to a nation of indigenous people who have some organic attachment to their land. The Berlin-based writer Zafer Şenocak, who publishes in both German and Turkish, distances himself from this territorial conception of identity

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in his essay ‘Beyond the Language of the Land’: ‘I am not in between, for I have lost my sense of direction’ (Şenocak 2000: 67). Decentred multidirectionality might indeed be a more appropriate constellation to capture the complex dynamics of circulation and mediation staged in Fatih Akın’s ironic melodrama Head-On and the companion music documentary Crossing the Bridge. Narratives of migration as loss of home, dislocation and suffering are reframed in these films by a multi-sited, cosmopolitan consciousness that destabilises the dichotomy between the native and foreign. To this ‘bird’s-eye view’ of the stranger (Simmel 1971 [1908]: 146), Heimat can appear as unfamiliar, both enticing and alienating, as Fremde. While institutions such as public broadcasting channels and film funding boards have tended to promote patronising disdain and victim talk in the representation of migrants, relying on preset assumptions of cultural difference, tradition and authenticity, cultural productions by transnational artists complicate the rhetoric of being trapped or lost ‘between two cultures’. Yoko Tawada, another translingual writer who has acquired star status in both German and Japanese national literature, claims: ‘I did not want to build bridges’ (1997: 416), refuting the logic of ties and hyphens, which implicitly reinstates separation. In his essay ‘The Bridge and the Door’, Georg Simmel pointed out already in 1909 that relating and separating always precondition each other – we can only relate things that we perceive as separate: Things must first be separate in order to be together. [...] The bridge becomes an aesthetic value not only because it in reality achieves the inter-relation of what is separate, and because it achieves practical purposes, it becomes an aesthetic value because it makes the interrelation immediately visible. The bridge encourages the eye to inter-relate parts of the landscape just as in practical reality it encourages bodies to relate with one another. (1994 [1909]: 408) Simmel’s relativist epistemology is germane to current discussions about cultural contact. His essay about sites and figures of transition – the bridge and the door – and their aesthetic value carries seeds of a dynamic conceptualisation of encounter, interaction and representation. Simmel’s focus on relativity, mobility and process in the idea of bridging resonates with my analysis of time–space compression and sonic fluidity in the musical interludes in Head-On, a film that imagines Europe as a space of proximities and entanglements, transcending territory-bound conceptions of national (German or Turkish) identities. The emphasis in the title Crossing the Bridge must therefore lie on the ‘crossing’ rather than on the ‘bridge’, on mobility and flux across borders. A bridge implies two stable shores. In a metaphoric sense, it posits distinct self-contained continents and cultures, Asia versus Europe, the East versus

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the West. While this binary rhetoric is picked up in several conversations with musicians throughout the film, it is repeatedly deconstructed by foregrounding the mix of musical influences, which make up the sound of the city. As a polyphonic portrait of Istanbul, Crossing the Bridge demonstrates the mediated production of vernacular specificity and the interdependencies between local stakes and global circuits in cinema and music. The medley of music in an improvisational fasıl, as in the performance of Selim Sesler and the other musicians in the pub in Keşan, embraces Balkanisation as fusion in a positive sense and transcends scenarios of ethnocultural tribalism. As the rhetoric of exclusive group formations has grown more virulent than ever over recent years, in Europe and elsewhere, learning to live in a state of ‘double occupancy’ and ‘mutual interference’ might be a way to avoid the dead end of identity politics (Elsaesser 2005: 108–30). The strategic interruption of dramatic conventions of empathy by moments of ironic distancing invites the spectator to continuously rethink his or her categories of identification and localisation. In ‘shifting landscapes’ (Christensen and Erdoğan 2008), travelling tunes may hold more promise than stable bridges.

Notes An earlier version of this chapter was published in Christensen and Erdoğan (2008: 153–71). Also D. Göktürk (2008) ‘Sound Bridges and Traveling Tunes’, in Congress Book, XVIIth International Congress of Aesthetics. Ankara: SANART, 423–36. 1. My translation with help from Rodney Livingstone. 2. The scene is nonetheless included as an extra on the DVD release of Head-On. 3. Documentary film-maker Hatice Ayten (n.d.) proposed a pointed feminist critique of stereotyping in the film and its reception. 4. Commercially speaking, Akın is the most successful among Turkish German filmmakers, and succeeds in raising the highest budgets (about 10 million Euro for Head-On.) Head-On was the fourth dramatic feature film he directed, and it was also the first German film in eighteen years to win the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival and at the European Film Awards. Akın’s critically acclaimed film stayed among the top twenty new releases in Germany between March and May 2004, attracting about 780,000 spectators in Germany, a figure that does not include international and DVD release. In the German box-office charts in 2004, Head-On was No. 50, No. 1 being the Star Trek spoof (T)Raumschiff Surprise (Dream/Space Ship Surprise), followed by 7 Zwerge – Männer Allein im Wald (Seven Dwarfs), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Shrek 2 and Der Untergang (Downfall). 5. See, however, Berghahn (2006) and Burns (2009), who both interpret Cahit’s return to Turkey as a journey of redemption. 6. In one scene of In July, Idil Üner sings a Turkish song to a captive audience on a beach in Hamburg. In his commentary on the DVD, the director claims that this musical interlude in the film was inspired by Indian cinema. 7. Dina Iordanova reads the ending of this film as a declaration of no return: ‘Back on the road, accompanied by Sabina, he [Stéphane] destroys his tapes and performs a ritual dance on top of them, thus erasing the link to the Western world to which he will not return. He will remain where he is, in the forlorn lands of Valachia, with the Roma’ (2001: 225).

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8. Aynur Doğan recently gave a concert at a Kurdish festival in San Francisco (Gilbert 2006).

Works cited Adorno, T. W. (1936) ‘On Jazz’, in T. W. Adorno, R. Leppert (trans.) (2002) Essays on Music. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ayten, H. (no date) ‘Was Sie schon immer über die Türken wissen wollten: Zur Rezeption des Films Gegen die Wand’, EPD Medien. Online. Available at: http://www. epd.de/medien/medien_index_27924.html (accessed 28 October 2008). Balázs, B. (2001 [1930]) Der Geist des Films. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Berghahn, D. (2006) ‘No Place Like Home: Or Impossible Homecomings in the Films of Fatih Akın’, New Cinemas 4(3): 141–57. Burns, R. (2009) ‘On the Streets and on the Road: Identity in Transit in TurkishGerman Travelogues on Screen’, Special Issue ‘Turkish German Dialogues on Screen’, ed. D. Berghahn, New Cinemas 7(1): 11–26. Christensen, M. and N. Erdoğan (eds) (2008) Shifting Landscapes: Film and Media in European Context. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Duygulu, M. (2006) Türkiye’de Çingene Müziği: Batı Grubu Romanlarında Müzik Kültürü. Istanbul: Pan. Elsaesser, T. (1987) ‘Tales of Sound and Fury’, in C. Gledhill (ed.) Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and Woman’s Film. London: British Film Institute, 43–69. ——. (2005) ‘Double Occupancy and Small Adjustments: Space, Place and Policy in the New European Cinema since the 1990s’, in European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 108–30. Erdoğan, N. (1998) ‘Narratives of Resistance: National Identity and Ambivalence in the Turkish Melodrama between 1965 and 1975’, Screen 39(3): 259–71. ——. (2002) ‘Mute Bodies, Disembodied Voices: Notes on Sound in Turkish Popular Cinema’, Screen 43(3): 233–49. Gilbert, A. (2006) ‘Kurdish Voice in a New World’, San Francisco Chronicle 17 September. Online. Available at: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/17/ PKGINL0HDF1.DTL (accessed 28 October 2008). Göktürk, D. (2002) ‘Beyond Paternalism: Turkish German Traffic in Cinema’, in T. Bergfelder, E. Carter and D. Göktürk (eds) The German Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute, 248–56. Göktürk, D., D. Gramling and A. Kaes (eds) (2007) Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration, 1955–2005. Berkeley: University of California Press. Göktürk, D., L. Soysal and I. Türeli (2010) Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Capital of Europe? London: Routledge. Gopalan, L. (2002) Cinema of Interruptions: Action Genres in Contemporary Indian Cinema. London: British Film Institute. Harvey, D. (1990) The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990. Huntington, S. P. (1993) ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Foreign Affairs 72(3): 22–49. Iordanova, D. (2001) Cinema of Flames: Balkan Film, Culture, and the Media. London: British Film Institute. ——. (2003) ‘Editorial’, Framework: Journal of Film and Media, Special Issue ‘Romanies and Cinematic Representation’, 44(2). Online. Available at: http://www.frameworkonline. com/Issue44/442editorial.html (accessed 15 January 2010). Kaçan, M. (1990) Ağır Roman. Istanbul: Metis.

234 Deniz Göktürk Kanak Attak (2007) ‘Manifesto’, in D. Göktürk, D. Gramling and A. Kaes (eds), D. Gramling (trans.) Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration 1955–2005. Berkeley: University of California Press, 261. Also available online at: http://www.kanak-attak. de/ka/about.html (accessed 28 October 2008). Liszt, F. (1859) Des Bohémiens et de leur Musique en Hongrie. Paris: Librairie Nouvelle. MacCrimmon, B. and S. Sesler (1998) Karşılama. Green Goat Recordings/Kalan Müzik CD 113. Malvinni, D. (2004) The Gypsy Caravan: From Real Roma to Imaginary Gypsies in Western Music and Film. New York, London: Routledge. Naficy, H. (2001) An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Roberts, M. (1998) ‘Baraka: World Cinema and Global Culture Industry’, Cinema Journal 37(3): 62–82. Seeman, S. T. (1998) Rumeli ve Türk Trakyasında Enstrümental ve Takım Gelenekleri. (Instrumental and Ensemble Traditions of Rumeli and Thrace). Karşılama. Liner notes. Green Goat Recordings/Kalan Müzik CD 113. Seeman, S. T. and S. Sesler (1999) Keşan’a giden yollar/Roads to Kesan Regional and Roma Music of Thrace. Kalan Müzik CD 154. Traditional Crossroads CD 80702-6001-2. Şenocak, Z. (2000) ‘Beyond the Language of the Land’, in Z. Şenocak, L. A. Adelson (trans.) Atlas of a Tropical Germany: Essays on Politics and Culture, 1990–1998. Lincoln, NE; London: University of Nebraska Press, 66–8. Simmel, G. (1908) ‘The Stranger’, in G. Simmel (D. N. Levine trans.) (1971) On Individuality and Social Forms. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 143–9. ——. (1994 [1909]) ‘The Bridge and the Door’ (M. Kaern, trans.) Qualitative Sociology 17(4): 397–413. Stokes, M. (1992) The Arabesk Debate: Music and Musicians in Modern Turkey. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Suner, A. (2005) ‘Dark Passion’, Sight & Sound 15(3): 18–21. Tawada, Y. (1997) ‘I Did Not Want to Build Bridges’, in D. Göktürk, D. Gramling and A. Kaes, D. Gramling (trans.) (2007) Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration 1955–2005. Berkeley: University of California Press, 416. Orig. (1997) ‘Ich wollte keine Brücke schlagen’, in Y. Tawada. Aber die Mandarinen müssen heute abend noch geraubt werden. Tübingen: Konkursbuch Verlag Claudia Gehrke. Zaimoğlu, F. (no date) ‘Der anstrengendste Film, den ich je gemacht habe ... Ein Gespräch zwischen Feridun Zaimoğlu und Fatih Akın über Gegen die Wand’, kino-zeit.de: Das Portal für Arthouse – Film und Kino. Online. Available at: http:// www.kino-zeit.de/filme/artikel/480_der-anstrengendste-film-den-ich-je-gemachthabe.html (accessed 28 October 2008).

11 Coming of Age in ‘the Hood’: The Diasporic Youth Film and Questions of Genre Daniela Berghahn

Since the mid-1980s there has been a surge of European films featuring the identity struggles of adolescents from ethnic minority backgrounds. They include British Asian films such as East Is East (1999, dir. Damien O’Donnell), Bend It Like Beckham (2002, dir. Gurinder Chadha), Anita and Me (2002, dir. Metin Hüseyin) and black British films such as Rage (1999, dir. Newton Aduaka), Bullet Boy (2004, dir. Saul Dibb) and the early precursor Pressure (1976, dir. Horace Ové). Turkish German features are Yasemin (1988, dir. Hark Bohm), Geschwister – Kardesler/Brothers and Sisters – Kardesler (1997, dir. Yüksel Yavuz), Aprilkinder/April Children (1998, dir. Yüksel Yavuz), Auslandstournee/Tour Abroad (2000, dir. Ayşe Polat) and Karamuk (2004, dir. Sülbiye Günar). Maghrebi French films include Le Thé au harem d’Archimède/Tea in the Harem (1985, dir. Mehdi Charef), Le Gone du chaâba/The Kid from the Chaaba (1998, dir. Christophe Ruggia), Le Ciel, les oiseaux ... et ta mère!/Boys on the Beach (1998, dir. Djamel Bensalah), La Squale/The Squale (2000, dir. Fabrice Genestal), Samia (2000, dir. Philippe Faucon), L’Esquive/Games of Love and Chance (2003, dir. Abdellatif Kechiche) and Le Grand voyage (2004, dir. Ismaël Ferroukhi). Considering a number of these films in more detail, this chapter applies a quintessentially American critical paradigm, genre criticism, to European films about diasporic youth and asks to what extent these films conform to the generic conventions of the ‘teenpic’ or ‘youth film’. What makes the diasporic youth film – in particular the coming-of-age film – different or unique and how does it contribute to the extension, renewal and hybridisation of the youth film genre? In answering this question it is necessary to take the issue of genre hybridity into account. Critically examining scholarly debates on the existence of ‘pure’ and ‘hybrid’ genres in the context of Hollywood cinema, Janet Staiger contends that the notion of genre hybridity does not apply to ‘the mixing of genres in post-Fordian Hollywood cinema’ because the intermixing of Hollywood genres is simply a ‘case of inbreeding’, whereby the generic components all stem from the same cultural context, that is, Western hegemonic 235

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culture. By contrast, and in line with the post-colonial understanding of hybridity and Bakhtin’s notion of the dialogic imagination, Staiger reserves the term ‘hybrid genres’ for ‘truly cross-cultural encounters’ (2003 [1997]): 196). Such hybrids ‘would be examples of films created by minority or subordinated groups that use genre mixing or genre parody to dialogue with or criticize the dominant’ (Staiger 2003 [1997]): 197). While these considerations are pertinent to the discussion of the diasporic coming-of-age narrative here, in so far as Staiger, too, adopts a Hollywoodcentric approach to genre and asks what ‘other’ or ‘World Cinemas’ have done to renew and invigorate established genres, recent research in the field of World Cinema has drawn attention to genres different from those of hegemonic Hollywood, which call existing genre classifications into question. Even though film-makers and scholars acknowledge that genre hybridisation is not a one-way cultural exchange whereby World Cinema conforms to Hollywood’s conventions (Ezra 2007), most genre criticism continues to assume a Hollywood-centric perspective – and this chapter is no exception. The imposition of a quintessentially American paradigm, however, appears legitimate, given that several of the migrant and diasporic film-makers under consideration here have acknowledged the inspiration they have drawn from Hollywood. Moreover, the teenpic has so far only been framed in the context of American cinema, which, therefore, provides the most appropriate basis for comparison.

The youth film Teenpics and the more broadly defined youth film emerged as a distinct genre in the 1950s when Hollywood recognised the purchasing power of the baby boom generation and began to cater to their particular interests.1 The term ‘teenpic’ conjures up classics such as The Wild One (1953, dir. Laslo Benedek), Rebel without a Cause (1955, dir. Nicholas Ray) and Blackboard Jungle (1955, dir. Richard Brooks). Yet these early examples are but one variant of the teenpic: mainstream social problem films which depict rebellious and transgressive youth and which are generally categorised as belonging to the juvenile delinquency subgenre. Teenage films are characterised by a number of fairly consistent generic conventions, such as the portrayal of adolescent protagonists, generational conflict and youthful rebellion. But, ever since the 1950s, successive generations have affected the emergence of new subgenres, including beach party, high school, rock ‘n’ roll and makeover films, teen comedies and psycho-slashers, to mention but a few. Given the thematic and stylistic variety of the teenpic, critics have not found it easy to define the genre, and considerable disagreement exists as to whether the teenpic is primarily defined by its target audience or by the characters it portrays. Thomas Doherty (2002) contends that the teenpic is primarily defined in terms of the age profile of its spectators, namely youth aged between 12 and

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20, and that films that cater to the ‘juve trade’ do not necessarily have to centre on adolescent protagonists. Timothy Shary, by contrast, who approaches the genre from the angle of a ‘social image researcher’ (2002: 258), includes only films that centre on protagonists aged between 12 and 20, that is, ‘the actual teen years as well as the traditionally recognised entrance into adolescence [...] as well as late adolescence and entry into the post-high school world’ (2002: 17). With the emergence of the ‘Generation X’, named after Douglas Coupland’s eponymous 1991 novel, adolescence (an ambiguous term that refers to the biological and social process of leaving childhood and entering adulthood) has become extended into the early twenties. According to Shary (2002: 19–25), sociological and psychological studies confirm that today’s youth enter adolescence earlier but take longer to grow up and assume adult responsibilities. Thus, by the end of the last millennium, the age demarcations of the youth film genre were extended to include films about the 20-something generation (King 2000a, b, Shary 2002: 21–2). More significant in the context of this book is the emergence of the ‘hood film’ in the 1990s at the hands of African American directors, a subgenre that centres on disenfranchised black youth in America’s urban ethnic ghettoes. It is another pertinent example of genre as process (Neale 2005) and generic hybridity, since hood films come, on the one hand, under the juvenile delinquency (‘J.D.’) subgenre of youth films, and, on the other hand, under black action films, while John Singleton’s Boyz ’n the Hood (USA 1991) and Allan and Albert Hughes’s Menace II Society (USA 1993) have also been referred to as coming-of-age films. They ‘detail the hardships of coming of age for their young protagonists [...] plac[ing] their narratives within the specific geographic boundaries of the hood’ (Massood 1996: 85; see also Reid 2000, Watkins 2002). The hood is demarcated by the precise coordinates of such ethnic minority neighbourhoods as South Central LA, Watts, Brooklyn and Harlem, which function more generally ‘as a metaphor for the African American experience’ (Massood 1996: 85). Even though the concept of the ‘hood’ is not directly transferable to the French banlieue and the multi-ethnic neighbourhoods of Berlin Kreuzberg, Hamburg-Altona or Southall in London, the ghettocentric imagination of the hood film and its use of hip hop and rap music has had a discernible influence on diasporic youth films such as La Haine/Hate (1995, dir. Mathieu Kassovitz), Raï (1995, dir. Thomas Gilou) and Hexagone (1994, dir. Malik Chibane) in France (Bluher 2001, Schroeder 2001), Kidulthood (2006, dir. Menhaj Huda) and Bullet Boy in Britain, and Kurz und schmerzlos/Short Sharp Shock (1998, dir. Fatih Akın) in Germany.

The diasporic youth film in Europe ‘That films about youth actually constitute a genre has only been recently identified in films studies’, Timothy Shary (2002: 16) notes. Since David Considine’s (1985) and Thomas Doherty’s (2002, originally 1988) pioneering

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studies, there has been much theorising about the generic corpus and evolution of the teenpic.2 However, with the notable exception of Shary and Seibel’s essay collection Youth Culture in Global Cinema (2007), studies generally centre on Hollywood cinema, whereas the European teenpic – if recognised at all as a genre – has not been considered in terms of the rules and norms that govern this rather heterogeneous group of films. This is due to a variety of factors. The study of European cinema has until relatively recently privileged issues of auteur and art cinema over popular cinema and, as a result, questions of genre have played a minor role. Admittedly, studies on European genre cinema exist (e.g. the German Heimatfilm, the Ealing comedies, the Italian spaghetti Western) but they tend to foreground discourses of nation over genre. Moreover, a transnational perspective is generally absent. This is certainly true with regard to the European youth film,3 which includes numerous famous instances that lend themselves to classification along the lines of Hollywood’s established subgenres: If (UK 1968, dir. Lindsay Anderson), Another Country (UK 1984, dir. Mark Kanievska), The History Boys (UK 2006, dir. Nicholas Hytner), Der junge Törless/The Young Törless (FRG 1966, dir. Volker Schlöndorff) and Das fliegende Klassenzimmer/ Flying Classroom (FRG 1954, dir. Kurt Hoffmann, remade in 1973 and 2003) can all be considered as the European counterpart of the high-school film; Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (FRG 1956, dir. Georg Tressler), Berlin – Ecke Schönhauser/Berlin Schönhauser Corner (GDR 1957, dir. Gerhard Klein), Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei/The Edukators (Germany 2004, dir. Hans Weingartner), many of the British angry young men films of the 1960s, such as Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960, dir. Karel Reisz), and the later Trainspotting (1996, dir. Danny Boyle), come under rebellious and delinquent youth films; coming-of-age narratives are also a staple of European cinema, with Les Quatre cents coups/400 Blows (France 1959, dir. François Truffaut), Le Souffle au coeur/Murmur of the Heart (France 1971, dir. Louis Malle), Diabolo menthe/ Peppermint Soda (France 1977, dir. Diane Kurys), La Petite voleuse/The Little Thief (France 1988, dir. Claude Miller), Kes (UK 1969, dir. Ken Loach) and Billy Elliot (UK 2000, dir. Stephen Daldry) being prominent examples. Yet, on the whole, European films about adolescence are not considered in terms of their generic properties but rather in relation to a particular auteur’s oeuvre or European film movement.4 The diasporic youth film may lend itself better to a generic framework because the corpus of films is more contained and more homogeneous, and there is already considerable discussion underway as to whether the banlieue film, portraying disaffected or delinquent youths on the multi-ethnic urban periphery, constitutes a genre in its own right (see Tarr 2005; Vincendeau 2005; Ruhe 2006; Higbee 2007). All diasporic youth films essentially reflect the experience of growing up in a culture that is different from one’s culture of origin. The majority of diasporic youth, whether resident in France, Britain or Germany (the national contexts under consideration in this

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chapter), are underprivileged in one form or another. These commonalities lend the diasporic youth films a transnational appeal. In fact, according to Gurinder Chadha, films about the experience of a particular community, such as the Indian diaspora, are really ‘about every diaspora, because the Indian experience reflects every other experience. That is why my films work internationally’ (Chadha in Korte and Sternberg 2004: 247). And what lies at the bottom of the international success of Bend It Like Beckham, a coming-of-age story set in a Sikh Indian family in Hounslow, Chadha argues, is that conflict and tension between parents and their teenage offspring ‘is not an exclusively Indian phenomenon, it can be found in every culture – black, white, brown, whatever’ (2004: 245). These considerations suggest that it is the universality of the experience portrayed in the diasporic youth film that allows these films to cross over from their ‘ethnic’ positioning to a generic one and that potentially lends them their mainstream appeal. This holds particularly true for some of the more recent productions, whereas early examples such as Horace Ové’s Pressure, Mehdi Charef’s Tea in the Harem and Hark Bohm’s Yasemin are pertinent examples of what has been labelled ‘the cinema of duty’, a social issue-based cinema with documentary–realist aesthetics and ‘firmly responsible in intention [... which] positions its subjects in direct relation to social crisis, and attempts to articulate “problems” and “solutions to problems” within a framework of centre and margin, white and non-white communities’ (Bailey cited in Malik 1996: 203–4). Contemporary diasporic youth films targeting mainstream audiences, by contrast, translate ‘otherness’ into ‘sameness’ and celebrate the pleasures of hybridity, as will be illustrated below. This is, however, not to say that these films have altogether abandoned a sense of political commitment. To a greater or lesser degree, they continue to address issues such as racism, inequality, culture clash and the search for identity in a culturally diverse context, yet they are no longer social problem films about the plight of troubled ethnic minority youth. While this dominant ethnic stereotype prevails in juvenile delinquency narratives, this is by no means the only plot type of diasporic youth films. Coming-of-age narratives and journeys of quest that depict adolescents in search of their cultural roots (see Berghahn 2006, Mazierska and Rascolari 2006) are also prominent and, frequently, these plot types intersect. In what follows, I shall concentrate on coming-ofage films depicting adolescents in black and Asian British, French Maghrebi and Turkish German contexts.

Coming-of-age films The literary precursor of coming-of-age films dates back to the late eighteenth-century German Bildungsroman (novel of formation or educational novel), with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1795/96) representing the prototype. The Bildungsroman,

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nowadays more loosely translated as a ‘novel about growing up’ (Swales 1978, Jeffers 2005), follows the development of a central character from childhood or adolescence into adulthood and traces his or, less frequently, her quest for identity. Early literary examples centre on young white men leaving home to embark on a journey, which would provide them with a variety of experiences, essential for the adolescent’s maturation and emancipation. The protagonist would eventually return home, where he would assume his role and position in society. This narrative paradigm has since been considerably modified, resulting in ever-changing adaptations of this literary genre, such as the female, the post-colonial, the queer and the black Bildungsroman (see LeSeur 1995, Stein 2004). Mark Stein imposes this Eurocentric literary paradigm on contemporary black and Asian British literature and chooses the term ‘novel of transformation’ in order to denote, on the one hand, the character formation of young black British protagonists who grow up in a space of ambivalent cultural attachments, and, on the other hand, ‘the transformation of British society and cultural institutions’ (2004: 22) through such literary works in which black Britons articulate their cultural identity and thereby assume a place in the public sphere. As one would expect, coming-of-age narratives in post-colonial literature and diasporic cinema share a number of distinctive features worth exploring in detail. However, bearing these correspondences in mind, I will return to my originally chosen generic blueprint, the American coming-of-age film and its reworking in the context of diasporic European cinema. Coming-of-age narratives occupy a central position in the oeuvre of diasporic film-makers, because many of these films are semi-autobiographical, reflecting in one form or another their creators’ own experience of growing up ‘in-between’ two cultures and their attempt to reconcile conflicting value systems and traditions.5 East Is East, Anita and Me, Tea in the Harem and Samia are all based loosely on their creators’ personal memories. And, like the Bildungsroman, they centre on the transition from childhood to adolescence or from adolescence to adulthood. In American coming-of-age narratives, this transition typically occurs as a result of a formative experience, such as falling in love, the first sexual encounter, the separation from or death of a loved one, or a rite of passage, such as a test of courage or graduation. Yet such experiences are of little importance in diasporic comingof-age films. What distinguishes coming-of-age films set in a multicultural milieu from those set in a milieu in which race and ethnicity are normalised – and thus invisible and, presumably, socially irrelevant – is that they revolve around their protagonists’ search for ethnic and cultural belonging. They frequently centre on pivotal moments in which the adolescent protagonist makes a choice between two cultures that will determine his or her adult identity. It is this pivotal moment that empowers the protagonist to move on to new shores at the end, in line with the generic conventions of the subgenre.6

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Given that coming-of-age films are by definition concerned with identity formation and that the family, as well as the peer group, function as the two most significant poles in this process, generational conflict is a staple plot device. In the diasporic coming-of-age film, conflict is usually linked with culture conflict because the two generations have different cultural and social attachments. The parents, in many cases first-generation immigrants who at the time of migration did not even anticipate staying for good in the host country, tend to have stronger ties to their home country than their children, who were born and brought up in the adopted country. Or, to use Paul Gilroy’s (1993) distinction: for the second- and third-generation migrants the ‘location of residence’ is identical with the ‘location of belonging’, but this is not the case for the parents, who experience a profound tension between these two locations and who usually wish to preserve their cultural traditions (religion, customs and language) in the location of residence. As a consequence, the two generations tend to be out of sync with regard to cultural assimilation. Frequently youths operate as mediators between cultural differences and seemingly irreconcilable ethnic dichotomies and thus function as tropes of hybridity in public discourse and popular culture (Ewing 2006: 274).

‘You’re tearing me apart’: Culture conflict as generation conflict in the family In the 1950s cult classic Rebel without a Cause, Jimmy Stark rebels in despair against the inadequate parenting he receives with the now famous outcry, ‘You’re tearing me apart.’ He longs for a suitable male role model, a firm hand like that of the policeman who knocks him out, and for parental consensus on how he is brought up. The film identifies the dysfunctional family as the chief cause of Jimmy’s problems, his delinquency and his despair. Similar family constellations are also at the root of teenage angst in diasporic coming-of-age films. In the case of adolescent boys, the absence or inadequacy of fathers is shown to result in juvenile delinquency, a point made abundantly and controversially clear in Boyz ’n the Hood (see Massood 1996, Bruzzi 2005: 162–9), and also reflected in Bullet Boy, in which a wellmeaning but ineffectual single mother is unable to prevent her eldest son Ricky from getting involved and eventually killed in black-on-black gun crime. Powerless to extract Ricky from his criminal peer group, his mother resorts to draconian measures: she evicts Ricky from home in order to give her younger son, 12-year-old Curtis, the chance to escape the vicious circle of gang crime, violence and retaliation. While these films, as well as Kidulthood, Wut/Rage (Germany 2006, dir. Züli Aladağ), Knallhart/Tough Enough (Germany 2006, dir. Detlev Buck), Raï and The Squale, are all to a greater or lesser degree concerned with the relationship between failing parents and criminalised youth, they do not depict

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Figure 11.1

Boyz ’n the Hood (USA 1991) – On the wrong track

Figure 11.2

Bullet Boy (UK 2004) – Ricky (Ashley Walters) about to be shot dead

families as the prime site for culture conflict. This thematic angle is more prominent in films dealing with the paternalistic constraint experienced by teenage girls. Yasemin, the first German film to centre on a Turkish teenager growing up in Germany, was made by the non-Turkish director Hark Bohm in 1988 and is a paradigmatic example. It tells the story of the title character, an 18-year-old Turkish greengrocer’s daughter in Hamburg. Yusuf, Yasemin’s originally nurturing and relatively open-minded father, turns into a despotic patriarch when his older daughter Emine cannot produce the required proof of her virginity after her wedding night and has, according to the

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social norms of rural Anatolia, brought shame upon the family. Upon realising that he cannot adequately ‘protect’ Yasemin’s honour from harmful Western influences in a country of ‘infidels’, he organises her instant deportation to Turkey. Cousin Dursun and Yasemin’s father take her to a remote place where Turkish men, who are supposed to arrange her onward journey to Turkey, are dancing around a camp fire, evoking clichéd depictions of gypsies as the exotic ‘other’. At the last minute, Yasemin’s German boyfriend Jan appears on his motorcycle and elopes with her. Although she has been ‘rescued’ from the oppressive rule of Turkish patriarchy, the film suggests, she mourns the loss of her family, and tears are streaming down her face as she holds on to Jan on the motorbike. As Deniz Göktürk (2000) and other critics of Yasemin have noted, the film adopts a highly problematic ideological stance by invoking a Manichaean cultural opposition, whereby the social norms of the West, such as a largely secular way of life, the right to self-determination and women’s equality, are pitted against the traditional values of Islamic societies, which are depicted as archaic and inhumane. According to cultural anthropologist Katherine Pratt Ewing, the culture clash that is reflected in particular in films about the plight of Turkish girls and women in Germany is not first and foremost a clash between an Islamic society and the liberal secular West, but one between rural and urban cultures. The kind of ‘village Islam’ practiced by Turkish diasporic communities is a corrupted form of Islam and more archaic in its practices than modern Islam (Ewing 2006: 279). Moreover, the culture conflict within the family is further intensified by the fact that the adolescent girls, born in the West, tend to welcome the opportunities available to them, whereas their first-generation migrant fathers work in lowpaid jobs and are frequently socially marginalised. By asserting their power within the family in a hyper-macho fashion, they are overcompensating for the sense of humiliation they experience outside the home. Thus female oppression is the result of a destabilised male identity (Ewing 2006). Samia illustrates Ewing’s argument in a Maghrebi French milieu. Samia is based on Soraya Nini’s semi-autobiographical novel Ils disent que je suis une beurette (1993) and directed by Philippe Faucon (a pied noir director).7 The film centres on the identity struggles of 15-year-old Samia, who grows up in the banlieue of Marseille, intensely oppressed by her eldest brother Yacine, who has been designated by his father to act as the head of the family while he is in hospital. Except for Samia’s older sister Amel, who runs away to live with a white Frenchman, the rest of the sisters are at the mercy of their brother. Yacine is a victim himself, unable to find employment in a society in which beurs do not enjoy the same kind of opportunities as their white French peers. To compensate for his powerlessness and marginalisation in society at large, Yacine rules despotically within the confines of his claustrophobic family home. With nothing else to do he polices his sisters’ every move to ‘protect their honour’ and enforces the traditional gender

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roles expected of Muslim girls and women through verbal abuse and physical violence. Not even his mother, herself a staunch supporter of Maghrebi traditions, dares challenge him. The film’s turning point occurs when the mother takes Samia and one of her sisters to a gynaecologist to have their virginity checked. Samia does not succumb to this humiliating examination and is, at last, successful in asserting her autonomy and dignity. Samia’s courage in turn strengthens her mother’s resolve to stand up to Yacine and to insist that her daughters will resume their schooling after their return from a holiday in Algeria. While the film ends with Samia and her mother and sisters on a big boat heading for Algeria, Nini’s novel ‘ends with the protagonist walking out on her family, having found her salvation through education’ (Tarr 2005: 123), conforming more closely to the conventional closure of coming-of-age narratives. Samia and her sisters vociferously rebel against the limitations imposed upon them by traditional Muslim social practice (subservience to male family members, confinement to the home, wearing traditional Maghrebi clothes, etc.), aspiring instead to the Western lifestyle they witness around them and which they perceive as liberating, despite the fact that they are on the margins of French society, as the film makes abundantly clear. The various references to racism and social injustice suffered by beurs lend the film a sense of political commitment that is downplayed in such upbeat Asian

Figure 11.3

Samia (France 2000) – Outside is France, in here is Algeria!

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British comedies as East Is East and Bend It Like Beckham, in which racism is depicted as a minor issue and one that has been overcome by the young generation. Even though Faucon’s film even-handedly depicts the shortcomings of the social spaces between which Samia negotiates her place in society, the film implicitly advocates her assimilation to a Western lifestyle. Her moments of greatest happiness are those when she dresses up in trendy, tight-fitting trousers and revealing dresses, or hangs out with her friends (all of whom are of Maghrebi heritage) at skateboarding ramps, sports grounds and a little cove by the sea, or when she dances either to Western pop music or, in an open-air venue, to fusion music, alongside a multicultural community of youths who move to the same hybridised tunes and rhythms.8 All of these moments occur outdoors, providing a stark contrast to the small flat in which three adults and eight brothers and sisters are crammed together amidst a collection of artefacts from the parents’ Algerian homeland. This spatial dichotomy between indoors and outdoors is made explicit in Samia when Yacine asserts his authority by saying: ‘This isn’t America. Outside is France, in here is Algeria!’ Samia shares its focus on oppressed teenage girls with a number of films, all of which are set in a cultural context in which Muslim fathers or, occasionally, older brothers, control the girls’ sexuality, which in traditional Islamic societies is crucially linked to the social identity of men. ‘Honourable behaviour’ means chastity before marriage as well as the acceptance of male supremacy. This explains the gender bias in the diasporic youth films under consideration here: while male adolescents are frequently typecast as delinquents, dealing in drugs, venting their aggression and frustration in acts of violence and gang crime, films about teenage girls tend to reinforce the binary opposition of a liberal and liberating Western culture which is contrasted with an oppressive backward Muslim culture, drawing on the common fantasy that victimised young women, ‘especially when young and beautiful, need to be rescued from their patriarchal community’ (Göktürk 2000: 69) by white Western young men.9

She’s All That: Hybrid identity formation and the post-ethnic family She’s All That (1999, dir. Robert Iscove) is the title of an American high-school makeover comedy, which follows the transformation of Laney, an average girl at a Californian high school, into a ‘Prom Queen’.10 The reference to She’s All That is made here not because I mean to suggest that the diasporic coming-of-age film follows the generic template of this particular teenpic, but in order to underscore that the essence of hybrid identity formation is ‘being all that’. In his essays ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’ and ‘Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities’, Stuart Hall defines hybrid identity

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formation in diaspora as a process of constant transformation and the adoption of multiple identities: The diaspora experience as I intend it here is defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of ‘identity’ which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity. Diaspora identities are those which are constantly producing and reproducing themselves anew through transformation and difference. (2005 [1990]: 244) And, with reference to the black and Asian British diaspora, Hall notes: Third generation young Black men and women know they come from the Caribbean, know that they are Black, know that they are British. They want to speak from all three identities. They are not prepared to give up any one of them. [...] They are all those identities together. (1993: 59, my emphasis). It is precisely this awareness of ‘being all that’ which drives the maturation plot of those diasporic coming-of-age films which prioritise discourses of hybridity over culture clash. The protagonists’ cultural hybridity or, to use David Hollinger’s term, ‘postethnicity’ is indicated by their free movement between different dress codes and languages. This code switching signals the adolescents’ ability to cross ethnic divides and cultural boundaries – an ability which often (but not always) distinguishes them from their parents. Without suggesting that hybrid identity and post-ethnicity are one and the same thing, I consider the concept of post-ethnicity particularly useful in the context of cinema because it lays stress on affiliation, a performative category, which lends itself to the investigation of how hybrid identities are actually performed in cinema. According to Hollinger, post-ethnicity, or, rather, a post-ethnic perspective, is based on the assumption that ‘the identities people assume are acquired largely through affiliation’ whereby the distinction between ‘prescribed and chosen’ is significant (Hollinger 2000: 7). Chosen or ‘voluntary’ affiliations allow the formation of new communities and identities in which descent and tradition (‘involuntary’ affiliations) are of no greater importance than those elective affinities that transcend ethnic and racial boundaries. In diasporic films, teenage girls in particular express their multiple cultural affiliations by alternating between ‘traditional’ items of clothing such as headscarves, the shalwar-qameez or saris, which they wear on important family occasions to comply with their parents’ expectations and/or to celebrate their heritage, and Western fashion when they are among their peers and away from home. Gurinder Chadha’s popular girl-power movie Bend It Like Beckham, a major British and international box office hit and so far the most successful

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diasporic youth film, illustrates how dress codes function as markers of hybrid identity. The film centres on 18-year-old Jess, of Punjabi Sikh origin, growing up in Hounslow, a West London suburb, and her white British friend Jules. Both teenage girls battle with their parents, who are reluctant to accept their daughters’ passion for football and their idolisation of football star David Beckham. Both girls face resistance in their families, but for Jess it is much harder to obtain parental consent to play in an all-women football team because in the context of the South Asian diaspora gender roles are rather more limiting for girls. Chadha’s successful attempt to universalise a coming-of-age story set in a British Asian milieu is crucially based around the argument that the process of growing up, which invariably involves generational conflict, is essentially the same for a white and an Asian British girl. The film establishes numerous correspondences between Jules’s and Jess’s domestic settings. Both girls’ mothers are worried about their daughters’ apparent lack of femininity which, crucially for the film’s humour, they define in culturally specific ways: Mrs Paxton is concerned about Jules’s androgynous appearance and would rather buy her a sexy push-up than a sports bra. In fact, she fears that Jess and Jules might have a lesbian relationship – a sexual orientation which is depicted as taboo in the white as well as the Asian British context.11 Mrs Bhamra, on the other hand, defines femininity in terms of modest dress

Figure 11.4 worlds

Bend It Like Beckham (2002) – Jess (Parminder Nagra), citizen of plural

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codes (she objects to Jess showing off her legs in soccer shorts) and female domestic skills, such as cooking a traditional Indian curry. Yet Jess is able to reconcile her parents’ expectations, that is, valuing her Indian origin, and the Westernised lifestyle she aspires to. There is a memorable scene which shows Jess in the locker room of her football club after a successful match. Jess is surrounded by her team in red and white sports gear, while she quickly changes from her soccer shorts into her richly embroidered red and gold sari, getting ready to return to her sister’s wedding ceremony, which she temporarily left in order to play at the all-important match. Whereas in Bend It Like Beckham Jess’s dress codes reflect her attachment to two cultures, in East Is East the non-Western dress code is depicted as spectacle and perceived as masquerade by the teenage protagonists. This is indicative of a sense of alienation from their father’s culture of origin. Early on in the film, Pakistan-born migrant George Khan dresses his eldest son, Nazir, in traditional wedding attire, complete with a ‘veil’ made out of gold tinsel, which hides his face. Rather ironically, and unbeknownst to his father, the feminising attire befits his queer identity and foreshadows his coming-out, which retrospectively explains his escape from the wedding ceremony. Similarly, Meenah, one of the seven children from the interracial marriage of George and his British wife Ella, puts on a sari when the Shah family from Bradford visit the Khans in Salford. This is a formal visit with a purpose: they have come to present their two unattractive daughters prior

Figure 11.5 East Is East (1999) – Nazir (Ian Aspinall) masquerading in traditional Pakistani wedding attire

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to the arranged marriage George envisages for his sons Tariq and Abdul. The problem as well as the main source of laughter in the film is that all but one of the seven Khan children have assumed a predominantly secular British identity. This explains why, for Meenah, wearing a sari is a form of masquerade, why the handsome Tariq rebels against the prospect of an arranged marriage with the provocative remark ‘I’m not marrying a fucking Paki’, and why his 12-year-old brother Sajid had earlier announced the arrival of the Shah family with their two brides-to-be shouting: ‘Mum, quick, the Pakis ’re here!’ The Khan family as a whole is a post-ethnic family and as such embodies the active and elective affiliations characteristic of hybrid identities. By having abandoned his first wife before migration and having married a British woman, George has embarked on a process of cultural assimilation that is irreversible. This explains why his offspring question their father’s moral integrity and boycott his attempt to subject them to the laws of Muslim patriarchy, be it a sausage-and-bacon-free diet or an arranged marriage. The film pokes fun at George Khan’s futile endeavours by ironically underscoring his own cultural hybridity: his business, a fish and chip shop, is a quintessentially British institution; he ‘forgot’ to have his youngest son Sajid circumcised and, whenever Ella offers him a cup of tea, he, rather symbolically, asks for half a cup. It is perhaps worth noting here that two recent coming-of-age films made by young Turkish German film-makers, Sülbiye Günar’s Karamuk and Züli Aladağ’s Elefantenherz/Elephant Heart (2002), invert this East–West direction of cultural identification still dominant in most narratives. In both films German teenage protagonists become attached to Turkish father figures who assume a protective and nurturing role in their lives. The Turkish father in Karamuk, in particular, is in effect a fantasy of cultural hybridity, fusing the German middle-class values of education, tolerance and material success with Turkish family values.12 Music is a staple ingredient of the teenpic – and the diasporic youth film is no exception. Popular tunes reflect the spirit of a generation, or, rather, of a particular youth (sub)culture and its musical tastes. Scenes on the dance floor feature prominently, and several of the diasporic comingof-age films considered here reflect this generic convention.13 Dancing to the same rhythms is presented as a unifying experience for ethnic minority and majority white youth. At the same time the protagonists’ musical tastes point towards their dominant cultural identification. While in East Is East the Khan brothers dance to the rhythms of Deep Purple and Jimmy Cliff at their local disco, in Karamuk Johanna and her Turkish friends dance to Turkish rap. The soundtracks of diasporic youth films almost invariably consist of a mixture of Western and World music, underscoring the cultural hybridity of the protagonists. Bend It Like Beckham makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that popular music travels both ways, from Britain to

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South Asia and vice versa, and that cultural hybridisation is a two-way process by rendering the 1980s British hit ‘The Power of Love’ in an Indian interpretation by Amar Mohile, instead of its familiar versions by Jennifer Rush (1984) and Celine Dion (1993). Other strategies that emphasise the teenagers’ voluntary cultural affiliations involve their use of language. Almost all diasporic youth films are multilingual, with the parents occasionally speaking only the language of their home country (e.g. the father in Samia or the mother in April Children) and the children occasionally not speaking this language at all (the Khan children in East Is East neither understand nor speak Urdu). In most cases, however, parents and children are bilingual, and the choice of language is determined by the situational context. Generally, language choice signifies the protagonists’ dominant cultural identification or a gradual acceptance of their dual heritage. In Karamuk, Johanna picks up some Turkish after she has discovered that her biological father is Turkish, while in Anita and Me Meena learns some Punjabi from her grandmother upon realising that her best friend Anita, a white, working-class neighbour, has been involved in a fatal ‘Paki-bashing’ incident.

The diasporic coming-of-age film – a hybrid genre? What, then, are the hallmarks of the diasporic coming-of-age film? How does ‘the cross-cultural encounter’ (Staiger 2004), which provides the creative impetus for these films, manifest itself in terms of the films’ generic regimes? And, finally, is the diasporic coming-of-age film recognised as a new genre by the industry? The diasporic coming-of-age film centres on adolescents who are marked as ethnically or racially ‘other’ and are growing up in a multi-ethnic and culturally diverse milieu. It charts the formation of the protagonists’ hybrid identities, which, in terms of the film’s narrative structure, translates into a set of binary oppositions which the protagonist has to negotiate: the claustrophobic home vs. the ‘cool places’ where youths hang out; the parents’ culture of origin vs. the culture of residence; oppressive patriarchy vs. liberal Western culture. While parents typically uphold the values and traditions of the ‘other’ culture, the peer group provides the link with the culture of residence. Generational conflict within the family, a common plot device in many coming-of-age films, is doubly charged here since it is conflated with culture conflict. Yet more tolerant domestic settings are shown to be conducive to the teenagers actively choosing their cultural affiliations, thus empowering them to develop hybrid identities and the social competencies necessary to survive and prosper in plural worlds. Hybrid identity formation is performed through switching between Western and non-Western dress codes and languages. The films’ soundtracks underscore the multi-ethnic, or, indeed, the post-ethnic, milieu in

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which the protagonists grow up and contribute to the mainstream appeal of the diasporic youth film. In contrast to the Hollywood coming-of-age film, in which the protagonist’s maturation often coincides with an existential experience or a rite of passage, in the diasporic coming-of-age film the adolescent’s maturation is equated with the dominant cultural affiliation he or she makes. The distinctive generic profile of the films considered here suggests that we are, indeed, witnessing the hybridisation of the coming-of-age genre. However, there is as yet relatively little indication that the film industry perceives and positions the majority of these films in generic terms. According to Eve Gabereau of the British distribution company Soda Pictures UK, which specialises in independent and World Cinema, migrant and diasporic films are classified as ‘non-genre or specialised films [a category that comprises European art cinema, World Cinema and indies]. They do not sit easily in a mainstream or commercialised genre’ (Gabereau 2007), but occasionally have potential to cross over into the mainstream, provided they are assigned a sufficiently large promotional budget and have a powerful marketing campaign: In order to break out of their niche audience in non-national countries, for example for a German [diasporic] film to break out of its niche audience in the UK, say a German audience, they have to have something universal, something that connects with audiences, while at the same time showing something new, and mapping the audience to other parts of the world and giving them a sense of different places and cultures within a global space. (Gabereau 2007) The commercially successful films considered in this chapter certainly underpin Gabereau’s observations: East Is East and Bend It Like Beckham, which frame culture conflict as family conflict and thus universalise the ethnic minority experience, succeeded in captivating large international audiences. By combining a universal theme with the culturally specific experience of growing up in diaspora, the diasporic coming-of-age film builds on and inflects the established generic conventions, while at the same time exploiting the popularity of this particular genre. This is confirmed by Leslee Udwin, the producer of East Is East, which made over £10 million at the UK box office alone. The film deals with ‘something that every parent and child knows about’ and as a result of its ‘universality it does not matter so much what the specifics are’ (cited in Korte and Sternberg 2004: 155). The box-office success of these diasporic teenpics was to a large extent due to well-orchestrated marketing campaigns, which promoted these films in terms of genre cinema, albeit not necessarily as youth films or coming-ofage films. More significantly, they downplayed the ‘ethnicity’ of these films,

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for example, by not showing Asian characters on the promotion posters of East Is East. Likewise, Bend It Like Beckham was marketed not as an ‘ethnic’ film, but ‘as a British film with a universal theme, a coming-of-age drama’ and a ‘girl power movie’ in which ‘young women fight to determine their full potential’ (Baker cited in Korte and Sternberg 2004: 169). By contrast, the low-budget and commercially less significant Samia was positioned as providing authentic insight ‘into the world of a Maghrebi family living in contemporary Marseille, with its codes, rules and taboos, sometimes warmhearted and strong, but occasionally also rigid and oppressive’ (Nini and Faucon 2000).14 While the promotion campaigns for these popular British coming-of-age films suggested that the ‘minority ethnic family experience’ was essentially the same as the majority British experience, the promotion for Samia, such as it was, pursued precisely the opposite strategy, emphasising the ‘otherness’ of the Maghrebi family – and thereby reinforcing the film’s niche positioning. And, finally, another important ingredient of the winning formula of East Is East and Bend It Like Beckham is the use of humour. Avoiding the alleged ‘miserabilism’ associated with ‘the cinema of duty’ (Malik 1996) has helped to deflect from the ‘ethnic labelling’ and repositioned these films as comedies bidding for mainstream transnational audiences. Yet going popular comes at a price. Instead of offering nuanced explorations of the experiences of diasporic youth, these ‘culture clash comedies’ rely on stereotyping and run the risk of perpetuating prejudices.15 On the other hand, a politically engaged representation of the trials and tribulations of growing up in diaspora which fails to transcend its niche audience is not going to change dominant perceptions either.

Notes 1. One might expect the term ‘youth film’ to be more inclusive than ‘teenpic’ in terms of the age range of the protagonists, but in practice the terms are used almost interchangeably in the American context (see Shary 2002). However, ‘teenpic’ is rarely used outside the American context. 2. See Considine’s The Cinema of Adolescence (1985), Bernstein’s Pretty in Pink (1997), Doherty’s Teenagers and Teenpics (1988, rev. 2nd ed. 2002), Gateward and Pomerance’s study on adolescent girls, Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice (2002), Shary’s Generation Multiplex (2002) and Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen (2005), Pomerance and Gateward’s Where the Boys Are (2005), Tropiano’s Rebels and Chicks (2006) and Hentges’s Pictures of Girlhood (2006). 3. The essays in Shary and Seibel’s collection deal with issues of representation but do not attempt to reconfigure the generic specificities of the youth film in a global context. 4. A notable exception is Tarr’s discussion of French ‘growing up’ films about female adolescents in Cinema and the Second Sex (2001: 25–81). 5. For a critical discussion of the autobiographical motivation of beur films see Ruhe (2006: 57–65).

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6. However, there are also some Maghrebi French and banlieue films, including Tea in the Harem, La Haine and Ma 6-T va crack-er (France 1997, dir. Jean François Richet), which evoke a sense of stasis precisely because the adolescent protagonists are unable to ‘move on’. For a detailed discussion of these films see Tarr (2005). 7. The name given to European settlers in the Maghreb. 8. For an exploration of music and youth cultures in post-colonial France and Britain, see Huq (2006). 9. Examples of such male stereotyping include the Turkish German films Dealer (1999, dir. Thomas Arslan), Short Sharp Shock, Ghetto-Kids (2002, dir. Christian Wagner), Wut/Rage, Knallhart/Tough Enough (2006); British films such as Bullet Boy and Kidulthood; French films such as La Haine, Raï and Ma 6-T va crack-er. Examples of female stereotyping include Yasemin, Yara (1999, dir. Yilmaz Arslan), Gegen die Wand/Head-On (2004, dir. Fatih Akın) and La Squale/The Squale (see Carrie Tarr’s chapter for additional examples). 10. Even though Laney is not voted prom queen, by the end of the film she certainly has the looks and, most importantly, she wins the heart of Zack, the prom king. 11. See James Williams’s chapter on queer diasporic cinema. 12. For a discussion of these two films see Berghahn (2009). Djamel Bensalah’s comedy Il était une fois dans l’oued/Once Upon a Time in the Oued (France 2005) is another example of such an inverse identification. Here a white French banlieue youth claims he is really an Algerian. 13. See Korte and Sternberg’s insightful discussion of black British youth films of the 1990s, including Young Soul Rebels (UK 1991, dir. Isaac Julien) and Rage (1999), two films in which music plays a key role (2004: 97–133). 14. ‘... dans l’univers d’une famille maghrébine à Marseille aujourd’hui, avec ses codes, ses règles, ses tabous, à la fois chaleureux et forts, mais qui peuvent aussi se faire rigides et oppressants’. In the French press Samia was discussed as a film about immigration and ‘une beurette entre deux cultures’. 15. In the German press, Bend It Like Beckham was referred to as a ‘Komödie der kleinen Kulturkonflikte’ (comedy of small cultural conflicts) (Stuttgarter Zeitung, 2 October 2002); East Is East was related to other ‘Pakistan Filme’ (Pakistan films) such as My Beautiful Laundrette and Brothers in Trouble (Kölner Stadtanzeiger, 20 May 2000) and presented as a multicultural comedy (Tagesspiegel, 18 May 2000).

Works cited Berghahn, D. (2006) ‘No Place Like Home? Or Impossible Homecomings in the Films of Fatih Akın’, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 4(3):141–57. ——. (2009) ‘From Turkish Greengrocer to Drag Queen: Re-assessing Patriarchy in Recent Turkish German Coming-of-Age Films’, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, special issue D. Berghahn (ed.), Turkish German Dialogues on Screen 7(1): 55–69. Bernstein, J. (1997) Pretty in Pink: The Golden Age of Teenage Movies. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Bluher, D. (2001) ‘Hip Hop Cinema in France’, Camera Obscura, Special Issue, R. Halle and S. Willis (eds), Marginality and Alterity in New European Cinemas 46(2): 77–97. Bruzzi, S. (2005) Bringing Up Daddy: Fatherhood and Masculinity in Postwar Hollywood. London: British Film Institute. Considine, D. M. (1985) The Cinema of Adolescence. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

254 Daniela Berghahn Doherty, T. (2002 [first ed. 1988]) Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Ewing, K. P. (2006) ‘Between Cinema and Social Work: Diasporic Turkish Women and the Displeasures of Hybridity’, Cultural Anthropology 21(2): 265–94. Ezra, E. (2007) ‘National Cinemas in the Global Era’, in P. Cook (ed.) The Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute, 168–70. Gabereau, E. (2007) ‘ “That’s a world music film for us”: The Distributor’s Perspective’, Conference Presentation at The Industrial Context of Migrant and Diasporic Cinema in Contemporary Europe, 13 January 2007. Online. Available at: http:// www.migrantcinema.net/podcasts/item/gabereau/ (accessed 1 February 2008). Gateward, F. and M. Pomerance (eds) (2002) Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice: Cinema of Girlhood. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London, New York: Verso. Göktürk, D. (2000) ‘Turkish Women on German Streets: Closure and Exposure in Transnational Cinema’, in M. Konstantarakos (ed.) Spaces in European Cinema. Exeter: Intellect, 64–76. Hall, S. (1993) ‘Old and New Identities, Old and New Ethnicities’, in A. D. King (ed.) Culture, Globalization and the World System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 41–68. ——. (2005 [1990]) ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in J. E. Braziel and A. Mannur (eds) Theorizing Diaspora. Oxford: Blackwell, 233–46. Hentges, S. (2006) Pictures of Girlhood: Modern Female Adolescence on Film. Jefferson, North Carolina, London: McFarlane. Higbee, W. (2007) ‘Re-presenting the Urban Periphery: Maghrebi-French Filmmaking and the Banlieue Film’, Cineaste, Special Supplement C. Tarr and R. Porton (eds), Beur Is Beautiful: A Retrospective of Maghrebi-French Filmmaking 33(1): 38–43. Hollinger, D. A. (2000) Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New York: Basic Books. Huq, R. (2006) ‘European Youth Cultures in a Post-colonial World: British Asian Underground and French Hip-Hop Music Scenes’, in P. Nilan and C. Feixa (eds) Global Youth? Hybrid Identities, Plural Worlds. London, New York: Routledge, 14–31. Jeffers, T. L. (2005) Apprenticeships: The Bildungsroman from Goethe to Santayana. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. King, L. C. (2000a) ‘Generation X. Searching for an Identity?’ Post Script 19(2): 8–18. ——. (2000b) ‘Introduction. Gen X Films’, Post Script 19(2): 3–7. Korte, B. and C. Sternberg (2004) Bidding for the Mainstream? Black and Asian British Film since the 1990s. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi. LeSeur, G. (1995) Ten is the Age of Darkness: The Black Bildungsroman. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Malik, S. (1996) ‘Beyond “the Cinema of Duty”? The Pleasures of Hybridity: Black British Film of the 1980s and 1990s’, in A. Higson (ed.) Dissolving Views: Key Writings on British Cinema. London: Cassell, 202–15. Massood, P. J. (1996) ‘Mapping the Hood: The Genealogy of City Space in Boyz ’n the Hood and Menace II Society’, Cinema Journal 35(2): 85–97. Mazierska, E. and L. Rascaroli (2006) Crossing New Europe: Postmodern Travel and the European Road Movie. London, New York: Wallflower Press. Neale, S. (2000) Genre and Hollywood. London, New York: Routledge. ——. (2005) ‘Questions of Genre’, in B. K. Grant (ed.) Film Genre Reader III. Austin: University of Texas Press, 160–84.

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Nini, S. and P. Faucon (2000) ‘Samia, un film de Philippe Faucon’, Publicity Material, Pyramide Films. Pomerance, M. and F. Gateward (eds) (2005) Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Reid, M. (2000) ‘New Wave Black Cinema in the 1990s’, in W. W. Dixon (ed.) Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays. Albany: State University of New York Press, 13–28. Ruhe, C. (2006) Cinéma beur: Analysen zu einem neuen Genre des französischen Films. Constance: UVK. Schroeder, E. (2001) ‘Multicultural Conversation: La Haine, Raï, and Menace II Society’, Camera Obscura, Special Issue, R. Halle and S. Willis (eds), Marginality and Alterity in New Euopean Cinemas 46(2): 143–79. Shary, T. (2002) Generation Multiplex: The Image of Youth in Contemporary American Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press. ——. (2005) Teen Movies: American Youth on Screen. London: Wallflower. Shary, T. and A. Seibel (eds) (2007) Youth Culture in Global Cinema. Austin: University of Texas Press. Staiger, J. (2003 [1997]) ‘Hybrid or Inbred: The Purity Hypothesis and Hollywood Genre History’, in B. K. Grant (ed.) Film Genre Reader III. Austin: University of Texas Press, 185–99. Stein, M. (2004) Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. Swales, M. (1978) The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tarr, C. (2001) ‘Growing Up’, in C. Tarr with B. Rollet, Cinema and the Second Sex: Women’s Filmmaking in France in the 1980s and 1990s. London: Continuum, 25–53. ——. (2005) Reframing Difference: Beur and Banlieue Cinema in France. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Tropiano, S. (2006) Rebels and Chicks: A History of the Hollywood Teen Movie. New York: Back Stage Books. Watkins, S. C. (2002) ‘Ghetto Reelness: Hollywood Film Production, Black Popular Culture and the Ghetto Action Film Cycle’, in S. Neale (ed.) Genre and Contemporary Hollywood. London: British Film Institute, 236–50. Vincendeau, G. (2005) La Haine. London, New York: I. B. Tauris.

12 Migration, Diaspora and Metacinematic Reflection Claudia Sternberg

This chapter is an investigation into the representation of cinema-going and the use of cinema-related elements in narrative films about migration and/or diasporas in Europe. It has been prompted by the prominence of references to films, film-making and the cinema in a number of European productions created by both migrant and non-migrant, diasporic and nondiasporic writers and directors. Using a sample of such productions from Britain, France, Germany and Spain, I aim to show that, while cinema scenes, citations, intertextual allusions and other metacinematic reflections can be read as postmodern strategies of pastiche and media reflexivity, they also – and perhaps more specifically – draw attention to the importance of film in the migratory and diasporic experience and its central role in and for discourses of ethnicity, ‘race’, belonging and displacement in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. My argument is that metacinematic elements address historical and metaphorical connections between migration and the moving image; they furthermore help to constitute migrant or diasporic subjects not only as characters in but also as spectators, performers and makers of films, thus defying objectification and foregrounding agency through metareflexive practice. In conceptual terms, migration and film are embodiments of motion and movement – one social, the other technological and representational – and have been described, aestheticised and theorised as key exemplars of the dynamics of Modernity. In the foundational myths of American cinema in particular, the two have repeatedly been brought together in the celebration of film as a democratic art form, accessible to the huddled masses of immigrants who received linguistic and social tuition on inclusive Americanness in the movie theatre.1 Hollywood has, again and again, been regarded as a haven and place of opportunity for European migrants – including the pioneers of the silent era, refugees from fascist Europe, dissidents from the Eastern bloc and others. Exiles and expatriates helped to build up the industry; they shaped the star system and made possible hybrid genres such as the film noir. Additionally, a less publicised migrant and diasporic US film 256

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history has to be acknowledged, encompassing films that emerged despite of and in response to invisibility or misrepresentation, social, linguistic or professional exclusion and segregated spectatorship. This history includes African American ‘race films’, Yiddish cinema, Spanish-language productions, counter-ethnographies, independent films and finally (near-)mainstream interventions by ethnic minority film-makers, which have impacted on genres such as comedy and the gangster, city, youth and music film. Europe, however, with its diverse and distinct, but overall less mythical, histories of national cinemas, presents a different picture: works on (Western) European migrant and diasporic film not only tend to concentrate on single national industries, but often focus on the second half of the twentieth century and, more precisely, the decades of post-colonial and/ or labour migration.2 For the analysis of the metacinematic in some of the examples given here, and perhaps in the context of migrant and diasporic cinema in general, it is useful to open up the discussion to earlier film production as well as to cinematic traditions in Europe, the United States and around the world. It further needs to be noted that migrants who arrived in Europe’s ‘host societies’ did not emerge from cinema-less (‘pre-modern’) places, but could well have been familiar with national and international productions. Their cinematic encounters might have included Hollywood fantasies, Empire spectacles and ethnographic films, many of them infused with Orientalism, ‘race thinking’ and exoticism. Celebratory productions featuring idealised metropolitan centres might have engendered desires and shaped expectations before migration. Outdated filmic exponents of Eurocentrism and the colonial imaginary have continued to be available to migrant and non-migrant, diasporic and non-diasporic viewers across Europe to the present day, if mainly as programme fillers on the small screen. Classic American genres such as the Western with its subtext of the internal colonisation of Native Americans, the urban gangster film with its Chinese, Italian and African American anti-heroes, and science fiction with its threats of alien invasion have similarly endured, regularly undergoing transformations and resurfacing in retro trends that incorporate previous patterns and configurations to a greater or lesser extent. Whether migratory groups in post-World War Two Western Europe had a previous colonial relationship with their countries of residence or not, it is likely that cinema-going preceded migration of the ‘first generation’ and that it can be recollected as a specific and pleasurable social experience.3 Notably, migrant and diasporic films often include sequences in which migrant characters watch movies to (re)connect with their cultures and communities of origin. In light of the long tradition of film-making in South Asia, the industry’s production volume, international distribution and large diasporic audiences, it is hardly surprising that popular Indian cinema takes centre stage. In the feature films investigated here, the focus is often on the Bollywood musical and the particular viewing situations of first-generation

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protagonists. While the representations are fictional, they nevertheless reference the social reality of South Asian diasporic film culture, which has become, at least in the British context, the subject of ethnographies on film and television audiences, cinema owners and programmers (Gillespie 1995, Puwar and Powar 2004, Puwar 2007). Scenes about screen characters watching films are embedded in larger narrative units that often depict the more dire conditions of life in Britain and elsewhere after relocation. They constitute the most direct engagement with cinema in the selection of films under investigation here.

The migrant at the movies: Cinema-going as transcultural practice The disappointments and disenchantments of a first generation brought up to feel reverence for the ‘mother country’ feature in a number of British films that have South Asian protagonists and are set in the United Kingdom in the 1960s and early 1970s. A Private Enterprise (1974, dir. Peter Smith), Brothers in Trouble (1995, dir. Udayan Prasad) and East is East (1999, dir. Damien O’Donnell) opt for a realist style, occasionally interspersed with elements of tragicomedy, and all three contain scenes in which the main characters go to the cinema to watch a popular Indian film. In each case, attending the movies allows the characters, at least for a while, to forget economic and social pressures by enjoying familiar entertainment. In A Private Enterprise, the protagonist Shiv – single and recently arrived from India – decides not to attend a meeting at his workplace dedicated to labour relations and goes instead to the movies with the daughter of white English intellectuals. After the film, Shiv accommodates his companion’s wish to go to an Asian café, only to find their car scratched afterwards. Not all places, the narrative suggests, offer the same kind of protection for interethnic romance as the darkened picture house. The protective space of the cinema, and even its potential healing effect, is also presented in Brothers in Trouble. The film tells the story of a group of illegal Pakistani migrant workers who share a dark, overcrowded and dilapidated house that constitutes one of the claustrophobic spaces identified as a recurring setting for migrant narratives (Naficy 1996). The men work as many shifts as possible and avoid being seen in public places for fear of deportation. They do, however, go to the cinema to watch ‘desi films’4 in order to escape their feelings of loneliness and displacement. For this disenfranchised community, a cinema – not a mosque – has an almost sacred aura; this is ironically underscored by the fact that the screenings for the migrants are scheduled on Sunday mornings when British Christians are at church. Finally, in East is East, the male protagonist George Khan (who arrived in Britain in the 1930s), his white English wife Ella and their children drive from their home in Salford to ‘Asian’ Bradford to see a Hindi movie.

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Travelling to film screenings was (and to some extent still is) a reality for the South Asian diaspora, who have been screening Indian films in the United Kingdom since the late 1930s. At first, films were shown in rented halls and at certain times in local cinemas, as represented in Brothers in Trouble; later on, full programmes were offered by cinemas owned and run by British Asians. This is the case in East is East, where the cinema the Khans visit is owned by a member of George’s family. Ella and George expect a particular movie, but it is not playing. In the family business their desires matter and the programme is changed; the couple enjoy their favourite film and briefly ‘escape’ the cultural and generational conflicts at home which lead to estrangement, domestic violence and the disintegration of the family. On the diegetic level, the cinema-going scenes described here are less about specific films than about finding a space that offers familiarity and recognition, in which a community can come together and to which migrants can bring their non-migrant partners. The scenes offer moments of respite in narratives driven by the hardship and difficulties of everyday life, including racism and discrimination, lack of opportunity, generational clashes and often violent acts of desperation. For migrants they also allow a glimpsed ‘return’ to their previous existence; this is played out particularly in East is East when George is shown looking from his car at a Muslim street scene in Bradford with the same pleasure he later displays when watching the screen romance in the cinema. For the protagonist–filmgoer within the film – who here also stands for his or her social group and generation – the cinema scenes are about fantasy, which, as Judith Mayne has argued in her discussion of early immigrant audiences, ‘may imply “escape,” but [...] is also a form of resistance, an imaginary refusal of real conditions of existence’ (1982: 39). They empower the characters at least temporarily through their privileged, if marginal, access to a culturally distinct yet ‘modern’ and transcultural practice. By including such scenes, screenwriters and directors also remind non-migrant and non-diasporic spectators of – or perhaps even introduce them to – non-Western cinematic traditions and, in this case, a vibrant Asian film culture in Britain. It is further made explicit that films and cinemas ‘migrate’ alongside migrant groups – any changing ethnoscape is accompanied by a transformed mediascape (Appadurai 1996: 48–65), and these processes continued in the 1980s and after with new cultural flows characteristic of the video, satellite and digital age. It should be noted, however, that, in contrast to skin colour, dress codes and religious practice, cinema-going is perceived as ‘harmless’ by the majority cultures, and popular productions have been embraced in a fashion similar to that of an exotic but ultimately unthreatening ‘ethnic cuisine’. The motif of watching non-Western films can also be found in migrant and diasporic productions representing more recent periods and social groups other than the South Asian diaspora. Frequently, in these films, home viewing replaces cinema-going, but the overall dynamic of a communal activity

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Figure 12.1

Shared visual pleasure – The Bollywood ‘effect’ in Anam (2001)

is maintained. Buket Alakus’s production Anam (Germany 2001), for example, centres on a Turkish cleaner’s fight against drug dealers and her son’s addiction. The three main characters – a Turkish, a German and an African woman – as well as the cleaner’s daughter and son’s girlfriend rent a Bollywood DVD for an ‘Indian Night’ at home. That their shared viewing experience generates energy and affirms solidarity is made explicit to the viewer when the women, all dressed in saris, start to dance together. In the productions discussed so far, the films watched by the protagonists, whether in the cinema or at home, are only briefly shown on the screen and are not debated. Their entertainment character and non-Westernness are marked, but the emphasis lies on the character–spectators and their viewing situation. A related strategy is employed when films and/or genres are named or alluded to, and the transcultural practice of watching films is developed further by suggesting specific readings of film texts. ‘Intertextual and hypertextual travels and their citational aesthetics’ are ‘typical features of postmodern texts’ (Degli-Esposti 1998: 7); if placed in the context of migration and diaspora, they add further layers of signification to the production, and will challenge different viewers in different ways.

Citational aesthetics: Sharing and expanding the canon Bollywood films have been reaching diasporic markets for many decades, and respective spectatorship is a recurring trope in literary and cinematic representations of diasporic existence. From the 1990s onwards, the Indian

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musical genre has also begun to be popular with non-Asian audiences, having been introduced and further promoted by the citational practices of migrant and diasporic directors (e.g. Gurinder Chadha’s Bhaji on the Beach, UK 1993, and Bride and Prejudice, UK 2004, as well as Pratibha Parmar’s Nina’s Heavenly Delights, UK 2006), by adoption in films written and directed by non-Asian film-makers (e.g. Jeremy Wooding’s Bollywood Queen, UK 2002), and by becoming part of a wider mix of popular traditions (e.g. in Yasmina Yahiaoui’s Rue des Figuiers/Fig Tree Road, France 2005; see also Tarr in this volume, p. 182).5 Despite this ‘universal’ appeal, the decoding position and knowledge base of the individual spectator determine, to a large extent, the level and depth of engagement with genre conventions and intertextual allusions to specific films and their context. In Bhaji on the Beach, for example, which shows a group of British Asian women of different backgrounds and ages on a trip to the English seaside resort Blackpool, Chadha includes several Bollywoodtype fantasies to externalise the disorientation of the middle-aged Asha, who finds herself caught between Eastern and Western value systems. When faced with the information that the young mother Hashida has left her husband, Asha ‘imagines a scene straight out of Paurab aur Paschim [India 1970, dir. Manoj Kumar] with Hashida playing the Westernized and corrupted heroine who parades around in a temple dressed in a red miniskirt and blonde wig, while lighting a cigarette and sitting on the altar’ (Desai 2004: 145). Bhaji on the Beach here uses popular Mumbai cinema critically and ironically to show that its ‘dominant narratives regarding gender and sexual normativities’ (Desai 2004: 146) are difficult to reconcile with the diversity of women’s lives as experienced by the film’s protagonists. While non-diasporic and possibly even younger diasporic audiences are unlikely to recognise the exact intertextual reference, they can still interpret the sequence as utilising the genre’s hyperbolic style as a cinematic mindscreen for the character of Asha. Bhaji on the Beach also capitalises on the fact that films such as Purab aur Paschim and many more recent productions include the non-resident Indian (NRI) as a stock figure with distinct, if historically changing, features (see Brosius and Yazgi 2007). The latter, too, may carry fewer connotations for the non-diasporic spectator than the generic features of costume, song and dance. Citational and intertextual practice is not limited, however, to nonWestern cinema. On the contrary, references often build on a cineliteracy shared by migrant and non-migrant, diasporic and non-diasporic filmmakers and audiences. Perhaps the most prominent citational engagement is with American cinema and its representations of the gangster and other (hypermasculine) outcasts, drawing on the ‘socially antagonistic cinematic tradition allied to lower-class and ethnically marginalized American interests in the 1930s’ (Munby 1999: 10) and its various reincarnations, as well as on the African American ‘ghettocentric gang epic’ (Guerrero 1993: 189)6

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or ‘hood films’ of the 1990s.7 Elements of these traditions are taken up and explicitly referred to in a number of films centring on young men, which constitute an important subcategory of migrant and diasporic cinema in general.8 Despite their differences, such films tend to privilege a stylised social realism and foreground the experience of social marginalisation; they are, however, more ambivalent when it comes to their protagonists’ ambitions and lifestyles than social dramas and dramatic comedies, which are more likely to represent young migrant and diasporic men as victims of social injustice, partners in inter-ethnic relationships or as coming to terms with homosexuality. Ambivalence also extends to issues of ‘race’ and ethnicity; here, too, protagonists are neither completely excluded nor fully integrated, as their respective status is dependent on shifting class and community contexts. Since the silent era, a considerable number of screen offenders have been ethnically marked; as Lee Grieveson et al. point out, the gangster has always been ‘a potent symbol open to various inflections of “otherness,” which has historically been used as a racist tool but also as equivocal expression of racialized opposition’ (2005: 5). Often structured as a coming-of-age drama rather than a conventional crime narrative (see also Berghahn in this volume), the ghettocentric youth film usually focuses on a small group of underprivileged young men from various ethnic backgrounds. They live in housing estates, the banlieue or Ausländerviertel and are drawn into a life of petty crime out of boredom and disaffection, are criminalised by default on account of their immigration status, or follow the lead of delinquent older brothers or professional criminals who serve as surrogate fathers due to a lack of parental involvement or alternative role models. Eventually, the young men cross an invisible line between fantasy and ‘real’ crime, usually by gaining access to a gun, which then leads to conflict and violence, the disintegration of the group or the traumatic death of one or more of the friends. References to the American gangster film and gang epic as well as across national cinemas and within migrant and diasporic film itself can be found in most films within this narrative paradigm. Among the productions with an elaborate set of referential elements are the French film La Haine/Hate (1995) and the German production Kurz und schmerzlos/Short Sharp Shock (1998). The respective writer–directors, Mathieu Kassovitz and Fatih Akın, clearly acknowledge American cinema as a major influence, specifically as it presented itself from the 1970s onwards in the work of Martin Scorsese. Their citational appropriations of specific filmic moments in combination with other elements of metacinema create a complex ‘cineliterate’ narrative. This is situated, as Barbara Mennel states with regard to Short Sharp Shock and Geschwister – Kardesler/Brothers and Sisters (Germany 1997, dir. Thomas Arslan), ‘in the transnational circulation of cinematic images’, depicting the characters’ ‘identification with mythical transnational heroes, in the process addressing and mobilizing the identificatory discourse of the audience,

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and constituting its aesthetics in relationship to those popular films’ (2002: 135, 145).9 La Haine enters into a citational relationship with Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (USA 1977) that is literally ‘triggered’ by one of the film’s protagonists: Vinz, the Jewish character of the central black–blanc–beur trio of male youths, mimics Robert de Niro’s performance as Travis Bickle, re-enacting in front of a mirror Bickle’s own rehearsal of pulling a gun in his shabby apartment.10 In his imitation, Vinz uses his fingers, but his ‘hand gun’ will eventually be replaced by a real one. The shooting gesture is repeatedly used in the film, until Vinz realises that he, unlike the screen character Bickle, cannot and does not want to pull the trigger – a realisation that will not prevent his violent death at the hands of the police. Like La Haine, Short Sharp Shock brings together three diasporic youths – the Turk Gabriel, the Serb Bobby and the Greek Costa. Akın sets them up like the Italian American protagonists of Scorsese’s Mean Streets (USA 1973), using snippets of their lives to characterise their personality and titles to introduce their names. In a later sequence, after the death of Bobby, Akın shows an agitated Costa on the nightly streets of Hamburg, visually citing a similar sequence from New York’s Little Italy in Mean Streets. These citations are not, however, simply ‘attributable’ to the writer– directors wishing to connect with an equally cineliterate audience. They also relate to the screen characters, who are shown as consumers, viewers and commentators of films. In Short Sharp Shock, a video rental shop serves as the location for a dispute between Gabriel and Bobby over the possession and use of guns. In a later scene, the three men are shown watching a video together. They do this while lying on a couch in homosocial union, sharing a joint to underscore their cameraderie.11 Bobby’s engagement with the cinema is the most intense; he fantasises about the actor Al Pacino’s genitals and refers to his role as Tony Montana in Brian de Palma’s Scarface (USA 1983), a remake of Howard Hawks’s classic film of the same title (USA 1930). Both Scarface productions centre on ‘hyphenated’ protagonists, the Italian American Tony Camonte in Hawks’s version, played by Paul Muni, and the Cuban American Montana (Pacino) in de Palma’s. The latter film makes an explicit connection between criminality and immigration in its prologue: it describes the Marial Boatlift of 1980, which brought many Cubans to the United States to join their families, but also gave the Castro regime the opportunity to dispose of a number of criminals.12 De Palma’s Montana himself is a fan of the actor James Cagney, known for his gangster roles in the 1930s. The multiple references to ethnically marked narratives and characters as well as actors and directors (here Cagney’s Irish Americanness, Muni’s Galician Jewishness, Pacino’s, de Palma’s and Scorsese’s Italian Americanness) create a seemingly closed cine-system which is at once socially antagonistic, masculinity-affirming and a performative site inviting imitation. The ambivalence of the latter is played out in Short Sharp

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Shock when Bobby makes the fatal decision to work for an Albanian crime boss instead of following Gabriel’s train of thought and striving for fame through an acting career. Kassovitz too reflects on film-viewing and the connection between violence and its representation. Protected by his whiteness, Vinz manages to avoid arrest and police custody and finds refuge in a cinema.13 He is shown in different seats, which accentuates his status as ‘spectator’ rather than individual viewer. La Haine’s audience does not see what happens on the cinema screen, but the soundtrack suggests a hard-boiled and violent film, somewhat surprisingly attended by a woman with a young child. The boy turns his attention to Vinz, who is casually smoking. As Vinz imitated the screen character Travis Bickle in his de Niro impersonation earlier, the child now imitates Vinz, who, once again, pulls his trigger – this time in front of an impressionable audience. The scene’s moral message is spelled out on the director’s commentary track: ‘It’s a responsibility toward the kids not to show them what we don’t want them to do.’ While this seems straightforward, it is also problematic. La Haine makes use of genre conventions showing exactly ‘what we don’t want them [the kids] to do’, but while both Vinz and the boy in the cinema are constructed as ‘passive’ spectator–receptacles, the audience is expected to engage ‘actively’ with representations of verbal and physical aggression. It could be argued, once again, that the mixing of social realist elements with citations and imitations presents ‘street culture’ as an actual and enacted culture. Those who identify too strongly with the cinematic myths are taken to their tragic deaths – like Camonte, Montana and Johnny Boy in Mean Streets before them. Citation practice indicates a literacy of the canon as well as an awareness of the hegemonic position of certain films and genres. References are not simply reverent, however; they are ironic, broken and/or critical. The characters’ infatuation with the gangster hero is a regressive response to social labelling and used as an empowering counter-discourse to deal with fear and rejection; it is also narratively constructed as oppositional to the framing of diasporic youth in the media. La Haine opens with news footage about demonstrations against police brutality and reports about rioting in the cités. Later on, the protagonists are filmed by an itinerant TV news team. It operates from a car on a bridge, while the objects of the journalists’ gaze, the ‘riotous youths’, are positioned on a dreary playground like animals in the zoo. Not being in charge of their own image – both literally and figuratively speaking – leads to an aggressive reaction which, once broadcast, will reinforce the negative stereotype of banlieue youth. La Haine maintains, however, its ambivalent perspective; while the characters are angered by the news team, they are disappointed when the footage does not appear on television. That a stereotypical image has more value than no representation is more light-heartedly narrativised in the opening sequence of Le Ciel, les

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oiseaux ... et ta mère!/Boys on the Beach (France 1999, dir. Djamel Bensalah). Four young men from St-Denis on the outskirts of Paris – two white, one black and one beur – win a video competition and, as a prize, a four-week stay in the seaside resort Biarritz, mainly frequented by the white French middle class. The four cinephiles are successful because, in their production, they drove the (staged) representation of a young drug dealer to ridiculous extremes, promptly receiving acclaim for the film’s honesty and realism as perceived by the awarding committee. The fantasy of street crime and drug culture is contrasted with the rather uneventful time the young men spend in their holiday apartment, lacking the means, nerve and social skills to mingle with the Biarritz crowds. They compensate for this by engaging in familiar activities: television viewing, movie talk and imaginative re-enactment. When one of the white youths is pushed by his peers to make advances to a young woman, he ‘replays’ in his mind a scene from Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm (USA 1955), starring Frank Sinatra as the drummer and former heroin addict Frankie Machine. Boys on the Beach then shows the character’s imagined Hollywood version of the encounter with the young woman in black and white images and with English dialogue. This tribute to ‘Frankie’ and Preminger as a cinematic inspiration is followed, however, by a laboured and unsuccessful conversation with the woman. By juxtaposing ‘film’ and ‘reality’, Boys on the Beach humorously renders visible the ‘primary suffering’ of all cinephiles, who can but desire ‘to shatter their position as a spectator and “enter into the screen” ’ (Douchet 2000: unpaginated). A further tactic for coming to terms with their sense of displacement in Boys on the Beach is the young men’s continuous recording of Biarritz scenes on their video camera. By doing this, they appropriate, negotiate or return both the gaze of surveillance (exemplified by CCTV images during their shopping/stealing spree in a supermarket) and the ethnographic gaze, to which migrant and diasporic subjects and their places and societies of ‘origin’ have frequently been subjected. Auto- and counter-ethnographic reflections involving films and filming can also be found in other productions of migrant and diasporic cinema.

Modifying the gaze: Elements of auto- and counter-ethnography In the German film Kleine Freiheit/A Little Bit of Freedom (2004),14 directed by Yüksel Yavuz, the teenager–protagonist Baran watches a video recording of his grandfather and other family members, taken in their home in a Kurdish village. Baran lives illegally in Germany, half-heartedly taken in and employed as a delivery boy by his uncle in Hamburg. Baran derives comfort from the footage, despite the fundamental differences between his and the family’s lifestyle and concerns. The close and medium shots

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of the Kurdish family are A Little Bit of Freedom’s opening images; they are presented through the replay function of Baran’s video camera. Notably, subtitles have been added, thus rendering the footage as a video letter on the diegetic level and as quasi-documentary information on the extradiegetic level. Baran acts as an ethnographer himself when he uses the camera to capture impressions of his life and his surroundings, perhaps to be sent back to the family in return. His recordings include the quotidian (the view from a friend’s flat in a high-rise building), the notorious (Hamburg’s red light district St Pauli), the personal (images of his equally illegal African friend Chernor) and the curious (a group of middle-aged German in-line skaters). In the course of the story, Baran recognises another Kurd who could have been responsible for the murder of his parents, loses the support of his uncle and gains access to a gun. When he witnesses Chernor’s arrest, which is likely to result in deportation, Baran makes a desperate attempt to intervene. He points the gun at a police officer in an effort to have Chernor released. More police arrive and the situation escalates. At this point, Yavuz restricts the audience’s viewpoint to what Baran’s video camera records. The sound of a shot can be heard, the image jerks to the sky. The lens then captures Baran’s face and eye, his head pinned to the roof of a police car. By having to give up the camera, he has lost his power over the way his story is told. The audience once again sees the footage of Baran’s Kurdish relatives, but can also hear the voices of the police officers who want to switch the camera off. Its battery finally goes flat and the film comes to an end; the spectator is no longer connected with the fate of an adolescent Kurdish refugee.

Figure 12.2 The apparatus as silent witness – amateur autoethnography in A Little Bit of Freedom (2004)

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The motif of the abandoned apparatus and forgotten image is also, if differently, presented in the Spanish production Poniente/West (2002, dir. Chus Gutiérrez), which takes its audience to Andalusia, one of the Southernmost regions of Europe. The film’s remote agricultural setting, with its considerable North African migrant population engaged in providing Europe with cheap produce all year round, is a far less familiar contact zone for cinéastes than the multicultural cities with their intertwined ethno- and mediascapes. West presents the volatile relationships between Spanish farmers and their mostly Moroccan workforce, and shows their deterioration into violence and destruction. The story has a reference point in actual events in the town of El Ejido, where, in 2000, African workers endured anti-immigrant attacks by Spanish locals after a woman was killed by a mentally unstable Moroccan. One of the film’s central characters is Curro, an accountant who grew up as a second-generation Spaniard in Switzerland. He gets hold of an old 8 mm film projector and some film material. In a scene without dialogue, but musically enhanced, Curro sets up the projector and watches the ‘found footage’ with an older friend who, like Curro’s father, was a first-generation Spanish emigrant. The black and white, small gauge and low resolution images remind the men of the poverty, dislocation, manual labour and family life of Spanish intra-European migrants in the 1950s and 1960s. The film material serves as an historical aide-mémoire, capitalising on the power of the documentary (ethnographic) image, and has a citational quality that differs from the US-inscribed intertexts of the previous examples. Writer– director Chus Gutiérrez uses filmic images to connect the present situation of African immigration with Spanish emigration of the 1950s and 1960s, joining other cultural voices who see the ‘urgent need to create a collective memory of traumatic historic episodes in order to transcend the chronic amnesia that has historically characterized Spanishness and, by doing so, reshape the national identity’ (Ballesteros 2005: 11). As Ballesteros argues, West does not simply pitch Spanish agricultural entrepreneurs against their Moroccan labourers. With Lucía, the daughter of a deceased landowner, and Curro, the educated son of Spanish workingclass emigrants, the film creates a ‘third party’ of characters (Ballesteros 2005: 11) who are sensitive to discrimination and inequality on account of their own gendered and migratory positions. Although the Spanish point of view dominates, the narrative is opened up to further subjectivities: the Berber Adbembi, as a non-Arab and foreman, occupies the space between Spaniards and Moroccans and between employers and labourers; it is he who reminds Curro of the century-old historical ties between North Africa and Spain (see also Santaolalla 2007: 74). The final shot of West shows the exodus of the workers, who take their limited belongings with them; it corresponds visually with the arrival scene of Spanish migrants in the earlier ethnographic footage and becomes its

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negative foil. The film’s downbeat ending is foreshadowed by an earlier shot of the broken 8 mm projector, which – somewhat overdeterminedly – symbolises historical memory and the consequences of its repression and neglect.

Fandom and revision: Productive (post-)colonial spectatorship In the filmic examples so far, metacinematic reflection has arisen from the physical space of the picture house, generic variation and citation, mimicry and enactment and attempts at self-empowerment through (auto)ethnograpy. It has remained, however, occasional and subordinate to other, more central plotlines. My final case study, Ian Iqbal Rashid’s short film Surviving Sabu (UK 1997),15 makes the metacinematic discourse the focal point of its narrative and thus crystallises a number of issues raised in this contribution, highlighting in particular the many facets of the (film) historical dimension of migrant and diasporic cinema. George Khan, the semi-fictional protagonist of East is East, tells his family that in 1938, one year after his arrival in the United Kingdom, he got a job in a British film production. As he recounts merrily, he was cast as one of a crowd of Indians, shouting ‘I kill bloody English!’ Director Horace Ové, who came to Britain from Trinidad in the late 1950s to study film and art, reports that after a series of odd jobs he went on the payroll for the historical epic Cleopatra (USA/UK 1963, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz), playing one of the Roman soldiers and then one of the slaves (2002: 221). These marginal positions (literally as ‘extras’) in films about old and new Empires, in which white actors took centre screen, sometimes in blackface, remind us of the representational structures in historical and colonial spectacles of mainstream American and European cinema. While rarely acknowledged, many migrant and diasporic people not only performed in them, but also made up parts of their audiences. While they had no authority over representation, it did not stop them from being fans. Surviving Sabu picks up on such fandom; it centres on a young Asian Briton who makes a short film about the Indian child actor Sabu, using his firstgeneration migrant father, a Sabu fan, as off-screen narrator and on-screen persona. The son – and director – wants to combine the two migratory narratives of his father’s life in Britain and Sabu’s acting career. Sabu became famous for his roles in the hybrid ethno-drama Elephant Boy (UK 1937, dir. Robert Flaherty and Zoltan Korda) and the Eastern tales The Thief of Bagdad (UK 1940, dir. Michael Powell et al.) and Jungle Book (USA 1942, dir. Zoltan Korda).16 In Surviving Sabu, the son and creator of the film-within-a-film constructs both men and their careers as failures: he sees Sabu as the product and object of white desire who was exploited by a racist and colonialist film industry and prompts his father to dwell on his unsuccessful attempts to become a police officer in the United Kingdom. The father, however,

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insists on Sabu’s star quality and emphasises that he had leading roles in major motion pictures, lived and worked in Britain and then Hollywood, had a white wife and ‘American kids’. Sabu fulfilled the ‘immigrant’s dream’, according to the father, and should thus be seen as a role model, having proven that success against the odds is possible for an Asian man in a whitedominated society. The conflict between father and son is aggravated by issues of sexuality because the young film-maker is gay.17 The father finds this fact difficult to accept, although he seems oblivious to the Orientalist sexualisation, feminisation and infantilisation of Sabu, performing half-naked or in lavishly adorned outfits. The film project nearly falls through, but both father and son eventually move towards reconciliation. The father completes the film, following his son’s direction and acknowledging some of the limitations faced by Asian Muslims in Britain. The son accepts his father’s refusal to disown Sabu because of a colonial history for which neither – father or actor – can be held responsible and in which both managed to advance within imposed limits. He arranges an outdoor screening in the backyard of their terraced house, recreating a viewing situation that reminds his father of watching drive-in movies in Uganda before forced migration. The film closes with a further communal viewing scene – father and son watch Sabu’s Jungle Book on the television screen, together submitting to the pleasures of spectacle and shared spectatorship. Surviving Sabu questions the (contested) binary of passive versus active spectatorship and includes the shift from consumer to producer, from viewer to director. It offers a critique of colonialist and Orientalist representation by way of revisionist practice, but complicates spectatorship by showing different generational frameworks and ways of ‘using’ colonial films, thus offering a particular post-colonial take on what Annette Kuhn has called ‘enduring fandom’ (1999: 135). Surviving Sabu underlines – with reference to the father – that certain assumptions about ‘black spectatorship’, that is, constructing the ethnic minority viewer as always ‘resistant’, ‘marginal’ or otherwise ‘oppositional’ (Mayne 1993: 155, see also 145), can be restrictive or misleading. The father derives pleasure from watching the Sabu films because they rekindle a (nostalgic) memory of the cinema as a pre-migratory social experience. Additionally, the young Sabu remains the ideal son, who, unchangingly locked into the screen, is sexually unthreatening and socially successful – unlike the father’s own son. Buying into the colonial imagination on celluloid helps avoid facing up to post-colonial social reality and the problems and decline of Sabu’s career. Last but not least, Sabu’s presence on the screen marks a certain moment in film history that provided migrant and diasporic audiences of earlier generations with the pleasure of recognition, seeing black or brown bodies at the heart of popular (if problematic) cinematic narratives. Jigna Desai identifies another such moment in the 1980s, the period that impacted on many migrant and

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diasporic film-makers of today, potentially including the young protagonist in and the director of Surviving Sabu: I first stumbled on the play of light as brown skins crossed the silver screen in My Beautiful Laundrette [UK 1985, dir. Stephen Frears]. [...] As brown bodies trespassed the spaces of colonial anthropology and history to spaces marked as the present, I experienced a return and a rupture simultaneously. [...] these Laundromat owners and white boy-kissing brown boys captured some other understandings of race and culture, gender and sexuality, and identity and modernity than I had previously encountered. (2004: vii)

The metacinematic effect By employing the various metadiscursive strategies outlined in this chapter – representing cinema-going and film-viewing, alluding to cinematic intertexts, including filmic elements of counter- and/or autoethnography and ‘filming back’ in response to (film) history – an overall metacinematic effect is achieved that works on several levels. In the first instance, the films discussed here emphasise the variety of positions occupied by migrant and diasporic subjects in film and cinema, including productive spectatorship and (potential) agency with regard to production and self-representation. Secondly, the act of presenting – in the broadest sense – film-within-film always doubles, mirrors or problematises the viewing situation of the production’s actual audience,18 even if the impact of this function is determined by the intensity of self-reflexive ‘noise’ and narrative destabilisation. Within migratory and/or diasporic aesthetics, such a doubling is taken further by aligning a migrant or diasporic character–spectator (or –critic, –director, –film historian) with diverse publics and thus posing additional decoding challenges. A third facet of the metacinematic effect is the privileged position that is accorded to visual culture, positioning it alongside the two central thematic complexes of generation and identity formation. The (mainstream) appeal of migrant and diasporic cinema is closely linked to its various claims to authenticity, seemingly offering (realist) representations of lived experience, and to its critical or affirmative relationships with the manifold imaginaries of the ‘other’. Metacinematic practice teases out the ambivalences of both by foregrounding (the role of) audiovisual media and media content itself. The metacinematic effect results in a special ‘complicity’ of audiences, film-makers and characters, as can be observed in the last scene of Short Sharp Shock, where it provides a sense of closure and a final ironic reflection on the film project. After having avenged Bobby’s death and the violent assault on Costa by killing the druglord Muhamer, Gabriel, the Turkish German protagonist, returns home. He hides the gun in the living room of the flat he shares with his family and then joins his father in prayer in the same room. The father, who is or acts oblivious to his son’s beaten-up face,

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says: ‘Life will have to end, just like a film.’ The film’s last line of dialogue is delivered in Turkish by Mustafa Enver Akın, who plays Gabriel’s father in the film but is also, in real life, the father of writer–director Fatih Akın. The ‘father’ figure thus speaks to two second-generation ‘sons’, Gabriel and Fatih,19 and – by way of a near-direct camera address – to their Turkish German peers as members of the film’s audience. Additionally, however, and assisted by German subtitles, he also communicates with non-Turkish German viewers who may have willingly bought into the pleasures of Short Sharp Shock’s ghettocentric imagination. The father’s statement about life’s relationship to film is not motivated by narrative context; rather, it draws attention to the impending ending and the constructedness of the film the spectators have been watching. After the previous violent showdown, there is now a change of register: Gabriel’s embrace of faith, long awaited by the father, seems to indicate that he is ready to renounce the (cinematic) world of the ethnically marked outlaw. He might be prepared to become an ordinary young man in Turkey, selling cola to tourists, as Bobby – now dead – had teasingly summarised Gabriel’s plan of remigration earlier in the video viewing sequence. Before Short Sharp Shock literally cuts to black, its narrative fades out of the screen-made excitement of street masculinity by moving into the domestic sphere (notably, in this case, not a female domain). What the film suggests through its mise-en-scène and the metadiscursive line of dialogue is that the sight of a middle-aged Muslim

Figure 12.3 ‘Life will have to end, just like a film’ – metacinematic closure in Short Sharp Shock (1998)

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on a prayer mat in a flat in Hamburg constitutes for Turkish Germans – and, by analogy, for migrant and diasporic communities all over Europe – a far more likely ‘scene’ than any of the cinematic and broadcast media representations that have dominated the European imaginary. The symbolic gun, however, is only as far away as the drawer in which it has been hidden, and it can easily be recovered for a new film’s beginning.

Notes 1. See Hansen (1991) for a more detailed discussion of this relationship. 2. A notable exception is Lola Young (1996), who – while remaining within the national paradigm of British film – brings together the colonial and post- colonial periods. 3. For a description of pre-migratory cinema-going in Iran and Trinidad respectively see Naficy (2003: 187–92) and Ové (2002: 219–20). 4. ‘Desi’ is a colloquial term for ‘South Asian’ used by the Indian and Pakistani diaspora. 5. For an encompassing discussion of global Bollywood reception and diasporic spectatorship see Bhattacharya (2004). 6. ‘Ghetto’ is not only a problematic term from a sociological point of view, but also has very different connotations in European and American contexts. What is referred to here is a ‘historically specific ghettocentric imagination’ (Watkins 1998: 197, emphasis in original) characterised by ‘its ability to foreground the worldviews of black youth’ (203) and ‘the representation of the urban ghetto as a site of repression and entrapment’ (212). As Mennel points out, the ‘ghetto as a phantasmatic site for the negotiation of resistance is a transnational cinematic phenomenon’ (2002: 141) and thus not restricted to urban American locations. 7. For more on the ‘hood’ films see Paula Massood (2003: 145–74). 8. See also Berghahn and Malik in this volume. 9. See also Iordanova for a discussion of transnational cinephilia, p. 63. 10. For a detailed discussion of mirroring and borrowing as well as references to African American film and culture in La Haine, see Doughty and Griffiths (2006). 11. Watching films together, albeit in the cinema, is also shown as a leisure activity in Mean Streets. 12. See Klein (2003) for more on the two films and immigration. 13. The cinema is once again constructed as a place of safety, and the cineliterate viewer is referred to the French New Wave films Les quatre cents coups/400 Blows (1959, dir. François Truffaut) and À bout de souffle/Breathless (1960, dir. Jean-Luc Godard) (Doughty and Griffiths 2006: 121 note 6). 14. Yavuz’s title alludes to another film set in the same part of Hamburg, Große Freiheit Nr. 7/Great Freedom No. 7/Port of Freedom (Germany 1944). In addition to the title, A Little Bit of Freedom includes a further intertextual link: one of the film’s characters – the homeless former seaman ‘Käptn’ – can be read as a run-down version of the charismatic, if flawed, sailor-turned-entertainer Hannes in Great Freedom No. 7. It is significant that both films refer to the streets ‘Große Freiheit’ (Great Freedom) and ‘Kleine Freiheit’ (Little Freedom) in Hamburg-Altona, whose unusual names date back to the seventeenth century. They reflect Altona’s past as an independent town which was known for its freedom of trade and religion and

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15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

consequently became a destination for religious minorities fleeing discrimination and persecution elsewhere. Originally just entitled Great Freedom, the 1940s production with its anti-heroes and libertine attitudes did not meet the approval of the Third Reich film censors; Great Freedom No. 7 was not released in Germany until September 1945. For more on Yavuz’s film see Gutiérrez Rodríguez in this volume. Surviving Sabu can be viewed online by registered users at: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1180371/index.html (accessed 30 November 2008). A number of Sabu’s films, including his debut Elephant Boy, were made by the brothers Alexander, Zoltan and Vincent Korda, who are credited with ‘discovering’ the young actor. Hungarian migrants themselves, the Korda brothers identified in varying degrees with the British Empire. Most of Alexander Korda’s Indian spectacle The Drum (UK 1938) was filmed in Britain; it is therefore the most likely production for George Khan’s stint as a movie extra. For a detailed discussion of Surviving Sabu as a queer diasporic intervention, see Gopinath (2005: 63–80). For a comprehensive and transnational discussion of this phenomenon in film and literature see Paech and Paech (2000). As he acts under the direction of his son Fatih Akın, we have in fact a similar father–son set-up to that constructed on the diegetic level in Surviving Sabu.

Works cited Appadurai, A. (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press. Ballesteros, I. (2005) ‘Embracing the Other: The Feminization of Spanish “Immigration Cinema” ’, Studies in Hispanic Cinemas 2(1): 3–14. Bhattacharya, N. (2004) ‘A “Basement” Cinephilia: Indian Diaspora Women Watch Bollywood’, South Asian Popular Culture 2(2): 161–83. Brosius, C. and N. Yazgi (2007) ‘ “Is there no place like home?” Contesting Cinematographic Constructions of Indian Diasporic Experiences’, Contributions to Indian Sociology 41(3): 355–86. Degli-Esposti, C. (1998) ‘Introduction: Postmodernism(s)’, in C. Degli-Esposti (ed.) Postmodernism in the Cinema. New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 3–18. Desai, J. (2004) Beyond Bollywood: The Cultural Politics of South Asian Diasporic Film. London, New York: Routledge. Douchet, J. (interviewed by A. de Baecque and C. M. Bosséno) (2000) ‘Constructing the Gaze: An Interview with Jean Douchet’, Framework 42. Online. Available at: http://www.frameworkonline.com/Issue42/42jd.html (accessed 20 April 2010). Doughty, R. and K. Griffiths (2006) ‘Racial Reflection: La Haine and the Art of Borrowing’, Studies in European Cinema 3(2): 117–27. Gillespie, M. (1995) Television, Ethnicity and Cultural Change. London, New York: Routledge. Gopinath, G. (2005) Impossible Dreams: Queer Diasporas and South Asian Public Culture. Durham, NC, London: Duke University Press. Grieveson, L., E. Sonnet and P. Stanfield (2005) ‘Introduction’, in L. Grieveson, E. Sonnet and P. Stanfield (eds) Mob Culture: Hidden Histories of the American Gangster Film. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1–10. Guerrero, E. (1993) Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

274 Claudia Sternberg Hansen, M. (1991) Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film. Cambridge, Mass., London: Harvard University Press. Klein, A. (2003) ‘ “Make way for the bad guy”: Understanding Changing Social Anxieties Through the Gangster Film’, in J. Gifford and G. Zezulka-Mailloux (eds) Culture & the State: Nationalisms. Edmonton: CRC Humanities Studio, 159–76. Kuhn, A. (1999) ‘ “That day did last me all my life”: Cinema Memory and Enduring Fandom’, in M. Stokes and R. Maltby (eds) Identifying Hollywood’s Audiences: Cultural Identity and the Movies. London: British Film Institute, 135–46. Massood, P. (2003) Black City Cinema: African American Urban Experiences in Film. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Mayne, J. (1982) ‘Immigrants and Spectators’, Wide Angle 5(2): 32–41. ——. (1993) Cinema and Spectatorship. London, New York: Routledge. Mennel, B. (2002) ‘Bruce Lee in Kreuzberg and Scarface in Altona: Transnational Auteurism and Ghettocentrism in Thomas Arslan’s Brothers and Sisters and Fatih Akın’s Short Sharp Shock’, New German Critique 87: 133–56. Munby, J. (1999) Public Enemies, Public Heroes: The Gangster from Little Caesar to Touch of Evil. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Naficy, H. (1996) ‘Phobic Spaces and Liminal Panics: Independent Transnational Film Genre’, in R. Wilson and W. Dissanayake (eds) Global/Local: Cultural Productions and the Transnational Imaginary. Durham, London: Duke University Press, 119–44. ——. (2003) ‘Theorizing “Third World” Film Spectatorship: The Case of Iran and Iranian Cinema’, in A. R. Guneratne and W. Dissanayake (eds) Rethinking Third Cinema. New York, London: Routledge, 183–201. Ové, H. (2002) ‘Belmont Olympic’, in B. Korte and C. Sternberg (eds) (2004) Bidding for the Mainstream? Black and Asian British Film since the 1990s. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, 219–25. Paech, A. and J. Paech (2000) Menschen im Kino: Film und Literatur erzählen. Stuttgart, Weimar: Metzler. Puwar, N. (2007) ‘Social Cinema Scenes’, Space and Culture 10(2): 253–70. Puwar, N. and K. Powar (2004) ‘Kabhi Ritz, Kabhie Palladium: Asian Cinema Culture in Coventry, 1940–1980’, Wasafiri 19(43): 41–4. Santaolalla, I. (2007) ‘A Case of Split Identity? Europe and Spanish America in Recent Spanish Cinema’, Journal of Contemporary European Studies 15(1): 67–78. Watkins, S. C. (1998) Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Young, L. (1996) Fear of the Dark: ‘Race’, Gender, and Sexuality in the Cinema. London: Routledge.

Future Imperfect: Some Onward Perspectives on Migrant and Diasporic Film Practice Gareth Jones

Film criticism generally bases itself on the finished film as fait accompli, as if the film, once made, were self-evidently a necessary and indispensable part of the cinemalandscape. But this is not the experience of the filmmaker, whose creative arc will be strewn with rejected scripts, false starts, failed finance and aborted shoots. This may apply doubly to the migrant or diasporic film-maker facing additional challenges of access or entitlement. The most passionate personal statement may be the hardest to finance and the best but thorniest screenplay may never be shot. Film is expensive to make and hard to sell; thus no one has an inalienable right to make a film, a privilege that is usually won through indomitable determination, immense vanity and tireless networking, not to mention solid financial backing. Film is a luxury item of complex and collaborative genesis, in which the authorial principle is constantly relativised by the difficulties of raising a budget, accommodating commissioning editors, finding a distributor and reaching an audience, to say nothing of securing appropriate locations and coping with the weather. Despite our desire to rationalise the result, we must acknowledge that film-making proceeds along a variant of the chaos principle, is thus approximate in its realisation and almost by definition cannot quite convey the absolute meaning of its auteur. Film is a permanent process of accommodation between intention and possibility, a process that mirrors in some respect the vicissitudes of migration, making film the natural vehicle for the recounting of thwarted journeys and incompleted rites of passage. While the industrial context in its basic components might seem the same for migrant and diasporic film-makers as for any others – script, crew, budget, edit, distribution and so on – these common denominators disguise a multitude of subtle inflections, hidden obstacles and unconscious resistances, which, together with varying national support mechanisms, form the actual experience of such film-makers across Europe. Ultimately it transpires 275

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that some versions of reality are acceptable and command finance. Others are not acceptable and do not get made. The stories abound, the talent is emerging fast; the output thus far, however, disguises immense strains that ought to be confronted.

Diasporas on our doorstep – the festival circuit Firstly, we should not confuse an interest in films made outside Europe and the United States (generally ‘World Cinema’) with a commitment to foster migrant and diasporic film within Europe. At a national or a European level, the multicultural current of interest (such as it is) tends to run to the outside of the European Union. The excellent film festivals of Rotterdam, Amiens, Fribourg and Tarifa, to mention only a few, specialise in non-Western film, and most festivals now feature a World Cinema section. Commendable initiatives such as the World Cinema Fund (Berlin) or Open Doors (Locarno) invite film-makers from around the world to visit Europe in search of audiences and finance; the Hubert Bals Fund (Netherlands) directly funds nonWestern film with development grants. Cinéfondation (France) and the Binger Filmlab (Netherlands) offer residences to international film-makers, and leading festivals increasingly recognise international films. However, it is hard not to discern a certain ‘exoticism’ in these globalising trends, which privilege the showcasing of product from distant parts of the world over the creative enfranchisement of the rapidly maturing diasporic collectivities now deeply embedded in Europe, let alone that of the first-generation migrant, whether voluntary or exiled. Through ambitious cultural programmes such as Euromed, the European Union exports large sums of development finance into its neighbouring regions, while largely overlooking the fact that Europe carries an important diasporic component of these regions and a vital talent base concealed inside its borders. ‘We like your rather strange and exciting films,’ the audience seems to be saying, ‘but please don’t think of coming to make them here.’ No comparable advantages or incentives are offered to any of Europe’s existing diasporic minorities, who thereby suffer from a double exclusion. Their concerns are viewed as neither fully foreign nor fully European and in cultural terms risk being marginalised. Whether or not this is an unconscious or deliberate control mechanism, an attempt to deport, as it were, a cultural ‘problem’, I believe, as a European film-maker, that this pattern should be challenged. Europe has been a continent of migration since earliest times and multiple failures of adaptation have accounted for much historical turbulence, failures we should avoid repeating. Migration will continue, and cinema as the locus classicus of intercultural dialogue has its part to play in disentangling the new realities it occasions. Whether through the unavoidable disturbance and pain of migration, the trauma of dispossession and homelessness, the challenges of arrival,

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rejection or assimilation, migrants can deliver powerful and challenging films in a stultified market struggling to find good stories in our safe, complacent societies. Creative artists of ‘double culture’ (Seeßlen in Berghahn/ Sternberg, p. 28) do not only bear witness to a complex past; they point the way to a more invigorating future.

Babylon – a place of welcome or exile? It was this intuition, and the realisation that, despite lavish EU funding for audiovisual training initiatives through the MEDIA Programme, no European project existed in which this hypothesis could be tested, that led to the founding in early 2006 of Babylon, a cultural forum and film development programme in which diasporic and migrant film-makers from Europe’s varied minorities can meet, compare notes and share their creative aims. The experience of reaching the mythical Babylon of fabulous wealth and unremitting exile, a metropolis of competing languages, interests and traditions, is repeated across Europe in different forms and between different cultures. The specificity depends largely on colonial, economic and political histories, yet each European nation tends to treat its minorities proprietorially as ‘our own’, depriving them firstly of access to Europe and secondly of the chance to speak to each other, and it was this isolation that Babylon was intended to overcome. The ‘national paradigm’ described by Dina Iordanova (p. 61) as being no longer adequate needs challenging both in academic discourse and in professional practice. For instance, there is an ingrained assumption among film-makers of the UK’s African Caribbean and Asian communities that ‘Europe isn’t meant for us’, an assumption reinforced by self-exclusion, self-doubt, misinformation and mistrust, directly attributable to an unfinished colonial legacy that can only be challenged and dispelled through the dismantling of European borders not just for the privileged traveller but for all sections of society. Babylon is needed not just because the national paradigm increasingly delivers coarse cliché and sterile repetition, but because an intercultural model is Europe’s only hope of challenging the hegemony of Hollywood ‘universalism’. Migration creates tales of the human condition capable of transcending language and acculturation and of speaking to a large audience. The dual sense of belonging speaks to us all, however monocultural we may be, if only as a paradigm of self-searching and self-doubt. The migrant carries a permanent alter ego and is the postmodern hero of our inner displacements and dislocations. His or her pilgrimage is the physical projection of an elusive quest for the self that we all share. Though the emergence of such film-makers as Fatih Akın in Germany, Rachid Bouchareb in France and Gurinder Chadha in the United Kingdom may herald the arrival of diasporic concerns in the mainstream, and though

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‘post-colonial dynamism’ (Iordanova, p. 55) is certainly palpable in the European film scene, the ‘coming into representation’ (Hall in Berghahn/ Sternberg, p. 15) of entire communities cannot yet be taken for granted. Individual success does not imply equality of access to the means of selfexpression, nor does it guarantee that other voices and alternative diasporic interpretations will get a hearing (see Malik in this volume). It was the unheard voices we were searching for, and we found them. Babylon’s pilot year 2006–7 brought together successful and aspiring film-makers from the United Kingdom (Asian and African Caribbean), France (Maghrebi and Chinese), Germany (Turkish) and Switzerland (Macedonian) in two multilingual workshops in Rotterdam and Cannes dedicated to script development, network building, co-production and film finance. Subsequent years have added The Netherlands (Surinamese, Iranian, Chinese), Austria (Turkish Kurdish) and Italy (US–Brazilian) as well as South-East Europe and the Near East. Funded by film and cultural authorities as diverse as the CNC (Centre National de la Cinématographie), Goethe-Institut, Filmförderungsanstalt (German Federal Film Board), Vienna Film Fund (Filmfonds Wien), Netherlands Film Fund and the British Council, UK Film Council and Skillset, Babylon has established itself in the European audiovisual sector as a serious network of like-minded film practitioners. We have been moved by the solidarity shown, the commonality of experiences narrated and the generosity of creative support exchanged, all of which (with the help of interpretation) transcended linguistic and national frontiers, which proved ephemeral compared with the deeper existential bonds between ‘hyphenated nationals’ (Elsaesser in Berghahn/Sternberg, p. 20) discovered less in the nationality than in the hyphenation, thus creating a sphere that Paul Gilroy evocatively characterises as multicultural ‘conviviality’ (2004: xi). Migration is in every sense a shared experience. It decimates communities left behind, for example the southern Adriatic, as shown in Eno Milkani’s heart-wrenching Edeni i braktisur/Abandoned Eden (Albania 2004), and has compounded and complicated communities of reception across Western Europe. Of such a complex encounter anyone concerned should have the right to speak; one exclusion cannot be remedied by another. In the mid1980s I was fortunate enough to write and direct the BBC five-part serial Shalom Salaam (UK 1988), which was based on two successive waves of migration into the United Kingdom, one Jewish, one Muslim, represented by two families sharing one city, Leicester. I belong to neither community, though I have always had personal links with both. I believe I was entitled to write this story, and the ‘dominant perspective’ (disclosing my subject position) was rendered by a monocultural adolescent envious of the complex identities of her peers. The piece was reasonably well received, especially in Continental Europe, and may have encouraged the liberation of new talents from within diasporic communities. This was exactly as it should be,

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though one should note the dangers of ‘authenticism’ that this advance brought with it. There was, and in many quarters still is, a perception that ‘Asian film-makers’, for example, were only there to write about ‘Asian subjects’ and thereby deliver us ‘authentic new voices’. Apart from the question of control – who is entitled to define authenticity? – this runs the risk of pigeonholing talent and reinforcing sectarian divides. A generalised Asian writer might not wish to write about an equally generalised Asian subject, or, if so, perhaps not within the social realist aesthetic complete with its prescribed stereotypes, preferring, say, Gothic horror instead. Conversely, since no British writer (as far as I am aware) belongs to both Jewish and Muslim communities simultaneously, Shalom Salaam should not have been made, since no one was entitled to tell it. The only response to this reductio ad absurdum is this: anyone should have the right to speak of anything, and they should be judged by the honesty, passion and insight with which they speak and the skill with which they touch their audience. Thus Babylon is open to all producer, writer or director applicants of any origin who have a working base in Europe. We stipulate an initial track record of at least one short film and a previous full-length script, since Babylon is not designed or funded to be a start-up programme or a substitute film school. We encourage culturally mixed teams but also those with very specific community links. Husband/wife teams or civil partnerships are valued, since independent film-makers increasingly work in a cottage industry enabled only by domestic sacrifice; one major European language (French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch or English) is required, as our interpretation facilities cannot cope with more. Nevertheless, despite an open call for offers, the submissions from every end of Europe speak of a passion for one subject, and that is the personal experience of migration in some shape or form, be it departure and arrival, exile and asylum, welcome or alienation, assimilation or emancipation. This does not imply that autobiography in itself makes good film; ‘based on a true story’ excuses nothing where fiction is concerned. It does mean, however, that in practice it is those with first-hand experience who come up with the best stories most likely to grip an audience. This pragmatic consideration is complemented in our selection by an alertness to prior disadvantages in cases where the film-maker’s subject matter, personal background or professional milieu may not have facilitated the access or attention he or she deserves. One aim of Babylon is to challenge existing perceptions that have hardened into prejudice and to stimulate an industrial environment in which audiences can be attracted by more diverse films. As Thomas Elsaesser notes, the cinema of double occupancy is thriving, but one might add that the hotel has many rooms still available.1 Of course there is no reason why the migrant or diasporic film-maker should have an easier time than anyone else, and individuals should not be labelled as some priestly caste defined by election either through suffering

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or through the ‘self-confident mobility’ that Deniz Göktürk has identified (p. 216). ‘Migrant envy’, as I would describe it, is a recurring phenomenon with unfortunate antecedents and should not be needlessly provoked. The seemingly effortless management of cosmopolitan ‘multiple codes’ (Göktürk, p. 216) can prove inaccessible and potentially threatening to the monoglot, monocultural mind, and, despite our belief that Babylon is needed, there are dangers that the well-meaning ‘diversity industry’, represented by political fiat at the heart of industrial bodies such as the BBC or the UK Film Council, may create the false impression that ‘diaspora chic’ has it all its own way. A multicultural market is exceedingly hard to create, as we shall see, and too many easy breaks or helping hands can entrench public resistance rather than genuinely open minds. We have been accused of exercising positive discrimination on the one hand and ghettoising film-makers by identifying them as migrant or diasporic on the other, sometimes both simultaneously. The free market should be adequate and appropriate for all, we are told in some quarters. ‘Talent will out. You’ll make it if you’re good enough’ – old saws often heard from people who actually mean: ‘You’re not one of us, you’ll do as you’re told.’ Migration is indeed framed, all too commonly, as a ‘monolinear narrative’ that leaves the migrant stranded within ‘the parameters of the nation state’ (Göktürk, p. 230), and prising that narrative free from national constrictions is not an easy task. The state of the ‘diversity debate’ is in very different phases across Europe, and, in launching Babylon across the continent, we soon realised that every potential interlocutor had a different conception of what might be meant by equal opportunities and how the eventual aim was best to be addressed. Nowhere is the European divide clearer than in national attitudes to minority entitlement, and one premise of Babylon was that only a Europe-wide exchange between minority cultures might bridge the gulf of incomprehension that still separates the national majorities of ‘Old Europe’. A ‘polycentric vision’ (Shohat and Stam in Berghahn/Sternberg, p. 40) is certainly our cause, but at no point have we felt that Eurocentrism was the obstacle – this was a world with no centre to locate. In cultural terms the continent is centrifugally inclined, and, for instance, the engagements with la francophonie by metropolitan France have little in common with the UK’s view of the English-speaking world. The post-Habsburg/Ottoman and also postcommunist reshaping of South-East Europe as well as the recent penetration of Balkan and Maghreb interests into Greece, Italy and Spain contribute further to an endlessly dynamic demography. Europe is a profoundly asymmetrical continent, already multicultural in its historical composition and anti-centrist in its instincts, as its rejection of a single Constitution demonstrates. Paradoxically, this might offer greater hope for new, richer syntheses than exist in a largely monolingual continent such as North America. One thing is certain: the entire subject is an ideological minefield, fraught with

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perils for both practitioners and academics, as the occasional discursive strain within this volume openly admits. For all these reasons it is hard to assess the migrant and diasporic experience solely through the prism of films that have been made, because those films have not been the only representational versions of reality on offer. Indeed, they have already passed through an industrial process that may have powerfully compromised or relativised their author’s original plans and intentions. Therefore, I shall briefly consider the prospect of projected films from France, Britain, Germany and the Balkans, each drawn from our Babylon initiative, films that quintessentially deserve, but in practice will find it very hard, to get made. Their fortunes might well define the future available to migrant and diasporic film.

The Balkans – from trauma to transnationalism Mitko Panov, one of our first-generation Babylonians, left Macedonia aged nineteen to study directing in Poland. From there he went to film school in the United States to learn and subsequently teach Hollywood–Aristotelian dramaturgy; thence he migrated once more to Switzerland, mainly for family reasons. His remarkable short film Z podniesionymi rekami/With Raised Hands (Poland 1986) won the Palme d’Or in Cannes with a cinematic reconstruction of the infamous photograph of the boy under German guns in the Warsaw ghetto, but, despite this widely recognised début, Panov’s subsequent career has been strewn with interruptions, due at least in part to his various migrations, a reminder that transnationalism can effect as many ruptures as sutures. The short film Livada (Macedonia 1998) saw him back in Macedonia with an intercultural fable of friendship between a Muslim peasant and a Greek Orthodox doctor. His major documentary Comrades (Macedonia 2002) took him through the Balkans, retracing the protagonists of another photograph, a carefree snapshot from 1981 of his former comrades of the Yugoslav ‘Peace Army’. The film charts how the happy conscripts have since then been divided on opposite sides of a bloody civil war, new enemies defined by exclusion and tribal bonding and frontline victims of an inner exodus inflicted by the break-up of their once unitary, if federal, state, now fractured into its not-quite-constituent parts, a diaspora of the soul by which a country has taken leave of its inhabitants and left them stranded. Panov’s Babylon screenplay The War Is Over tells of the anguished exile to Switzerland during the Kosovo crisis of an Albanian Serb teacher, a man who withers once separated from his home. ‘Diaspora is the biggest trauma of all,’ Panov ruminates, with permissible hyperbole, a gentle, bearded introvert with a watery, distant gaze. ‘Think of the early pioneers who simply got in a boat and sailed away, never to return. I can scarcely imagine their sacrifice, the inner turmoil, the pain of separation. The shock was so great it

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was still felt by the second and third generations, who grow up like resilient mutants, a shock that makes the USA what it is.’2 Emigration can prove a traumatic event for whatever reason it is undertaken. Walking away apparently unscathed from the psychic disaster of their own exodus, many migrant film-makers create from a base of latent trauma that often goes unacknowledged. The success of their output will depend on the extent to which they can transmute the trauma of exile from a repetitive, sterile ‘acting out’ of ritualistic behaviour patterns into a dynamic, fertile ‘working through’ of buried grief into empowering consciousness. Tapping into the creative potential of recovered trauma can prove as important for the personal voice of the migrant as the subsequent métissage with a new culture. Though clearly a vessel for his own experience, Panov’s suffering teacher is based on a former Yugoslav soldier whom the author happened upon as a stateless person in Switzerland, an example of how an accomplished writer displaces autobiography the better to tell it. Though an exile, Panov himself has never been a refugee; he is neither Albanian nor Serb but a Macedonian Slav; he has never been caught up in a war zone, or suffered such extreme alienation as his subject. Yet, quintessentially, this is his story. ‘What’s the difference?’ he asks with the ingrained self-effacement of the dramatist. ‘All experience is common.’ The asylum-seeking teacher stands not for his screenwriter–creator but for displaced humanity, though this prompts me to wonder whether the universal is achievable in film without a scrupulous adherence to the specific, and whether the culture-hopping of the transnational inevitably involves a dilution of narrative intensity. ‘Without leaving home I could never talk like this,’ Panov muses and turns to his Israeli producer Assaf Shapira: ‘It’s the Exodus that makes you who you are.’ Though not Jewish himself, Panov speaks in a diasporic vocabulary laid down in the Pentateuch at the dawn of recorded migration and still alive in the emotionally loaded terms aliya and yerida, ‘going-up’ and ‘coming-down’: aliya the final ingathering of the exiles into the promised Eretz Israel enjoined upon the Jewish diaspora; yerida the abandonment of Eretz Israel involved in rejoining the diaspora. This binary perception of faithfulness and desertion is echoed in varied modulations throughout the diasporic experience, at its simplest and most poignant in the weekly cash transfers from migrant workers to their families ‘back home’, for both of whom ‘onward mobility’ may be a distant mirage and ‘return’ a dubious endpoint. Having made yerida and left his war-torn country, Panov’s teacher fears nothing more than the impending aliya imposed by the Swiss authorities who wish to send him back. At peace or at war, his birthplace will not be the same, and more crucially neither will he. Despite his inability to engage with either Switzerland or its Balkan diasporic communities, he knows he has changed and cannot revert to what he was. Unconsciously he suffers

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from the guilt implicit in the very concept of yerida, a betrayal of the covenant with one’s land, one’s ancestors and one’s god, quasi-religious perceptions that have survived the state-fostered atheism of the Tito years. He has been broken, become a non-person; and return will never piece him back together or restore his integrity. ‘Every uprooting is fatal,’ says Panov and his logic eloquently drifts: If you don’t survive it ... it’s fatal. Everyone who leaves is in the category of ‘survivor’. My career ended where it was supposed to start, as soon as I left school, my country disintegrating, one part of the world collapsed. You have no project, you have to start from scratch, you’re less of a filmmaker than someone who’s done nothing, never studied but carries a project for three years. Then there’s the competition, these people don’t respect the rules, I’m on the starting line and they’re already a hundred meters ahead, you can never catch up. You have an emotional sense of injustice. But then ... it’s never going to be fair. Every place has its challenges, the ideal space doesn’t exist. In his eyes I see the wandering focus of the nomad attempting to locate the source of his trauma, as he quietly concludes: ‘Yes, I feel like a survivor.’3 Nowadays migration is a more complicated affair than a one-way ticket in steerage class. The film-maker is likely to spend time at international markets and festivals in search of co-producers from opposite ends of the earth. Far from reducing the trauma of emigration, onward mobility paradoxically may intensify it through a compulsive ‘acting out’ in a hapless systolic alternation of aliya and yerida: once gone, no return is ever complete or adequate, however often repeated. ‘People back home look at you with a fear of new competition, as if you’re going to expose their cosy little game, and they make life five times tougher for you. When I’m tempted to say, “Hey, these Swiss are giving you a hard time”, I remind myself: “Remember those Macedonians, they treat you really bad”.’ In his screenplay for The War is Over, Panov amusingly parodies resentment against the returning émigré loaded with inappropriate gifts for all the family from whisky to lingerie, whose robust display of Albanian independence nearly sparks an outrage by the local Serb police, thus proving that the habits and strategies of ethnic conflict, far from dissipating, may fossilise into self-caricature in the diaspora. It is said that language departs from itself more slowly in the colony than in the homeland, if only because the exile holds more tenaciously to his dying roots. Thus Panov: ‘You speak your own language more grammatically, you avoid using outdated colloquialisms because you don’t know the new ones, you end up asking “Why am I talking like a book?” ’ There may be a danger that migrant film-makers make just such films about their former home, because the trauma of migration has frozen in time their cultural

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references. As well as eloquent, accents can be stilted, forced or comical, and accented films need not always prove either original or daring. Like language, cultural observances tend to freeze at the moment of departure and are often reduced to extravagant displays of loyalty, such as folk dishes unknown to native cuisine and long abandoned or purely mythical renderings of ‘life at home’, and many film proposals we receive at Babylon arrive with impeccable diasporic but implausible creative credentials. Conversely, the robust self-criticism adopted by home communities reflected in films such as Fatmir Koçi’s Tirana viti zero/Tirana Year Zero (Albania 2001) can provoke howls of outrage from the disappointed diaspora, one further example being the protests of Australian Slovenes at Jan Cvitkovič’s Odgrobadogroba/Gravehopping (Slovenia 2005). The film was described as an insult to national pride, ‘degrading Slovenian image and Slovenian culture [...] which is Central European, not Balkan’,4 sentiments not echoed in Ljubljana or elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia to which Slovenia till so recently belonged. This diasporic fatwah indicates how easily the term ‘Balkan’ can itself be balkanised as an unthinking pejorative and an implement of ethnic rejection, though its current usage in film circles of South East Europe (galvanised by the Sarajevo Film Festival in particular) points more to its joyous recuperation as an emblem of regional solidarity. Panov’s teacher has a doubly problematic trajectory in that Albanians of Serbia are already part of an inner diaspora, from which he departs into an international No Man’s Land. Albanians are to be found in most nations of the Balkans, and particularly in Macedonia, Kosovo and Montenegro, besides obviously Albania itself, where a newspaper editor recently took exception to my reference to a ‘regional diaspora’ with the rejoinder that Albania is simply not large enough for its ethnic population and an extension of its borders was all that was needed to bring the diaspora home.

Britain – authentic to whom? While Mitko Panov’s trajectory is caught somewhere in the bind between involuntary migration and transnational career-building, his frustrations have something in common with that of his fellow Babylonian Faisal Qureshi, a British journalist, film editor and short film-maker who clearly, emphatically even, belongs to one of the UK’s embedded diasporic communities. Born in Britain of first-generation Pakistani parents, he has lived in these islands all his life, is not a great traveller outside work commissions and would probably not welcome the label ‘migrant’ whether of second generation or any other epithet. Qureshi joined Babylon with an ambitious and well-scripted story of special rendition Battle without Banners, told from the point of view of a bewildered innocent snatched from his family on false information and consigned to a nightmare world of secret detention camps where he is converted to the Islamic fundamentalism formerly alien

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to him, a resounding comment on the War on Terror’s counterproductive outcomes.5 An active trade unionist, Qureshi is familiar with the hurdles faced by film-makers from Muslim communities and sober about his prospects: a good twenty years after multiculturalism reached the United Kingdom, equality of self-expression is still a long way off and ‘Special Rendition from a Muslim Perspective’ raises eyebrows amongst the UK’s top executives. For them, arranged marriages, honour killings and Bollywood fantasy are more acceptable diasporic narratives, an illustration of what Qureshi eloquently describes as ‘genre intimidation’6 – the stereotypical reinforcement of received ideas via apparently neutral commercial pressures. In the culturally myopic UK entertainment industry, Muslim characters are regularly played by Hindu actors and Muslims generally feel uneasy in the drinking, socialising, promiscuous film world with its downward pressures on family life. While an Islamic language of film has emerged in, say, the cultures of the Maghreb, the same cannot be said of the Muslim diasporas of Western Europe, and the reason must be found in part within the hedonistic, materialistic assumptions of an industry that consciously Muslim film-makers such as Qureshi find antithetical to their way of life and their authorial aspirations. It is arguable that Muslim film cannot be produced by a postmodern, post-Christian industry, yet the locating and rooting of Muslim allegiance and belonging within Western film is surely a priority of huge concern. This brings us to the central question: whom is the migrant or diasporic film-maker addressing? The diasporic community or majority audiences? Pleasing both may prove hard. The adaptation of Ayub Khan Din’s stage play East is East (UK 1999, dir. Damien O’Donnell) did much to familiarise the UK’s non-Asian public with the permanence of the Pakistani communities, and the general response could be paraphrased: ‘Look, they can laugh at themselves, so they must be British’ (see also Malik, pp. 143–4). This assumption was not reciprocated in many sections of the Muslim community, where the film’s undercurrent of satirical humour caused deep hurt, and, according to Qureshi, threw doubt on the value of attempted integration. ‘You do your best, you try to fit in, and this gets thrown at you,’ might be a rough rendering. ‘Compromise doesn’t work and was wrong in the first place. Better stick to your principles,’ says Qureshi. Thus the film might lend some comfort to the rejectionist stance of the younger generation, disillusioned by ‘parental sell-out’. Unhappy with their screen representations, Britain’s minority communities have taken refuge in their own radio and television stations such as Star TV, DTV, Prime TV, Zee TV, the Islam Channel; eighty per cent of the foreign films shown in the United Kingdom are from the Indian subcontinent. This deepening of a ‘niche market’ can only intensify the difficulties encountered in the mainstream crossover even by high-profile British

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Asian screenwriters and directors such as Hanif Kureishi and Gurinder Chadha. Meanwhile the focus is squarely on the upcoming generation, who paradoxically may find life harder than their immediate predecessors. Qureshi’s trade union BECTU is leading the industry with the training initiative Move on Up, which is now being extended from film and television into the music world, but few training places convert into full-time jobs and unpaid secondments often bring no real work experience beyond menial tasks. Disillusioned career stagnation can be the outcome. Qureshi’s progression to feature films may prove a hard one, and local diasporic talent, by a bitter irony, is likely to find itself leap-frogged by transnationals from the glamorous film schools of Eastern Europe. Following the European entrée offered to him by Babylon, Qureshi thinks the answer may be to make common cause with other European minorities and to hunt for production finance on the Continent – in other words, to complement his locally bound diasporic identity with a new transnationalism of his own.

France – a film-maker’s heaven? While the British approach to cinema is clearly market-orientated, treating film as a commodity like any other, the French have a long-standing and honourable tradition of supporting film as an essential form of cultural self-expression on a par with theatre or the visual arts. Film is seen as clearly deserving of public funding (see Jäckel, pp. 77–9), particularly where it involves the French language and the extended political–cultural ambit of la francophonie. By teaming up with co-producers from compatible countries in the Maghreb, the Mashrek, French-speaking Africa or even the Balkans, and with top-up funds from the Council of Europe’s Eurimages (from which the UK withdrew in late 1995), a French producer can hypothetically mount a production with no private investment of any kind. The results are rewarded with prizes at international film festivals and with sophisticated audiences in Paris and beyond, but again one should note that international co-production does not necessarily entail greater creative mobility of the director, let alone facilitate the self-expression of film-makers already entrenched in certain diasporas, as we might illustrate through the experience of Babylon participant Jilani Saadi. Tunisian-born Saadi has lived in France for twenty-five years, but his award-winning films (including his Ors el-dhib/Tender is the Wolf, Tunisia 2006) were shot in Tunisia. With some support from Babylon, he is now raising finance for his latest project L’Impossible Testament, set mostly in Paris, which ought to qualify for French state support. But the film, and Saadi as a diasporic film-maker, fall foul of a terrible double bind. As a French resident, he is making a French film. But as a film-maker of Tunisian origin, he is filming mainly in the Arabic language. Under current regulations he is

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neither French nor foreign and qualifies for none of the existing schemes. In the absence of French support he believes it simpler (and cheaper) to shoot the entire film, including the Paris sequences, in Tunis. This bureaucratic loophole typifies the challenges faced by diasporic film-makers in asserting their right to be heard. At the time of writing, Saadi has abandoned his French home of twenty-five years and has migrated (I refuse the word ‘returned’) to Tunisia. Behind this problem lies the deeper one: films about ‘Arabs’ living in France don’t sell. In the highly cinephile (and largely white) French public there is an aversion to seeing its own image relegated to supporting role or walk-on status in favour of minority protagonists. This is borne out by the funding difficulties experienced by French resident Raja Amari, whose Tunis-based Satin Rouge/Red Satin (Tunisia 2002) should long ago have been followed by her latest project Corps Etranger, a Paris-based story of a young Maghrebi domestic carer recuperated by his haute bourgeoise host family. Despite international recognition, finance is slow to come in. Firstly the protagonist is non-French; secondly the French characters don’t behave well. Paris won’t like it. Difficult (particularly subtly difficult) truths are always more palatable when displaced to a safe distance from home, and ‘Old Europe’ can prove reluctant to look inwards through the eyes of the migrant in its midst. In a phone call to her producer, I learnt that Corps Etranger has been overtaken by another Raja Amari project, Dowaha/Buried Secrets (Tunisia/Switzerland/France 2009) shot entirely in Tunisia and premiered in the Orizzonti section of the 2009 Venice Film Festival. This de facto exclusion lies in stark contrast to the warm welcome France has traditionally offered political exiles who have fallen foul of authorities at home and who wish to pursue their cause from a safe distance. Our fellow Babylonian, Paris-based Show-Chun Lee, started as a documentarist aged sixteen with a film on the Aborigine community of her native Taiwan. She came to France to study visual anthropology and continued her film-making with a dangerous and partly undercover report on sans papiers Chinese migrants in France, consigned to forced labour in the sweatshops of Paris. Her feature project Shanghai-Belleville draws on this previous work. ‘Rich Chinese love to buy expensive French product,’ she muses, ‘but little do they know that leather handbag with the French label has been crafted by Chinese slave labour.’7 Neither Taiwan nor China would have allowed her to make such a film; in China she would have ended up in prison. France has provided her with the freedom and the visual inspiration for her career; she is grateful and proud of her association with the French cinema, but also culturally attached to Taiwan: Of course I get homesick, I’ll never forget what Taiwan taught me, but I say to myself ‘homesickness is a state of being.’ I’m always kind of nowhere, a bit peripheral, and that’s why minority subjects interest me.

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La nostalgie, c’est moi – that’s what drives me on. Every winter I cry, I want to go back to Taiwan, but I live here, my daughter was born here. I keep telling her I’ll leave France when she’s eighteen, but in the meantime my trauma, my homesickness give me the sensibility to enquire into the lives of others. Searching for defining factors to distinguish the British and French positions, one realises that Jilani Saadi, Raja Amari or Show-Chun Lee will always be regarded as Tunisian or Taiwanese film-makers domiciled in France. But Qureshi will always be thought of as a British film-maker of Asian or Pakistani origin. In this asymmetry of appartenance the different emphasis seems slight but is crucial. The sense of separation and belonging is different in the two countries, due in part to the geographical proximity of the former French colonies and the incomplete nature of French decolonisation, especially in the cultural domain. Different legal traditions of citizenship and residence play a part as well. Despite its generosity with political asylum for the stranger within its gates, France has yet to prove that French-born beur talent has it any easier than the UK’s African Caribbean or Asian communities.

Germany – no problem! Meanwhile the German situation is different again, in part because its largest diasporic community, the Turkish, is not (post-)colonial and its presence in Germany is based on different assumptions. While film officials in London and Paris are keen to address diasporic issues such as access and inclusion, wide layers of myopia and denial still prevail in Berlin, where a top film executive in private conversation recently brushed aside the entire concept of Babylon with the magisterial ‘Turkish film-makers have no problems in Germany,’ a complacency punctured by recent press reports of significant emigration of well-educated Turkish Germans (Sontheimer 2008), which our Babylonians might yet emulate. The strains and discrepancies in national policy can be detected in the different nomenclature assigned to the ‘multicultural project’. In the last Chirac administration in France, the affable writer and film-maker Azouz Begag oversaw the Ministère de l’égalité des chances, while in the chilly winds of a new dispensation his successor now runs the Ministère de l’immigration, de l’intégration, de l’identité. The ‘integration word’ rears its head in Berlin too, in the title of the Beauftragte für Migration, Flüchtlinge und Integration. Fears of the integrationist agenda run deep: Turkish Prime Minister Erdoğan on a visit to Germany in February 2008 described assimilation as ‘a crime against humanity’, an intervention that did little to sweeten intercultural relations. Admittedly there are pockets of concern within the German television sector, exemplified by ZDF’s excellent Das kleine Fernsehspiel

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and WDR’s series of debut films Avanti Debütanti, which have handed first opportunities to numerous film-makers of Turkish and other diasporic origins. Downward pressure tends to set in higher on the career ladder, as illustrated by the experience of Babylon participant Sülbiye Günar, whose moving and much-awarded début film Karamuk (Germany 2002) tells the story of a German girl who is brought up by her single mother and discovers, almost by coincidence when she is seventeen, that her biological father is Turkish.8 As is frequently the case in the entertainment sector, a first success leads to the wilderness, and Günar’s personal diasporic concerns are proving hard to pursue, as if the combined weight of the establishment were saying: ‘That was your personal statement, now face up to the market place.’ Though mainstream employment is not hard to find for someone of Günar’s ability, her latest personal project in development with Babylon had been first ‘ethnically cleansed’ of its Turkish characters by the producers and then removed from her control entirely, before legal intervention restored it to her and with Babylon’s encouragement she bought it back. Europe-wide, the problem lies not so much in accepting diasporic filmmakers in themselves as in welcoming their concerns and stories. ‘Tell it the way it is’ is the editorial instruction, by which all too often is meant ‘the way we see it and the way we can sell it’, and frequently this amounts to direct censorship. Of course it is the exception to this rule that seizes our attention. But some eminent successes should not blind us to statistical realities. Not all is well in the garden of the European audiovisual industry. For every diasporic film made, hundreds have been refused, occulted or suppressed, though Babylon, now in its fourth year, is finally showing results.9

Migrant and diasporic film – does it exist? To argue from the negative: if no such thing exists, then this volume has thrown up an amazing number of coincidences, for it seems that right across Europe the fact and the subject of migration have moved to occupy a position of interest and concern within our audiovisual cultures, a phenomenon we have witnessed at first hand through our Babylon initiative. The arrival of a cinema of migration and diaspora is a phenomenon hard to define, born of the working through of Europe’s colonial past, its changing labour economies and the upheavals that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and driven by the movement of peoples, both of individuals and of collectivities. In modern history only the cataclysmic wars of the twentieth century have shifted such large numbers of people across the map of Europe. As Stephen Castles and other migration and diaspora scholars have noted, the speed of migration and the global dispersion of diasporic communities had never reached the dimensions we are experiencing today. The ‘proliferation of transnational movements, flows, and connections of people into and across the European space’ (Robins 2007: 152) has made

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‘migration [...] one of the key forces of social transformation in the contemporary world’ (Castles 2002: 1,144), resulting in fundamental changes of the social and cultural composition of European societies. It is scarcely surprising that there are new stories to tell, stories of a weight and insistence to match the unending filmic output generated by World War Two. One might equally argue that migration has proved simply the catalyst for changes already stirring in European societies, and that the migratory experience is in some sense a paradigm of self-discovery that provides the best optic on society as a whole. Although many diasporic trajectories (and the films that speak of them) take place on the periphery of our established societies, the latter are not unchanged by them, whatever resistances are thrown up along the way. It may well prove that migration has brought about a revolution in the way we see ourselves, and that film is one of the first, most sensitive indicators of this societal shift. As an academic discipline, the study of migrant and diasporic film belongs in the vanguard of media studies, as the site where new sensibilities are emerging fastest and finding their most natural expression through film, in whatever format it may be delivered or watched. How should one describe this distinctly discernable trend? As yet it has no manifesto, so it is hard to call it a movement, though Babylon is attempting to provide some underlying support. It might be called a wave – spontaneous, spreading, ungovernable – more properly so than the highly self-conscious and theorised Nouvelle Vague. It is definitely not, in my opinion, a genre, a term better used to denote post facto similarities in narrative construction and the stylistic handling of content. The classification of films according to genres threatens to straightjacket migrant and diasporic cinema, a phenomenon that is still emerging and has yet to assume its true dimensions. Conceiving of this relatively new type of European cinema, or even world cinema within Europe, as a single genre cannot account for the exuberant, simultaneous emergence of so many different voices working in completely different tones and timbres across most European cultures, voices that may choose, as time goes by, to explore their themes and concerns through the varied genres (and their hybrids) discussed in academic discourse and successfully sold at the cinema door – from romantic comedy to horror (both of which have provided our Babylonians with useful points of reference). These voices should not be condescended to with closed-end definitions that seek to prescribe their concerns and circumscribe their output. Whatever category is eventually chosen to describe migrant and diasporic film, it must respect the plurality of form, style and production implicitly advocated in the following statement by Reece Auguiste of the Black Audio Film Collective: we [...] believe in giving privilege to historical and geographical contexts in the formation of our film sense. Independent film producers of the

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diaspora have a historical/cultural task which is to extend the boundaries of cinema as an apparatus capable of articulating our vision of the social world. Therefore, it is absolutely redundant to reproduce the filmic categories and organising principles of Third Cinema [or any other – GJ] theory in the metropolitan centres, for this amounts to an intellectual disservice to those who for many years mentally and physically laboured to make it a viable proposition within a particular geographical context. (Auguiste 1991: 215) Among many other potential wrong turns, it is vital to resist the equation: films of migration and diaspora mean art-house film. Migrant and diasporic concerns already command large budgets and reach diverse audiences. Are we to banish these films from the diasporic hearth on the grounds of their commercial success and crossover appeal? Of course, migrant film-makers have as much right as anyone to make art films, and are possibly best placed to do so. Of course one must guard with the greatest vigilance against the dilution of intensity, the compromise of vision and the recuperation of message that the commercial machine threatens to impose. But the mindset that tells us ‘small is authentic/big is bad’ is a counsel of despair, leading only to empty cinemas and binned prints. The assumption that anything a minority film-maker has to say can be of interest only to an educated minority leads only to a double ghetto. Migrant and diasporic cinema can be regarded as distinct from all the related fields excavated in the editors’ framework chapter at the beginning of this volume. It denotes firstly a thematic area of concern, secondly a source of biographical engagement, thirdly a growing social phenomenon and fourthly a wave of films that may indeed become a movement. Most importantly, migrant and diasporic cinema contains a fertile creative tension in the contrapuntal use of its complementary but by no means synonymous terms: ‘migrant’ connoting translocation and impermanence; ‘diasporic’ accommodation and engagement. In the dialogue between these two notions lies an entirely new discipline in film studies.

Notes 1. Elsaesser borrows the term ‘double occupancy’ from hotel brochures offering discounted room rates for two people sharing the same room and applies it to European cinema (2005: 129). 2. All of Panov’s statements are taken from an interview with the author during Cinelink, Sarajevo, 7 May 2006. 3. Cf. also Beumers on aspects of alienation and trauma for Russian émigrés, p. 96–102. 4. Protest to the Sydney Film Festival, Re: Offensive and inaccurate comments about Slovenia, 10 June 2006. Source: Jozko Rutar, Producer Gravehopping. 5. See Göktürk on the rhetoric of the ‘clash of civilizations’ p. 229.

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6. All of Qureshi’s statements are taken from an interview with the author, 20 July 2007. 7. Lee’s quotations are taken from an email from the author, 20 August 2007. 8. See Tarr on Babylon participants Sülbiye Günar, Seyhan Derin and Ayşe Polat, p. 177. For a detailed discussion of Karamuk, see Berghahn (2009). 9. At the time of going to press, three Babylon films have been completed: The War is Over by Mitko Panov, Luks Glück by Ayşe Polat and Son of Babylon by Mohamed Al Daradji. Show Chun Lee has obtained substantial development funding; Hueseyin Tabak has shot a feature documentary on a closely related theme; Sally El Hosaini’s My Brother the Devil has subsequently been through the Sundance Directors Lab. Many careers have developed sideways via other projects. Another recent development has been the 2010 launch of a new strand of activities with the title Babylon International thanks to separate funding from the European Union’s MEDIA International and the Nigerian Film Corporation, a complementary and exploratory initiative that brings together film-makers of Europe’s embedded diasporic minorities with their opposite numbers in other continents, in this pilot year with those of French and English-speaking West Africa. Diasporas may thus come to play a holistic role in the future of world cinema by building bridges between different points in their personal trajectories and repairing sometimes fractured links between the two halves of their double cultures.

Works cited Auguiste, R. (1989) ‘Black Independents and Third Cinema: The British Context’, in J. Pines and P. Willemen (eds) Questions of Third Cinema. London: British Film Institute, 212–17. Berghahn, D. (2009) ‘From Turkish Greengrocer to Drag Queen: Re-assessing Patriarchy in Recent Turkish German Coming-of-Age Films’, New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 7(1): 55–69. Castles, S. (2002) ‘Migration and Community Formation under Conditions of Globalisation’, International Migration Review, 36(4): 1143–68. Elsaesser, T. (2005) ‘Double Occupancy and Small Adjustments: Space, Place and Policy in the New European Cinema since the 1990s’, in European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 108–30. Gilroy, P. (2004) After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? Abingdon: Routledge. Moorti, S. (2003) ‘Desperately Seeking an Identity’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 6(3): 355–76. Robins, K. (2007) ‘Transnational Cultural Policy and European Cosmopolitanism’, Cultural Politics 3(2): 147–74. Sontheimer, M. (2008) ‘Turkish-German Professionals: Young, Qualified and Unwanted’, Spiegel Online International, 21 May. Online. Available at: http://www. spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,554612,00.html (accessed 24 September 2008).

Filmography 4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile/4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (Romania 2007, dir. Cristian Mungiu) 40 qm Deutschland/Forty Square Meters of Germany (FRG 1986, dir. Tevfik Başer) 40 Shades of Blue (USA 2005, dir. Ira Sachs) 44 (Morocco/France 1985, dir. Moumen Smihi) À bout de souffle/Breathless (France 1960, dir. Jean-Luc Godard) A mi madre le gustan las mujeres/My Mother Likes Women (Spain 2002, dir. Daniela Féjerman and Inés París) À toute vitesse/Full Speed (France 1998, dir. Gaël Morel) Abschied vom falschen Paradies/Farewell to a False Paradise (FRG 1989, dir. Tevfik Başer) Adiós con el corazón/Goodbye from the Heart (Spain 2000, dir. José Luis García Sánchez) Ağır Roman/Cholera Street (Turkey 1997, dir. Mustafa Altıoklar) Agua con sal/Salt Water (Spain/Puerto Rico 2005, dir. Pedro Pérez-Rosado) Alger la Blanche (France 1986, dir. Cyril Collard) Ali au pays de mirages/Ali in Wonderland (Algeria 1978, dir. Ahmed Rachedi) Alice in den Städten/Alice in the Cities (West Germany 1974, dir. Wim Wenders) Alles wird gut/Everything Will be Fine (Germany 1998, dir. Angelina Maccarone) Ambassadeurs, Les/The Ambassadors (Tunisia/Libya/France 1976, dir. Naceur Ktari) Anam (Germany 2001, dir. Buket Alakus) Angst essen Seele auf/Ali – Fear Eats the Soul (FRG 1974, dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder) Anita and Me (UK 2002, dir. Metin Husseyin) Another Country (UK 1984, dir. Mark Kanievska) Apo tin akri tis polis/From the Edge of the City (Greece 1998, dir. Constantine Giannaris) Aprile (Italy 1998, dir. Nanni Moretti) Aprilkinder/April Children (Germany 1998, dir. Yüksel Yavuz) Aretz Hamuvtachat, Ha-/Terre promise/Promised Land (Israel/France/UK 2004, dir. Amos Gitai) Assedio, L’/Besieged (Italy/UK 1998, dir. Bernardo Bertolucci) Ataque verbal/Verbal Attack (Spain 2000, dir. Miguel Albaladejo) Auf der anderen Seite/The Edge of Heaven (Germany/Turkey/Italy 2007, dir. Fatih Akın) Auslandstournee/Tour Abroad (Germany 2000, dir. Ayşe Polat) Avant que j’oublie/Before I Forget (France 2007, dir. Jacques Nolot) A Way of Life (UK 2004, dir. Amma Asante) Babas Bilar/Baba’s Cars (Sweden 2006, dir. Rafael Edholm) Barrio/Neighbourhood (Spain 1998, dir. Fernando León de Aranoa) Baton Rouge (France 1985, dir. Rachid Bouchareb) Beau travail/Good Work (France 1998, dir. Claire Denis) Bednye rodstvenniki/Roots (Russia/France 2005, dir. Pavel Lungin) Bend It Like Beckham (UK 2002, dir. Gurinder Chadha) Berlin – Ecke Schönhauser/Berlin Schönhauser Corner (GDR 1957, dir. Gerhard Klein) Beur, blanc, rouge (France/Algeria 2006, dir. Mahmoud Zemmouri) Beurs appart’ (France 2007, dir. L’Iskander) Bhaji on the Beach (UK 1993, dir. Gurinder Chadha) 293

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Bicots-nègres, vos voisins, Les/Arabs and Niggers, Your Neighbours (France/Mauritania 1973, dir. Med Hondo) Billy Elliot (UK 2000, dir. Stephen Daldry) Birthday Girl (UK/USA 2001, dir. Jez Butterworth) Blackboard Jungle (USA 1955, dir. Richard Brooks) Blaue Engel, Der/The Blue Angel (Germany 1930, dir. Josef von Sternberg) Bleeder (Denmark 1999, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn) Bollywood Queen (UK 2002, dir. Jeremy Wooding) Bolshe Vita (Hungary 1996, dir. Ibolja Fekete) Boyz ’n the Hood (USA 1991, dir. John Singleton) Brat 2/Brother 2 (Russia 2000, dir. Alexei Balabanov) Breaking and Entering (UK/USA 2006, dir. Anthony Minghella) Bride and Prejudice (UK/USA 2004, dir. Gurinder Chadha) Brothers in Trouble (UK 1995, dir. Udayan Prasad) Bullet Boy (UK 2004, dir. Saul Dibb) Bure baruta/Powder Keg (France/Greece/Turkey/Macedonia/Yugoslavia 1998, dir. Goran Pasklajević) Bwana (Spain 1996, dir. Imanol Uribe) Caché/Hidden (France/Austria/Germany/Italy 2005, dir. Michael Haneke) Cage aux folles, La/Birds of a Feather (France/Italy 1978, dir. Edouard Molinaro) Cartas de Alou, Las/Alou’s Letters (Spain 1990, dir. Montxo Armendáriz) Change-moi ma vie/Change My Life (France 2001, dir. Liria Begeja) Cherps (UK 2005, dir. Kolton Lee) Chicken Tikka Masala (UK 2005, dir. Harmage Singh Kalirai) Chico (Germany/Croatia/Hungary/Chile 2001, dir. Ibolja Fekete) Chouchou (France 2002, dir. Merzak Allouache) Ciel, les oiseaux... et ta mère!, Le/Boys on the Beach (France 1999, dir. Djamel Bensalah) Clan, Le/Three Dancing Slaves (France 2004, dir. Gaël Morel) Cleopatra (USA/UK 1963, dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz) Come l’ombra/As the Shadow (Italy 2006, dir. Marina Spada) Comrades (Macedonia 2002, dir. Mitko Panov) Corps Ouverts, Les (France 1998, dir. Sébastien Lifshitz) Cosas que dejé en La Habana/Things I Left in Havana (Spain 1997, dir. Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón) Crna mačka, beli mačor/Black Cat White Cat (France/Germany/Yugoslavia 1998, dir. Emir Kusturica) Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul/Istanbul Hatırası (Germany/Turkey 2005, dir. Fatih Akın) Crying Game, The (UK/Japan 1992, dir. Neil Jordan) Dakan (Guinea/France 1997, dir. Mohamed Camara) Dancehall Queen (Jamaica 1997, dir. Rick Elgood and Don Letts) Daratt (Chad/France/Belgium/Austria 2006, dir. Mahamat-Saleh Haroun) Dealer (Germany 1999, dir. Thomas Arslan) Devdas (India 2002, dir. Sanjay Leela Bhansali) Diabolo menthe/Peppermint Soda (France 1977, dir. Diane Kurys) Dirty Pretty Things (UK 2002, dir. Stephen Frears) Dnevnoi dozor/Day Watch (Russia 2005, dir. Timur Bekmambetov) Dom za vesanje/Time of the Gypsies (Yugoslavia 1988, dir. Emir Kusturica) Dowaha/Buried Secrets (Tunisia/Switzerland/France 2009, dir. Raja Amari) Drôle de Félix/Adventures of Felix (France 2000, dir. Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau)

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295

Drum, The (UK 1938, dir. Alexander Korda) East is East (UK 1999, dir. Damien O’Donnell) Eastern Promises (UK/Canada/USA 2007, dir. David Cronenberg) Edeni i braktisur/Abandoned Eden (Albania 2004, dir. Eno Milkani) Eine andere Liga/Offside (Germany 2004, dir. Buket Alakus) Elefantenherz/Elephant Heart (Germany 2002, dir. Züli Aladağ) Elephant Boy (UK 1937, dir. Robert Flaherty and Zoltan Korda) Elvjs e Merilijin/Elvis and Marilyn (Italy 1998, dir. Armando Manni) Emotional Backgammon (UK 2003, dir. Leon Herbert) En Garde (Germany 2004, dir. Ayşe Polat) Esquive, L’/Games of Love and Chance (France 2003, dir. Abdellatif Kechiche) Est-Ouest/East-West (Bulgaria/France/Russia/Spain/Ukraine 1999, dir. Régis Wargnier) Exils/Exiles (France/Japan 2004, dir. Tony Gatlif) Far North (UK/France 2007, dir. Asif Kapadia) Faro, El/The Lighthouse (Spain 1998, dir. Manuel Balaguer) Fate ignoranti, Le /The Ignorant Fairies (France/Italy 2001, dir. Ferzan Özpetek) Fetten Jahre sind vorbei, Die/The Edukators (Germany 2004, dir. Hans Weingartner) Fille de Keltoum, La/The Daughter of Keltoum (France/Belgium/Tunisia 2001, dir. Mehdi Charef) Fils, Un/A Son (France 2003, dir. Amal Bedjaoui) Fliegende Klassenzimmer, Das/The Flying Classroom (FRG 1954, dir. Kurt Hoffmann; FRG 1973, dir. Werner Jacobs; Germany 2003, dir. Tomy Wigand) Flores de otro mundo/Flowers from Another World (Spain 1999, dir. Iciar Bollaín) Fräulein, Das (Switzerland/Germany 2005, dir. Andrea Štaka) Free Zone (Israel/Belgium/France/Spain, 2005, dir. Amos Gitaï) Fremde Haut/Unveiled (Germany/Austria 2005, dir. Angelina Maccarone) Fuente amarilla, La/The Yellow Fountain (Spain/France 1999, dir. Miguel Santesmases) Gadjo Dilo/The Crazy Stranger (Romania/France 1997, dir. Tony Gatlif) Gegen die Wand/Head-On (Germany/Turkey 2004, dir. Fatih Akın) Gens de la rizière, Les /Neak sre (Cambodia/France/Switzerland/Germany 1994, dir. Rithy Panh) Geschwister – Kardesler/Brothers and Sisters (Germany 1997, dir. Thomas Arslan) Getürkt/Weed (Germany 1996, dir. Fatih Akın) Ghetto-Kids (Germany 2002, dir. Christian Wagner) Ghosts (UK 2006, dir. Nick Broomfield) Girl With Brains in Her Feet, The (UK 1997, dir. Roberto Bangura) Gone du chaâba, Le/The Kid from the Chaaba (France 1998, dir. Christophe Ruggia) Good Heart, The (Denmark/Iceland/USA 2008, dir. Dagur Kári) Grand Voyage, Le (France, Morocco 2004, dir. Ismaël Ferroukhi) Grande école (France 2004, dir. Robert Salis) Große Freiheit Nr. 7/Great Freedom No. 7/Port of Freedom (Germany 1944, dir. Helmut Käutner) Guru, The (UK/France/USA 2002, dir. Daisy von Scherler Mayer) Haine, La/Hate (France 1995, dir. Mathieu Kassovitz) Halbstarken, Die/The Wolfpack (FRG 1956, dir. Georg Tressler) Hamam/Steam/The Turkish Bath (Italy/Turkey/Spain 1997, dir. Ferzan Özpetek) Harem Suaré (Turkey/Italy/France 1999, dir. Ferzan Özpetek) Hexagone/Hexagon (France 1994, dir. Malik Chibane) History Boys, The (UK 2006, dir. Nicholas Hytner) How Harry Became a Tree (Italy/France/UK/Ireland 2001, dir. Goran Pasklajević)

296 Filmography If (UK 1968, dir. Lindsay Anderson) Il était une fois dans l’oued/Once Upon a Time in the Oued (France 2005, dir. Djamel Bensalah) Im Juli/In July (Germany 2000, dir. Fatih Akın) In der Fremde/Abroad (FRG 1974, dir. Sohrab Shahid Saless) In der Fremde/Far from Home (FRG 1968, dir. Klaus Wildenhahn) In This World (UK 2002, dir. Michael Winterbottom) Inch’Allah dimanche/Inch’Allah Sunday (France 2001, dir. Yamina Benguigui) Indigènes/Days of Glory (Algeria/France/Morocco/Belgium 2006, dir. Rachid Bouchareb) Interdevochka/Intergirl (USSR/Sweden 1989, dir. Pyotr Todorosvky) Intrus, L’/The Intruder (France 2004, dir. Claire Denis) It’s a Free World (UK/Italy/Germany/Spain/Poland 2007, dir. Ken Loach) J’ai pas sommeil/I Cannot Sleep (France/Switzerland 1994, dir. Claire Denis) J’aimerais J’aimerais (France 2007, dir. Jann Halexander) Jalla! Jalla! (Sweden 2000, dir. Josef Fares) Jerusalem (Sweden 1996, dir. Bille August) Jeunesse dorée/Golden Youth (France 2002, dir. Zaïda Ghorab-Volta) Junge Törless, Der/The Young Törless (Germany 1966, dir. Volker Schlöndorff) Jungle Book (USA 1942, dir. Zoltan Korda) Kalte Paradies, Das/The Cold Paradise (FRG 1986, dir. Bernard Safarik) Karamuk (Germany 2002, dir. Sülbiye Günar) Katzelmacher (FRG 1969, dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder) Kes (UK 1969, dir. Ken Loach) Khush (UK 1991, dir. Pratibha Parmar) Kidulthood (UK 2006, dir. Menhaj Huda) King of Bollywood, The (India 2004, dir. Piyush Jha) Kiss of Life (UK 2003, dir. Emily Young) Kleine Freiheit/A Little Bit of Freedom (Germany 2003, dir. Yüksel Yavuz) Knallhart/Tough Enough (Germany 2006, dir. Detlev Buck) Kochevniki/The Nomad (France/Kazakhstan 2005, dir. Sergei Bodrov, Ivan Passer) Kurz und schmerzlos/Short Sharp Shock (Germany 1998, dir. Fatih Akın) Lamerica (Italy/France/Germany 1994, dir. Gianni Amelio) Last Resort (UK 2000, dir. Pawel Pawlikowski) Latcho Drom/Safe Journey (France 1993, dir. Tony Gatlif) Leben der Anderen, Das/The Lives of Others (Germany 2006, dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck) Leo (Spain 2000, dir. José Luis Borau) Life & Lyrics (UK 2006, dir. Richard Laxton) Lilja 4-Ever (Sweden/Denmark 2002, dir. Lukas Moodysson) Livada (Macedonia 1998, dir. Mitko Panov) ‘Loin du 16ème/ Far from the 16th [arrondissement]’, dir. Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, in Paris je t’aime/Paris, I Love You (France/Liechtenstein/Switzerland 2006, various directors) Lola (FRG 1981, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) Lola + Bilidikid (Germany 2003, dir. Kutluğ Ataman) Love + Hate (UK/Ireland 2006, dir. Dominic Savage) Lunes al sol, Los/Mondays in the Sun (Spain 2002, dir. Fernando de Aranoa) Ma 6-T va crack-er (France 1997, dir. Jean François Richet) Madly in Love (Switzerland 2010, dir. Anna Luif) Mahaleo (France/Madagascar 2005, dir. Raymond Rajaonarivelo) Maité (Cuba/Spain 1994, dir. Eneko Olasagasti and Carlos Cabala)

Filmography

297

Mal’chiki v nebe [Osmondagi bolalar]/Boys in Heaven and Boys in Heaven 2 (Uzbekistan 2002 and 2004, dir. Zulfikar Musakov) Man with the Golden Arm, The (USA 1955, dir. Otto Preminger) Maradona by Kusturica (France 2008, dir. Emir Kusturica) Martín (Hache) (Spain/Argentina 1997, dir. Adolfo Aristarain) Mayak/The Lighthouse (Russia 2006, dir. Maria Saakyan) Mean Streets (USA 1973, dir. Martin Scorsese) Mein Vater, der Gastarbeiter/My Father, the Guest Worker (Germany 1994, dir. Yüksel Yavuz) Mektoub (France 1970, dir. Ali Ghalem) Mémoires d’Immigrés, l’héritage maghrébin (France 1997, dir. Yamina Benguigui) Menace II Society (USA 1993, dir. Allan and Albert Hughes) Miss Mona (France 1987, dir. Mehdi Charef) Molly’s Way (Germany/Poland 2005, dir. Emily Atef) Mongol (Kazakhstan/Germany/Russia/Mongolia 2007, dir. Sergei Bodrov) Monsoon Wedding (India/USA/France/Italy/Germany 2001, dir. Mira Nair) My Beautiful Laundrette (UK 1985, dir. Stephen Frears) Nina’s Heavenly Delights (UK 2006, dir. Pratibha Parmar) Nochnoi dozor/Night Watch (Russia 2004, dir. Timur Bekmambetov) Nordrand/Northern Skirts (Austria 1999, dir. Barbara Albert) Nostalghia/Nostalgia (Italy/USSR 1983, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky) Notting Hill (UK/USA 1999, dir. Roger Michell) Novios búlgaros, Los/Bulgarian Lovers (Spain 2003, dir. Eloy de la Iglesia) Nuits fauves, Les/Savage Nights (France 2002, dir. Cyril Collard) Nuovomondo/The Golden Door (Italy/France, 2006, dir. Emanuele Crialese) Nya Landet, Det/The New Country (TV mini-series, Sweden 2000, dir. Geir Hansteen Jörgensen) Nybyggarna/The New Land (Sweden 1972, dir. Jan Troell) Nyfes/Brides (Greece 2004, dir. Pantelis Voulgaris) O dromos pros ti dissi/The Way to the West (Greece 2003, dir. Kyriakos Katzourakis) Occident (Romania 2002, dir. Cristian Mungiu) Odgrobadogroba/Gravehopping (Slovenia 2005, dir. Jan Cvitkovič) Okno v Parizh/Window on Paris (Russia/France 1993, dir. Yuri Mamin) Omiros/Hostage (Greece/Turkey 2005, dir. Constantine Giannaris) One Dollar Curry (France/India/UK 2004, dir. Vijay Singh) Origine contrôlée/Made in France (France 2001, dir. Zakia Tahiri and Ahmed Bouchaala) Ors el-dhib/Tender is the Wolf (Tunisia 2006, dir. Jilani Saadi) Palermo oder Wolfsburg/Palermo or Wolfsburg (FRG 1980, dir. Werner Schroeter) Paradise Now (Palestine/France/Germany/Netherlands/Israel 2005, dir. Hany AbuAssad) Pasión turca, La/Turkish Passion (Spain 1994, dir. Vicente Aranda) Pata negra (Spain/Cuba 2001, dir. Luis Oliveros) Purab aur Paschim (India 1970, dir. Manoj Kumar) Pelle erobreren/Pelle the Conqueror (Denmark/Sweden 1987, dir. Bille August) Permis d’aimer/Permission to Love (France 2005, dir. Rachida Krim) Persepolis (France/USA 2007, dir. Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud) Petite Jérusalem, La /Little Jerusalem (France 2004, dir. Karin Albou) Petite voleuse, La/The Little Thief (France 1988, dir. Claude Miller) Pigalle (France/Switzerland 1994, dir. Karim Dridi) Pola X (France/Switzerland/Germany/Japan 1999, dir. Leos Carax) Politiki Kouzina/A Touch of Spice (Greece 2003, dir. Tassos Boulmetis)

298

Filmography

Poniente/West (Spain 2002, dir. Chus Gutiérrez) Pour l’amour de Dieu/For the Love of God (France 2006, dir. Zakia Tahiri and Ahmed Bouchaâla) Poussières de vie/Living Dust (France/Algeria/Belgium/Germany/Hong Kong 1995, dir. Rachid Bouchareb) Presque rien/Come Undone (France/Belgium 2000, dir. Sébastien Lifshitz) Pressure (UK 1976, dir. Horace Ové) Princesa/Princess (Italy/Spain/France/UK/Germany 2001, dir. Henrique Goldman) Princesas/Princesses (Spain 2005, dir. Fernando León de Aranoa) Private Enterprise, A (UK 1974, dir. Peter Smith) Promesse, La/The Promise (Belgium 1996, dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne) Próximo Oriente, El/The Near East (Spain 2006, dir. Fernando Colomo) Pummarò (Italy 1990, dir. Michele Placido) Purab aur Paschim (India 1970, dir. Manoj Kumar) Pusher series (Denmark 1996–2007, dir. Nicolas Winding Refn) Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti/Once You’re Born You Can No Longer Hide (Italy/ France/UK 2005, dir. Marco Tullio Giordana) Quatre cents coups, Les/400 Blows (France 1959, dir. François Truffaut) Rag Tag (Nigeria/UK 2006, dir. Adaora Nwandu) Rage (UK/Nigeria 1999, dir. Newton I. Aduaka) Raï (France 1995, dir. Thomas Gilou) Rebel without a Cause (USA 1955, dir. Nicholas Ray) Reise der Hoffnung/Journey of Hope (Switzerland/Turkey/UK 1991, dir. Xavier Koller) Respect (UK 1998, dir. Oz Hutchins) Return, The (USA 2006, dir. Asif Kapadia) Rey del mambo, El/The Mambo King (Spain 1989, dir. Carles Mira) Rezervni deli/Spare Parts (Slovenia 2003, dir. Damjan Kozole) Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (Italy/France 1960, dir. Luchino Visconti) Rodina/Votan/The Homeland (Uzbekistan 2006, dir. Zulfikar Musakov) Rollin’ with the Nines (UK 2006, dir. Julian Gilbey) Rue Cases-Nègres/Sugar Cane Alley (France/Martinique 1983, dir. Euzhan Palcy) Rue des Figuiers/Fig Tree Road (France 2005, dir. Yasmina Yahiaoui) Ruf der Wälder/Call of the Forest (Austria 1965, dir. Franz Antel) S21, la machine de mort khmère rouge/The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (Cambodia/ France 2003, dir. Rithy Panh) Saïd (Spain 1998, dir. Llorenç Soler) Saimir (Italy 2005, dir. Francesco Munzi) Samia (France 2000, dir. Philippe Faucon) Saniyes Lust/Saniye’s Desire (Germany 2004, dir. Sülbiye Günar) Satin Rouge/Red Satin (Tunisia 2002, dir. Raja Amari) Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (UK 1960, dir. Karel Reisz) Saturno contro/Saturn in Opposition (Italy/France/Turkey 2007, dir. Ferzan Özpetek) Scarface (USA 1930, dir. Howard Hawks) Scarface (USA 1983, dir. Brian de Palma) Se buscan fulmontis/Fullmontis Sought (Spain 1999, dir. Alejandro Calvo-Sotelo) Secret, Le/The Secret (France 2000, dir. Virginie Wagon) Sex and Philosophy (France/Iran/Tajikistan 2005, dir. Mohsen Makhmalbaf) Shalom Salaam (UK 1988, dir. Gareth Jones) She’s All That (USA 1999, dir. Robert Iscove) Shirins Hochzeit/Shirin’s Wedding (FRG 1975, dir. Helma Sanders)

Filmography

299

Shoot the Messenger (UK 2006, dir. Ngozi Onwurah) Sibirskii tsiriul’nik/The Barber of Siberia (Russia/France/Italy/Czech Republic 1998, dir. Nikita Mikhalkov) Soleil O (France/Mauritania 1970, dir. Med Hondo) Souffle au coeur, Le/Murmur of the Heart (France 1971, dir. Louis Malle) Sous les pieds des femmes (France 1997, dir. Rachida Krim) Southwest 9 (UK 2001, dir. Richard Parry) Souviens-toi de moi/Remember Me (France 1996, dir. Zaïda Ghorab-Volta) Squale, La/The Squale (France 2000, dir. Fabrice Genestal) Starye pesni o glavnom/Old Songs about the Main Thing (Russia 1996–8, dir. Dzhanik Faiziyev) Stepnoi ekspress/Steppe Express (Kazakhstan 2005, dir. Amanzhol Aituarov) Statross le magnifique (France 2006, dir. Rémi Lange) Step Forward Youth (UK 1977, dir. Menelik Shabazz) Sud Side Stori/South Side Story (Italy 2000, dir. Roberta Torre) Sunduk predkov/The Wedding Chest (Russia/France/Germany/Kyrgyzstan 2006, dir. Nurbek Egen) Suriyothai (Thailand 2001, dir. Chatrichalerm Yukol) Surviving Sabu (UK 1997, dir. Ian Iqbal Rashid) Susanna (Spain 1996, dir. Antonio Chavarrías) Svoi sredi chuzhikh, chuzhoi sredi svoikh/At Home among Strangers, a Stranger at Home (USSR 1974, dir. Nikita Mikhalkov) Tarik el hob/The Road to Love (France 2002, dir. Rémi Lange) Taxi (Spain 1996, dir. Carlos Saura) Taxi Driver (USA 1977, dir. Martin Scorsese) Terres froides, Les/Cold Lands (France 1999, dir. Sébastien Lifshitz) Thé à la menthe, Le/Mint Tea (France/Belgium 1984, dir. Abdelkrim Bahloul) Thé au harem d’Archimède, Le/Tea in the Harem (France 1985, dir. Mehdi Charef) Thief of Bagdad, The (UK 1940, dir. Michael Powell et al.) Tirana viti zero/Tirana Year Zero (France/Albania 2001, dir. Fatmir Koçi) Töchter zweier Welten/Daughters of Two Worlds (Germany 1990, dir. Serap Berrakkarasu) Todo está oscuro (Spain/Portugal/Colombia/Cuba 1997, dir. Ana Díez) Tomandote/Two for Tea (Spain 2000, dir. Isabel Gardela) Torrente 2: Misión en Marbella/Mission in Marbella (Spain 2001, dir. Santiago Segura) Trainspotting (UK 1996, dir. Danny Boyle) Traje, El/The Suit (Spain 2002, dir. Alberto Rodríguez) Transe (Portugal 2006, dir. Teresa Villaverde) Transylvania (France 2006, dir. Tony Gatlif) Tudja Amerika/Someone Else’s America (France/UK/Germany/Greece 1995, dir. Goran Pasklajević) Tvrdjava Evropa/Fortress Europe (Slovenia 2001, dir. Zelimir Zilnik) Twenty-nine Palms (France/Germany/USA 2003, dir. Bruno Dumont) Ulzhan (Kazakhstan/Germany/France 2007, dir. Volker Schlöndorff) Un franco, 14 pesetas/One franc, 14 pesetas (Spain, 2006, dir. Carlos Iglesias) Utvandrarna/The Emigrants (Sweden 1971, dir. Jan Troell) Vengo (Spain/France/Germany/Japan 2000, dir. Tony Gatlif) Vers le Sud/Heading South (France, Canada, 2005, dir. Laurent Cantet) Vesna va veloce/Vesna Goes Fast (Italy/France 1996, dir. Carlo Mazzacurati) Vodka Lemon (France/Italy/Switzerland/Armenia 2003, dir. Hiner Saleem) Vse budet khorosho/Everything Will Be OK (Russia 1995, dir. Dmitri Astrakhan)

300 Filmography Wanted (USA 2008, dir. Timur Bekmambetov) Warrior, The (UK/France/Germany, 2001, dir. Asif Kapadia) We Have No War Songs: The Gypsies (Netherlands 1995, dir. /prod. Izzy Abrahami and Erga Netz) Welcome II The Terrordome (UK 1995, dir. Ngozi Onwurah) West Indies Story (France/Algeria/Mauritania 1979, dir. Med Hondo) Wild One, The (USA 1953, dir. Laslo Benedek) Wild Side (France/Belgium/UK 2004, dir. Sébastien Lifshitz) Wut/Rage (Germany 2006, dir. Züli Aladağ) Yasemin (FGR 1988, dir. Hark Bohm) Yasmin (Germany/UK 2005, dir. Kenny Glenaan) Young Soul Rebels (UK/France/Germany/Spain 1991, dir. Isaac Julien) Yugodivas (Switzerland 2001, dir. Andrea Štaka) Z podniesionymi rekami/With Raised Hands (Poland 1986, dir. Mitko Panov) Zozo (Sweden/UK/Denmark 2005, dir. Josef Fares)

Index 40 Shades of Blue 102 40m2 Deutschland/Forty Square Metres of Germany 33 400 Blows/Les quatre cents coups 238 44 78 A mi madre le gustan las mujeres/My Mother Likes Women 165–6 À toute vitesse/Full Speed 198 Abandoned Eden/Edeni i braktisur 278 Abrahami, Izzy 229 Abschied vom falschen Paradies/Farewell to a False Paradise 33 Abu-Assad, Hany 86 Abu-Nuwas 201 accented cinema 5, 12, 22, 24–5, 63, 176, 216, 284 acculturation 115–16 ACTT Workshop Declaration (1981) 136 Adiós con el corazón/Good-bye from the Heart 158 Adorno, Theodor W. 228 Aduaka, Newton 141, 235 Adventures of Felix/Drôle de Félix 202, 207 aesthetic of attachment 114 aesthetic of hunger 35 Africa African diaspora 14 film festivals 89–90 migrants from 13 Africa Cinémas 81 African American cinema 10, 142, 145, 237, 257 African/African Caribbean British cinema 7, 127, 133, 135, 277 see also Black British cinema Ağir Roman/Cholera Street 223–5 Agua con sal/Saltwater 115, 158 Aïd el kébir 179 AIDS see HIV/AIDS Aituarov, Amanzhol 108–9, 110 Akın, Fatih 9, 58, 85, 86, 114, 117, 215–23, 224, 226, 228, 230, 231, 237, 262, 263, 271, 277 Akın, Mustafa Enver 271

Akomfrah, John 28, 133, 134 Aksu, Sezen 221 Aladağ, Züli 241, 249 Alakus, Buket 177, 184, 187–8 Albania/Albanians 163, 164, 165, 284 Albou, Karin 81, 177, 179–81 Alger la Blanche 199 Algeria co-productions 83 War of Independence (1962) 97, 186 see also Maghrebi French cinema Ali au pays des mirage/Ali in Wonderland 33 Ali – Fear Eats the Soul/Angst essen Seele auf 32–3 Alice in den Städten/Alice in the Cities 207 Alles wird gut/Everything Will Be Fine 190 Allouache, Merzak 78, 82, 199 alterity 28, 32 Altıoklar, Mustafa 223, 224 Amari, Raja 287, 288 Les Ambassadeurs/The Ambassadors 33 Amelio, Gianni 55, 85, 86, 168 American cinema see Hollywood Amiens International Film Festival 88, 276 Amin, Rahul 139 Anam 184, 187–8, 193, 260 Anderson, Benedict 19 Anderson, Lindsay 238 Ang, Ien 58–9 Angelopoulos, Theo 83 Angst essen Seele auf/Ali – Fear Eats the Soul 32–3 Anita and Me 140, 235, 240, 250 Another Country 238 Antel, Franz 117 anti-Semitism 179, 181, 205 Anzaldúa, Gloria 30–1 Apo tin akri tis polis/From the Edge of the City 163–4, 165, 168 Appadurai, Arjun 19, 59 Aprile 61 Aprilkinder/April Children 118, 187, 235, 250 301

302

Index

Arab film co-productions 83–4 quality of 88 visibility of 87 Aranda, Vicente 166 Aristaráin, Adolfo 84 Armendáriz, Montxo 117, 160 Arslan, Thomas 114, 262 art-house cinema 25, 65, 67–8, 69, 70, 137, 210, 291 Arte 6, 85, 86–7, 91 Arte France Cinéma 86 ArteEast 89 As the Shadow/Come l’ombra 102 Asante, Amma 139, 177, 178 Asian British cinema 2, 7, 8, 12, 26, 33–4, 77, 132–44, 147–9, 277, 278, 284–6 and Black British cinema 27, 133, 147–8 dangers of success 138–9 funding 80, 136, 137, 138 gay/queer film 9, 197, 209–11 and genre 133 and hybrid identity 246–9 mainstreaming of 136–7, 143, 148, 251–2, 285–6 market opportunities 136–9 metacinematic reflections 257–9, 260–1, 268–70 subject matter 133, 141–4, 279 women film-makers 177, 191–2 youth films 9, 235, 245, 246–50, 251–2 L’assedio/Besieged 162 assimilation 31, 32, 115, 135–6, 142, 144, 197, 241, 249, 277, 279, 288 Astrakhan, Dmitri 104 asylum seekers 13, 18, 20, 117, 119, 121, 127, 178, 190 At Home among Strangers, a Stranger at Home/Svoi sredi chuzhikh, chuzhoi sredi svoikh 107 Ataman, Kutluğ 114, 205 Attile, Martine 177 audiences diasporic or majority 285 migrant 257, 258–60, 269–70 watching across borders 19–20, 51, 61–4 Auf der anderen Seite/The Edge of Heaven 85

Auguiste, Reece 290–1 August, Bille 62 Auslandstournee/Tour Abroad 206–7, 235 auteur cinema 35, 77, 79, 82, 86–7, 91, 238 authenticity 146–7, 148, 279 auto-ethnography 265–8, 270 avance sur recettes (ASR) 78–9, 81, 82, 91, 92 Avant que j’oublie/Before I Forget 198 Avril, Philippe 81 Ayhan, Balık 224 Babas Bilar/Baba’s Cars 62 Babylon 10, 89, 91, 277–81, 284, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290 Bagdadi, Maroun 78 Bahloul, Abdelkrim 33, 78, 82 Bakhtin, Mikhail 97, 236 Bakic-Hayden, Milica 53 Balabanov, Alexei 104 Balaguer, Manuel 160 Balázs, Béla 215 Balkans 2, 281–4 Baltic States 3 Bangura, Roberto 141 banlieue film 5, 12, 29, 57–60, 77, 199, 237, 238 The Barber of Siberia/Sibirskii tsiriul’nik 99 Barcelona Film Festival 87 Barrio/Neighbourhood 118 Bartabas 83 Bartas, Sharunas 67, 69 Bartók, Béla 228 Başer, Tevfik 33 Baton Rouge 33, 79 Battle without Banners 284–5 Baute, Christian 81 BBC 144, 146, 278, 280 Bedjaoui, Amal 198 Before I Forget/Avant que j’oublie 198 Begag, Azouz 288 Bégéja, Liria 177, 199 Belghoul, Farida 176 Belmadi, Yasmine 199, 203 Bend It Like Beckham 137, 142, 235, 239, 245, 246–8, 249, 251–2 Benedek, Laslo 236 Benguigui, Yamina 177, 184, 185–6 Bensalah, Djamel 235, 265

Index 303 Berlant, Lauren 114 Berlin – Ecke Schönhauser/Berlin Schönhauser Corner 238 Berlin International Film Festival 89, 276 Berrakkarasu, Serap 177 Bertolucci, Bernardo 162 Besieged/L’assedio 162 beur 28, 29, 33, 243, 244, 288 gay 198–9, 200, 202–3, 212–13 see also cinéma beur Beur, blanc, rouge 83, 85 Beurs appart’ 202–3 Bhabha, Homi 30, 114, 132, 156 Bhaji on the Beach 34, 136, 141, 261 bhangra music 4 Les bicots-nègres, vos voisins/Arabs and Niggers, Your Neighbours 33 Biennale of Arab Cinemas (Paris) 84, 88 Bildungsroman 239–40 Billy Elliot 238 Binger Filmlab 276 Birds of a Feather/La cage aux folles 199 Birthday Girl 103 Bite the Mango Festival (Bradford) 88 Black Atlantic 5, 30 Black Audio Film Collective 133, 177, 290 black British cinema 5, 7, 8, 26–7, 33–4, 35, 77, 132–6, 139–42, 144–8 and Asian British cinema 147–8 distribution and reception 139, 145 first opportunities for 27 funding 79–80, 136, 145–6 gay/queer film 9, 197, 210–11 and genre 133 and hybrid identity 246 subject matter 142, 144–7 women film-makers 177 youth film 235, 237 black film 4, 12, 18, 26, 142, 147–8 Black Filmmaker Magazine International Film Festival (London) 88 black popular culture 145 Blackboard Jungle 236 Blackwood, Maureen 177 Der Blaue Engel/The Blue Angel 205 Bleeder 58 Bodrov, Sergei 65, 66, 105 Bodrum Film Festival 87

Bohm, Hark 187, 235, 239 Bollaín, Iciar 117, 158 Bollywood enticements to shoot in UK 79 fantasy 141, 261 importance of 137–8, 260–1 musicals 4, 38, 257 reference to 141–2, 261 Bollywood Queen 140, 261 Bolshe Vita 70 borderlands 30–1 Bosnians diasporic cinema 61 migration 50, 61, 178 Bouajila, Sami 199 Bouchaala, Ahmed 200 Bouchareb, Rachid 33, 79, 83, 84, 277 Boughedir, Ferid 82 Boulmetis, Tassos 167 Boyle, Danny 238 Boys in Heaven and Boys in Heaven 2/ Mal’chiki v nebe [Osmondagi bolalar] 109 Boys on the Beach/ Le ciel, les oiseaux ... et ta mère 235, 264–5 Boym, Svetlana 7, 96–7, 99, 102, 111 Boyz ‘n the Hood 237, 241, 242 Brah, Avtar 5, 16, 142 Brasseur, Claude 199 Brat 2/Brother 2 104 Breaking and Entering 55–6 Brecht, Bertolt 9, 221, 224 Bregovic, Goran 68 Brehat, Jean 88 Bride and Prejudice 137, 138, 178, 261 Brides/Nyfes 168 British Film Institute 79, 147 Bronze Screen 30–1 Brooks, Richard 236 Broomfield, Nick 175 Brothers and Sisters/Geschwister – Kardesler 235, 262 Brothers in Trouble 258, 259 Buck, Detlev 241 Bulgarians diasporic cinema 62 women 165 Bullet Boy 139, 140, 142, 145–6, 235, 237, 241, 242 burden of representation 77, 140 Bure baruta/Powder Keg 66

304 Index Buried Secrets/Dowaha 287 Butler, Judith 197 Butterworth, Jez 103 Bwana 117, 160–2, 164 Cabrera, Dominique 177 La cage aux folles/Birds of a Feather 199 Cagney, James 263 Call of the Wild/Ruf der Wälder 117 Camara, Mohamed 86 cameramen 68 Cannes Film Festival 88 Cannes Film Market 87 Carax, Leos 69 Caribbean film characters from 160 migrants from 13, 97 Las cartas de Alou/The Letters from Alou 117, 160, 162 Castles, Stephen 289 Caucasus republics 97, 105 censorship 6, 76, 90, 289 Central Asian cinema, post-Soviet 7, 99, 100, 105–11 Centre National de la Cinématographie (CNC) 78, 278 Chabat, Alain 199 Chadha, Gurinder 34, 136, 137, 141, 177, 178, 235, 239, 246–7, 261, 277, 286 Chahine, Yousef 82 Change-moi ma vie/Change My Life 199 Channel 4 79, 136 Charef, Mehdi 33, 78, 108, 198, 235, 239 Chavarrías, Antonio 117, 160 Chekhov, Anton 96, 111 Chéreau, Patrice 86 Cherps 140 Chibane, Malik 237 Chicken Tikka Masala 140, 142 Chico 70 China/Chinese co-productions 83 in Eastern Europe 50 film-makers 278, 287–8 Cholera Street/Ağir Roman 223–5 Chouchou 199–200 chronotope 30, 97 Le ciel, les oiseaux ... et ta mère/Boys on the Beach 235, 264–5

cine de inmigración/des inmigrantes 31 Cinéfondation 276 cineliteracy 261 cinema of the affected 33, 34 cinéma beur 5, 12, 18, 22, 28–9, 64, 77, 82, 87, 197, 200, 202–3, 212–13 cinéma de l’émigration/immigration 28, 33 cinema of double occupancy 12, 20, 21 cinéma du métissage 5, 12, 26, 27–8, 58, 213 cinema of duty 33, 34, 135, 188, 239, 252 cinéma engagé 34 cinema of interruptions 9, 221 cinema of the metropolitan multicultural margin 51, 57–60 Cinema Nuovo 35 cinema of transvergence 23, 211–13 cinema of two cultures 5, 28, 114 cinema-going, migrants 257, 258–60 CinemaEast Film Festival 89 CineMart 89 cinematographers 68 Cinemed (Montpellier) 88 CITA (Biarritz) 88 citational aesthetics 10, 260–5 citizenship 136, 192, 197, 202, 212 Le Clan/Three Dancing Slaves 198 clash of civilisations 229 Cleopatra 268 Clifford, James 14 Cold Lands/Les terres froides 203 co-productions 6, 22, 76, 83–5, 88, 89, 105, 138 Cohen, Robin 14 Cold War, end of 5–6, 50, 52–6, 98–100 Collard, Cyril 198–9 collective memory 14, 17–18, 111, 267 Colomo, Fernando 166 colonialism 4, 30, 36–7 legacy of 2, 132, 133 new forms of 53 in Spain and Italy 154 see also post-colonialism Come l’ombra/As the Shadow 102 Come Undone/Presque rien 204 comedy see humour coming-of-age films 10, 178, 235, 237, 238, 239–41, 246, 247, 250–2, 262 Commission for Equality and Human Rights (UK) 136

Index 305 Commission Images de la Diversité 91 communism, collapse of 2, 3, 13, 18, 37, 50, 51, 98–9 community cohesion 135 composers 68 Comrades 281 contact zones 5, 30, 120, 124, 125, 128, 132, 196, 267 corporeality, of immigrant figures 8, 152–69 Corps Etranger 287 Les corps ouverts 203 Cosas que dejé en La Habana/Things I Left in Havana 159 cosmopolitan elites 20, 21 cosmopolitan film-makers 32 Council of Europe 85 counter-ethnography 265–8, 270 Coupland, Douglas 237 The Crazy Stranger/Gadjo Dilo 229–30 Crialese, Emanuele 168 Crna mačka, beli mačor/Black Cat White Cat 228 Crofts, Stephen 19, 20, 21 Cronenberg, David 70 Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul 9, 215, 226–7, 228–9, 230, 231–2 crossover 4, 10, 139, 148, 213, 285, 291 Crossroads co-production forum 89 Cuba 115, 116 cultural diversity 17, 32, 81, 90, 93, 135, 136, 145 cultural exchange 25, 30, 116, 236 cultural hybridity 40, 177, 210, 246, 249–50 cultural identity 15, 22, 25, 86, 89, 240 cultural memory 26 cultural pluralism 14 cultural transformation 30, 116, 120, 210 culture clash comedy-drama 133, 141–2, 252 culture conflict 132, 239, 241–5 Curtis, Richard 147 Cvitkovič, Jan 284 Dakan 86 Daldry, Stephen 238 Dancehall Queen 140 Dapkunajte, Ingeborga 69

Daratt 86 Dardenne, Jean-Pierre and Luc 60, 83, 86 The Daughter of Keltoum/Fille de Keltoum 108 Days of Glory/Indigènes 79, 83, 88 de Niro, Robert 263, 264 de Palma, Brian 263 decolonisation 5, 30, 288 Dede, Mercan 221 delinquency 133, 142, 144–7, 237, 238, 262–5 Denis, Claire 69, 86, 204–5 Denmark 36 Depeche Mode 221 Derin, Seyhan 177 deterritorialisation diasporas 30 of film-makers 24 of viewers 20, 24 Development Fund (UKFC) 80 Diabolo menthe/Peppermint Soda 238 dialogic imagination 26, 40, 236 diaspora aliya and yerida 282–3 characteristics of diasporic communities 14–15 complex or segmented 135 concept of 1, 13–14 feminine experience of 175–93 impact on social and cultural life 1, 13, 14, 290 maturing of 50 migration and 1, 12–15 as transnational nationalism 58 transnationalism and 21, 62 versus global city 58–9 Diaspora Film Festival (Toronto) 88 diaspora space 5, 17, 41 diasporic aesthetic 26, 270 diasporic cinema see migrant and diasporic cinema diasporic hybrid films 35, 36 diasporic identity 15, 30, 132, 286 diasporic optic 4, 26, 41 Dibb, Saul 139, 235 Díez, Ana 84 Digital Short schemes (UKFC) 80 directors concentration of study on 68 see also film-makers

306 Index Dirty Pretty Things 85, 175, 210 displacement 6, 13, 14, 23, 24, 31, 37, 107, 111, 140, 231, 256, 265, 277 distribution 10, 39, 275 aid 81 and categorisation 140–1 and funding 87 diversification, cultural and social 2, 14 Doğan, Aynur 226 Doillon, Jacques 86 Dom za vesanje/Time of the Gypsies 228 Douarnenez Film Festival 77 double consciousness 23–4, 40, 41, 140 double occupancy 12, 20, 21, 88, 92, 232, 279 Dowaha/Buried Secrets 287 dress codes 10, 246–8, 250, 259 Dridi, Karim 78, 199 Drôle de Félix/Adventures of Felix 202, 207 O dromos pros ti dissi/The Way to the West 165 DuBois, W.E.B. 23, 140 Ducastel, Olivier 202 Dukouré, Cheik 78 Dumont, Bruno 69 East is East 137, 142, 143–4, 235, 240, 245, 248–9, 250, 251–2, 258–9, 268, 285 East-Ouest/East-West 98 East–West divide 3, 154 cultural 231–2 migrations across 6–7, 13, 36, 97, 98 Eastern Europe art house 67–8 characters in films 7, 163–5 Cold War era directors 65–7 EU accessions 50 immigrant-receiving in 50 post-communist migrations from 13, 50–1 as Second World 37 transitology and postcoloniality 52–6 Edeni i braktisur/Abandoned Eden 278 The Edge of Heaven/Auf der anderen Seite 85 Edholm, Rafael 62 The Edukators/Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei 238

Egen, Nurbek 105–9, 110 El-Tahib, Fatima 190 Elefantenherz/Elephant Heart 249 Elephant Boy 268 Elgood, Rick 140 Elmaleh, Gad 199 Elsaesser, Thomas 20, 21, 31–2, 38, 39, 40, 90, 217, 221, 279 Elvjs e Merilijin/Elvis and Marilyn 165 The Emigrants/Utvandrana 62 émigré cinema 31–2, 104, 105–10, 111 émigrés 98 returning 99, 105–10, 111 Emotional Blackmail 140 En Garde 115 Enlightenment philosophy 4, 180 enslavement 1, 14 equal opportunities 135 legislation 77 Equality Charter for Film 80 Espinosa, Julio Garcia 35 L’Esquive/Games of Love and Chance 57, 212, 235 essay films 25 ethnic diversity and global city 58, 59 portrayal of 141 promotion of 77 ethnic minorities 1, 21, 23, 26, 27, 117, 133, 147, 251, 269 youth 9, 235, 237, 249 ethnic monitoring 77 ethnic-led film 136 ethnicity, discourses of 6, 26, 27, 30, 41, 142, 155, 230, 251, 256, 262 ethnocentricity 2, 115 Eurimages 6, 22, 66, 76, 85–6, 87, 91, 224, 286 Eurocentrism 4, 21, 24, 39, 257, 280 Euromed 6, 87, 91, 276 Europa Cinemas 87 European cinema enrichment and revitalising of 5 rebranding of 39–40 transformation of 2 European Commission 229 cultural tests 76 European Film Academy 67 European identity and Eurimages 85 redefining 2, 3, 18, 40

Index 307 European integration 2, 18 European Union 2004 enlargement of 50, 99, 100 asylum and immigration policies 7, 117, 121, 127 and diasporic talent within its borders 276 Euromed 87, 276 Greek and Spanish accession 154 MEDIA programme 76, 85, 92, 177 sponsorship 89, 91 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue (2008) 91 Everything Will Be Fine/Alles wird gut 190 Everything Will Be OK/Vse budet khorosho 104 exhibition niche market 25 opportunities 39 exile 13–14, 98 exilic cinema 24, 31–2, 140 Exils/Exiles 108 exoticism 257, 276 experimental shorts 25 Ezra, Elizabeth 22, 63 Fameck Arab Film Festival 87 Fanon, Frantz 37, 156 Far East exotic/erotic characters from 166–7 migrants from 13 Far from Home/ In der Fremde 117 Far North 137, 140 Farewell to a False Paradise/Abschied vom falschen Paradies 33 Fares, Josef 62 Fares, Nadia 178 El faro/The Lighthouse 160 Farocki, Harun 92 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner 32, 205, 221 Le fate ignoranti/The Ignorant Fairies 166 Faucon, Philippe 235, 243, 245 Féjerman, Daniela 165 Fekete, Ibolje 70 Ferran, Pascale 86 Ferroukhi, Ismaël 235 FESPACO (Festival Panafricain du Cinéma du Ouagadougou) 89–90 Festival des 3 Continents (Nantes) 88

Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei/The Edukators 238 Fig Tree Road/Rue des Figuiers 179, 181–2, 184, 193, 261 La Fille de Keltoum/The Daughter of Keltoum 108 film festivals 6, 25, 39, 87, 88–91, 276–7 film-makers career pathways 51–2, 65–70 challenges facing migrant and diasporic 275–91 migrant experience of 16–18, 20–1, 41, 52, 64, 140, 279 per project basis 6, 65, 66 self-definition of 77 shift from niche to mainstream 216 transnational mobility of 6, 32, 65, 68–9, 76–7, 83, 197 working in home country 67–8, 70, 287 Filmförderungsanstalt (German Federal Film Board) 278 Un fils/A Son 198 finance see funding First Cinema 35, 40 first generation migrants 143, 167, 176, 181, 187, 257–8 as film-makers 16, 33, 281 Flaherty, Robert 268 Das fliegende Klassenzimmer/Flying Classroom 238 Flores de otro mundo/Flowers from Another World 117, 158 Fonds d’Action Sociale pour les travailleurs immigrés et leurs familles (FAS) 77 Fonds ECO (Fonds d’aide aux coproductions avec les pays d’Europe Centrale et Orientale) 80 Fonds Francophone de Production Audiovisuelle Sud (FFPAS) 80, 81 Fonds Images Afrique 81 Fonds Sud 80–1, 87, 91 Fortress Europe/Tvrdjava Evropa 61 Forty Square Metres of Germany/40m2 Deutschland 33 France Arte 86 Chinese film-makers 278, 287–8 co-productions 83 diasporic women film-makers 8, 176–7, 179–82, 185–7

308 Index France – continued ethno-national perspectives 27–9 film funding and policy 6, 76, 77–9, 80–3, 91, 92–3, 286–8 gay/queer film 9, 197, 198–205 metacinematic elements 10 post-colonial migrations 13, 176–7 principle of individual integration 77 see also banlieue film; cinéma beur; Maghrebi French cinema, cinéma de l’émigration/immigration Das Fräulein 178, 179, 182–4, 192, 193 Frears, Stephen 34, 85, 143, 175, 209–10, 270 Free Zone 86 freedom of movement 7, 65 obstacles to 98 Fregoso, Rosa Linda 30, 31 Fremde Haut/Unveiled 115, 189–91, 192 Freud, Sigmund 157 Fribourg International Film Festival 89, 276 From the Edge of the City/Apo tin akri tis polis 163–4, 165, 168 Fukuyama, Francis 52 funding 6, 76–93 and choice of genre 25 co-productions 83–5 following best supply of 6, 76 pan-European programmes 66, 76, 85–7 raising 10, 275 state funding 76, 77–83 Gabereau, Eve 80, 251 Gadjo Dilo/The Crazy Stranger 229–30 Games of Love and Chance/L’Esquive 57, 212, 235 gang culture/gangster films 144, 257, 261–4 García Sánchez, José Luis 158 Gardela, Isabel 166 Gastarbeiter 13, 32–3, 36, 97, 117 Gates, Henry Louis Jr 24 Gatlif, Tony 78, 83, 86, 108, 229 Gavras, Constantine Costa 83 Gegen die Wand/Head-On 9, 86, 215, 216, 217–24, 226, 228, 231 Gencebay, Orhan 221, 226 gender, discourse of 6, 8, 175–93

‘Generation X’ 237 generational relations/conflict 9, 16, 236, 241–5, 250, 270 Genestal, Fabrice 235 Genet, Jean 201 genre in Asian British/Black British cinema 133 choice and availability of funding 25 classification as straightjacket 290 criticism 235–6 European genre cinema 238, 251 hybridity 6, 137, 143, 235–6, 237, 250–2, 256 and irony 215–17 queer diasporic cinema 213 Germany Arte 86 diasporic women film-makers 8, 177, 187–9, 189–91 funding 76, 86, 92, 278 Gastarbeiter 13, 32–3, 36, 97, 117 immigration policy 119 metacinematic elements 10 migrant and diasporic cinema in 7, 114, 115, 117–20, 121, 124–8, 197, 288–9 reunification of 13, 50, 197 see also Migrantenkino; Turkish German cinema Geschwister – Kardesler/Brothers and Sisters 235, 262 Getino, Octavio 34–5 Ghalem, Ali 33 ghetto/ghettoising 29, 58, 90, 152, 178, 203, 237, 261, 262, 271, 280, 291 Ghobadi, Bahman 90 Ghorab-Volta, Zaïda 82, 86, 176 Ghosh, Bishnopriya 31 Ghosts 175 Giannaris, Constantine 163, 164 Gilbey, Julian 140 Gilou, Thomas 237 Gilroy, Paul 30, 241, 278 Giordano, Marco Tullio 165 Girl with Brains in Her Feet 141 Gitaï, Amos 83, 86, 102 Givanni, June 135 global city 58–9, 115, 120 globalisation of cinema 22, 63, 76, 83, 92, 137

Index 309 globalisation – continued dislocating effects of 18 and migration 13, 183 of music 230 Godard, Agnès 204 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 39, 239 The Golden Door/Nuovomondo 168 Goldman, Henrique 159, 208 Golubeva, Katia 69 Gomis, Alain 78 Le Gone du chaâba/The Kid from the Chaaba 235 González Iñárritu, Alejandro 38 The Good Heart 86 Good-bye from the Heart/Adiós con el corazón 158 Goodhart, David 136 Goodness Gracious Me (UK TV) 144 Göteborg Festival Fund 89 Gould, Gaylene 139 Grande école 198 Le grand voyage 235 Grant, Catherine 38 Gravehopping/Odgrobadogroba 284 Greece Eastern characters in cinema 163–5, 167 historical legacy 155, 167–8 immigration 8, 13, 152, 153 labour migration from 13, 153–4 migrant and diasporic cinema in 152–7, 163–9 Große Freiheit Nr. 7/Great Freedom No. 7/ Port Freedom 119 Guédiguian, Robert 86 Guild of African Directors and Producers 81 Günar, Sülbiye 177, 184–5, 235, 249, 289 The Guru 137 Gutiérrez Aragón, Manuel 159 Gutiérrez, Chus 117, 267 Gypsies musical traditions 9, 223–4, 226–30 nomadic freedom 229 Ha’aretz Hamuvtachat/Promised Land 102 Hacke, Alexander 219, 226, 230 La Haine/Hate 29, 57, 77, 141, 237, 262, 263, 264 Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack 238 Halexander, Jann 205

Hall, Stuart 15, 20, 27, 155, 245–6 Halle, Randall 85, 92 Hamam/Steam/The Turkish Bath 166, 207–8 Hamburg Film Festival 87 Handke, Peter 86 Haneke, Michael 38, 83, 86 haptic visuality 25–6 Harem Suaré 166 Haroun, Mahmet-Saleh 81, 86 Hatoum, Mona 36 Hawks, Howard 263 Hayden, Robert 53 Head-On/Gegen die Wand 9, 86, 215, 216, 217–24, 226, 228, 231 Heimatfilm 238 Henckel von Donnersmarck, Florian 38 Henriques, Julian 139 Herbert, Leon 140 Herskovits, Melville J. 115 Hexagone 237 Higbee, Will 22, 23, 29, 199, 213 Higson, Andrew 22, 100 Hirsch, Marianne 16 Hispano-American film 77 The History Boys 238 HIV/AIDS 122, 159, 198, 199, 202, 204 Hjort, Mette 63 Hoffmann, Kurt 238 Holland, Agnieszka 65, 66 Hollinger, David 246 Hollywood citations of 261–5 coming-of-age films 10, 251 domination of 22, 23, 24, 35, 100, 277 émigré and exilic cinema 31–2, 256–7 emphasis on entertainment 24 hybridity of genres 235–6, 256 and immigration 31–2, 256–7 melodramas 221 as a model 100 homeland and abroad 7 allegiance to 20 exilic relationship 24 longing for past 7, 96–111 projection of tradition onto 105, 106 sacred/Utopian 15, 111 separation from 108 and time-space 97, 107, 108–9, 110, 111

310

Index

The Homeland/Rodina [Votan] 109–10 homosexuality 9, 189–92, 196–213, 262, 269 Hondo, Med 33, 78 hood films 9, 10, 237, 262 Hostage/Omiros 163, 164 How Harry Became a Tree 66 Hubert Bals Fund 89, 276 Huda, Menhaj 139, 146, 147, 237 Hughes, Albert and Allan 237 humour 33, 36, 58, 70, 103, 104, 133, 141, 144, 165, 181, 187, 191, 199, 200, 202, 206, 210, 211, 224, 245, 247, 252, 257, 285, 290 Hungary/Hungarians 165, 228 Hunger 140 Hüseyin, Metin 140, 235 Hutchins, Oz 141 hybridity in Asian and Black British cinema 132–48 cinematic 224 cultural and social 2, 34, 40, 132, 133–4, 249–50 ‘dark side’ of 134, 143 genre 6, 137, 143, 235–6, 237, 250–2, 256 and global city 58–9 hybrid identity 10, 114, 245–50 musical 6, 228, 229, 230 sonic 9, 228, 229, 230, 231–2, 249–50 tropes of 241 hyphenated film-makers 77, 92 hyphenated nationals 20, 278 Hytner, Nicholas 238 I Can’t Sleep/J’ai pas sommeil 204–5 identity formation 2, 241, 245–50, 270 hybrid 10, 114, 245–50 politics 22, 29, 232 quest for 211 territorial concept of 230–1 Idziak, Sławomir 68 If 238 The Ignorant Fairies/Le fate ignoranti 166 illegal migration 7, 13, 82 Im Juli/In July 215, 226 imagined communities 15, 19 immigrant cinema 31 immigration

management of 7, 50, 117, 121, 288 opposition to legislation against 82 L’Impossible Testament 286 In der Fremde/Far from Home 117 In This World 61 in-between, space of the 134, 142, 208–11, 240 Inch’Allah dimanche/Inch’Allah Sunday 184, 185–6, 188 independent transnational film genre 137, 143 India co-productions 83, 138 English-language cinema 22 pan-Indian cinema 137 partition of 53 Indigènes/Days of Glory 79, 83, 88 Indo-Canadian cinema 26 inequalities 54, 139, 239 intercultural cinema 5, 25–6 Interdevochka/Intergirl 63, 102 intertextual reference 10, 260, 261, 270 intimate encounters 114–15, 127 Iosseliani, Otar 78, 83 Iran/Iranians 62, 90, 108, 176, 190, 278 Iraq/Iraqis 104 Ireland, immigration 62 Iron Curtain, fall of 13, 65–6, 98 ironic strategies 7, 9, 215–32 Iscove, Robert 245 L’Iskander 202 Istanbul 226–9 International Film Festival 88 Italy black characters in 162–3 Eastern characters in 163–5, 166, 207–8 fascist and colonial legacy 154–5 funding 76, 89 gay/queer film 9, 197, 207–9 immigration 8, 13, 62, 152, 153, 168–9, 197, 209 internal migration 154, 168 Italian Brazilian cinema 9, 197 labour migration from 13, 117, 153–4, 177 migrant and diasporic cinema 152–6, 159–60, 162–3, 165, 168–9, 278 It’s a Free World 56 Jaafar, Ali 79–80

Index 311 J’ai pas sommeil/I Can’t Sleep 204–5 J’aimerais J’aimerais 205 Jalla! Jalla! 62 Jamal, Ahmed A. 139 Jan Vrijman Fund 89 Jerusalem 62 Jews Jewish diaspora 14, 282 Soviet 98 women 179 Jha, Piyush 137 Johnson, Avril 177 Johnson, Catherine 145–6 Jörgensen, Geir Hansteen 62 Joseph, Clare 177 Journées Cinématographique de Carthage (JCC) 89–90 Journey of Hope/Reise der Hoffnung 33, 85 journeys of quest 31, 41, 239 Julien, Isaac 29, 34, 139, 210 Der junge Törless/The Young Törless 238 Jungle Book 268, 269 Kaçan, Metin 224 Kalirai, Harmage Singh 140 Kanievska, Mark 238 Kapadia, Asif 137, 140 Kapur, Shekhar 137 Karamuk 235, 249, 250, 289 Kári, Dagur 86 Karmitz, Marin 83 Kassovitz, Mathieu 57, 77, 141, 237, 262 Katić, Branka 69 Käutner, Helmut 119 Kazakhstan 100, 108–9, 111 Kechiche, Abdellatif 57, 212, 235 Kechiouche, Salim 199 Kes 140, 238 Khamatova, Chulpan 69 Khush 191 Kiarostami, Abbas 83 The Kid from the Chaaba/Le Gone du chaâba 235 Kidulthood 139, 141, 145, 146, 147, 237, 241 Kieślowski, Krzystof 68, 83 The King of Bollywood 137 Kino der doppelten Kulturen 5, 28, 114 Kino der Fremdheit 28 Klein, Gerhard 238

Kleine Freiheit /A Little Bit of Freedom 7, 114, 115, 117–20, 121, 124–8, 265–6 Knallhart/Tough Enough 241 Koçi, Fatmir 85, 284 Koller, Xavier 33, 85 Koltai, Lajos 68 Konchalovsky, Andrei 105 Korda, Zoltan 268 Korzun, Dina 102 Kosovo/Kosovans 178, 284 Kouyaté, Dani 78, 81 Kozole, Damjan 61, 175 Krim, Rachida 177, 179, 184, 186 Kristensen, Lars 63 Kristeva, Julia 156 Ktari, Naceur 33 Kuhn, Annette 38 Kumar, Manoj 261 Kureishi, Hanif 36, 209, 286 Kurys, Diane 238 Kurz und schmerzlos/Short Sharp Shock 58, 215, 237, 262, 263–4, 270–2 Kusturica, Emir 65, 67, 68, 228 Kyrgyzstan 100, 105–8, 111 labour migration 13, 18, 117, 176, 257 Lamerica 55, 85, 168–9 Landsberg, Alison 17–18 Lange, Rémi 200, 202, 205 languages, switch between 3, 10, 216, 250 Laplaine, Zeka 81 Last Resort 60, 102 Latcho drom/Safe Journey 229 Latin America cinema 34–5 film characters from 160 migrants 13 Law, Clara 63 Laxton, Richard 140 Lee, Kolton 140 Leitkultur 27 Lenouvel, Thierry 81 León de Aranoa, Fernando 114, 118, 122, 158 lesbianism 9, 178, 189–92, 211, 212 The Letters from Alou/ Las cartas de Alou 117, 160, 162 Letts, Don 140 Life & Lyrics 140, 141

312

Index

Lifshitz, Sébastien 60, 203–4 The Lighthouse/El faro 160 The Lighthouse/Mayak 104–5 Lilja 4-Ever 56, 62, 102, 175 Lille Film Week 87 Liszt, Franz 228 Little Jerusalem/La Petite Jérusalem 179–81, 184, 193 The Little Thief/La petite voleuse 238 Livada 281 Living Dust/Poussiéres de vie 84 Loach, Ken 56, 86, 140, 238 Locarno Film Festival 89, 276 Lola 205 Lola + Bilidikid 205–6 London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival 211 Love + Hate 140, 142 Luibhéid, Eithne 196 Luif, Anna 178 Los lunes al sol/Mondays in the Sun 118 Lungin, Pavel 105 Luther, Igor 68 Maccarone, Angelina 115, 177, 189–91 MacCrimmon, Brenna 226, 230 Macedonia/Macedonians 278, 281–3, 284 MacKenzie, Scott 63 Macnab, Geoffrey 90 McQueen, Steve 140 McRobbie, Angela 148 Made in France/Origin contrôlée 200 Madly in Love 193 Maghrebi French cinema 2, 26, 28–9, 33, 64, 77, 92, 278, 286–7 distribution 87 funding 80–3 gay/queer film 9, 197, 198–205 metacinematic reflections 262–3, 264–5 women film-makers 176–7, 179–82, 185–7 youth film 9, 235, 237, 243–5, 252 Mahaleo 86 mainstreaming 36, 136, 137, 252, 277, 285–6 Maité 84 Makhmalbaf, Mohsen 83 Mal’chiki v nebe [Osmondagi bolalar]/Boys in Heaven and Boys in Heaven 2 109

Malinowski, Bronislaw 115–16 Malle, Louis 238 The Mambo King/El rey del mambo 160 Mamin, Yuri 103 The Man with the Golden Arm 265 Manchester Film Week 87 Manchevski, Milcho 67 Mankiewicz, Joseph L. 268 Manni, Armando 165 marginality 23, 27, 32, 37, 41, 42, 60, 165, 169, 211 Marks, Laura 25, 26, 63 Marsh-Edwards, Nadine 177 Martín (Hache) 84 Martineau, Jacques 202 Marx, Michel 81 Mayak/The Lighthouse 104–5 Mazzacurati, Carlo 165 Mean Streets 263, 264 MEDIA 22, 66, 76, 85, 87, 92 media reflexivity 6, 256 Mediterranean Culture Film Festival (Bastia) 88 Mediterranean Festival of New Filmmakers (Larissa) 88 Mediterranean Film Festival (Tübingen) 88 Medscreen 87 Mehta, Deepa 137 Mein Vater, der Gastarbeiter/My Father the Guest Worker 118 Mektoub? 33 melodrama 216–17, 221–2, 224, 229, 231 Menace II Society 237 Menzel, Jiri 83 Mercer, Kobena 29, 35, 37 mestizo 27, 28, 30–1 Mesuret, Nathalie 81 métissage 27–8 Mezzogiorno 154, 155, 163 Middle East exotic/erotic characters from 166–7 Greek associations with 163 migrants from 13 migrant and diasporic cinema aesthetics and ‘double consciousness’ 23–6 challenges facing 275–91 corporeality in 152–69 defining 5, 40–2

Index 313 migrant and diasporic cinema – continued ethno-national perspectives 26–9 film-makers’ migrant experience 16–18, 20–1, 41, 52, 64, 140, 279 funding for 76–93 future of 10–11, 276–7 gay/queer film 196–213 hybridity 132–48 as indicator of societal shift 11, 290 metacinematic reflections 256–72 music and ironic melodrama 215–32 non-migrant film-makers 16–17, 140, 153 nostalgia in 96–111 plurality of form 290–1 post-Cold War era 50–71, 96–111 problems facing 275–91 socio-political perspectives 32–4 study of 1–2, 290, 291 sub-state level 23 transculturation 114–28 transnationality of 61–4 women film-makers 175–93 youth film 235–52, 261–2 Migrantenkino/Migrationsfilm 12, 31, 32–3 migration and cinema-going 257, 258–60, 270 communities left behind 278, 283, 284 and diaspora 1, 12–15 economic/labour 3, 6, 13, 18, 64–5, 97, 98, 117, 176, 257 experience or memory of 16 historical relationship with cinema 10, 257 illegal 7, 13, 82 involuntary 98 LGBTQ 196–7 political 3, 6–7, 13, 97 post-Cold War 3, 5–6, 13, 50–1, 54, 60, 98–9 post-colonial 3, 6, 13, 97, 133, 135, 176, 257 as rebirth 16 and social transformation 290 temporary or long-term 13, 64 undocumented 7, 13, 37, 115, 116, 118, 120, 127, 128

Mikhalkov, Nikita 99, 107 Milkani, Eno 278 Miller, Claude 238 Minghella, Anthony 55 Mira, Carles 160 Miss Mona 198 Mission in Marbella/Torrente 2: Misión en Marbella 160 mixed-race Britons 141 mixed-race identities 30–1 mobility, tropes of 28–32 Mograbi, Avi 78 Mohile, Amar 250 Molinaro, Edouard 199 Mondays in the Sun/Los lunes al sol 118 Mongol 66 Monsoon Wedding 137 Montenegro 284 Moodysson, Lukas 56, 62, 102, 175 Moore, David Chioni 53–4 Moorti, Sujata 26, 192 Moreiras, Alberto 120, 121 Morel, Gaël 198 Moretti, Nanni 61 Morley, David 57, 59 Mostra International Film Festival (Pesaro) 89 Mostra of Valencia/Mediterranean Cinema 88 mother figures, diasporic 184–9 Mueller-Stahl, Armin 69–70 mulattas 157 multi-ethnic urban neighbourhoods 29, 51, 237, 262, 264 multiculturalism 2, 3, 114, 135, 136, 147–8, 197, 223, 229, 278 multiple occupancy 88, 92 Mulvey, Laura 156 Mungiu, Cristian 70 Muni, Paul 263 Munzi, Francesco 165 Muren, Zeki 207 Murmur of the Heart/Le souffle au coeur 238 Musakov, Zulfikar 109–10 music black British cinema 146 carrying complex meaning 9, 215, 219 crossover 4 and diaspora 2

314

Index

music – continued diasporic hybrid films 36 emotional underscoring 9, 221 and melodrama 216–23 migrant composers 68 multi-ethnic underscoring 10 Romani 9, 219, 224, 226–30 sonic hybridity 9, 228, 229, 230, 231–2, 249–50 Muslim as descriptor 27 film-makers 285 My Beautiful Laundrette 34, 143, 209–10, 270 My Father the Guest Worker/Mein Vater, der Gastarbeiter 118 My Mother Likes Women/A mi madre le gustan las mujeres 165–6 Naficy, Hamid 24–5, 26, 31, 63, 137, 143, 176, 216 Nagib, Lucía 38 Nair, Mira 137 nation states crisis of 19, 20 treatment of minorities 10–11, 276, 277 national cinemas challenge to concept of 41 focus of studies on 257 inward-looking perspective on 19, 61, 64 post-Soviet establishment of 100, 105 state funding 76 trends in 18–21 view of European identity 2 national identity challenges to traditional view of 2–3, 15, 18–19, 20, 21, 114 fake concepts of 99, 105 Greece, Spain and Italy 154–5 and post-Soviet era 100, 105, 111 nationhood 197, 211 funding for film festivals 89 migrant and diasporic filmmakers 278 post-colonial migrations 13 The Near East/El próximo Oriente 166–7 Neighbourhood/Barrio 118 neo-colonialism 39

The Netherlands 3 Netherlands Film Fund 278 Netz, Erga 229 New Cinema Fund (UKFC) 80, 146 The New Country/Det Nya Landet 62 New Crowned Hope project 89 The New Land/Nybyggarna 62 New Wave cinema 34, 79, 82, 290 niche market 25, 251, 252, 285 Nina’s Heavenly Delights 179, 189, 191–2, 193, 211, 261 Nini, Soraya 181, 243, 244 Nolot, Jacques 198 Nordrand/Northern Skirts 57 North Africans in Eastern Europe 50 in film 160 Spanish view of 154 North–South divide 154 Norway 36 Nostalghia/Nostalgia 100–1, 107 nostalgia 7, 96–111 Notting Hill 147 Novak, Marcos 23 Les nuits fauves/Savage Nights 198, 201 Nuovomondo/The Golden Door 168 Nuremberg Film Festival 88 Nwandu, Adaora 177, 211 Det Nya Landet/The New Country 62 Nybyggarna/The New Land 62 Nyfes/Brides 168 Occident 70 October Revolution (1917) 98 Odgrobadogroba/Gravehopping 284 O’Donnell, Damien 137, 235, 258, 285 Okno v Parizh/Window on Paris 103–4 Okonedo, Sophie 210 Olasagasti, Eneko 84 Oliveros, Luis 158 Omiros/Hostage 163, 164 Once You’re Born You Can No Longer Hide/Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti 165 One Dollar Curry 58 Onwurah, Ngozi 140, 177, 178 Open Doors (Locarno) 276 Orientalism 53, 54, 156, 166–7, 208, 257, 269 Origin contrôlée/Made in France 200

Index 315 Ors el-dhib/Tender is the Wolf 286 Ortiz, Fernando 7, 114, 115–16, 119, 121, 126 the other cinematic gaze and 155–7 in cinematic narrative 8, 32, 41, 117, 143 film-makers seeing through the eyes of 18 gangsters as 262 as perceived in Spain, Italy and Greece 154, 155 racial 155–7 and sameness 239 sexual 208 varied ways of imagining 152 Ottoman Empire 155 Ouedraogo, Idrissa 78, 82 Ové, Horace 34, 235, 239, 268 Özpetek, Ferzan 166, 207–8 Pacino, Al 263 Palcy, Euzhan 78, 176, 177 Palermo oder Wolfsburg/Palermo or Wolfsburg 33 Panh, Rithy 78, 82 Panov, Mitko 281–4 Paradise Now 86 París, Inés 165 Parmar, Pratibha 177, 179, 189, 191–2, 211, 261 Paronnaud, Vincent 108 Parry, Richard 141 La pasión turca/Turkish Passion 166 Paskaljević, Goran 58, 65, 66 Pata negra 158 paternalism 223, 231 patriarchy 60, 69, 117, 144, 167, 176, 178, 179, 181, 182, 188, 190, 191, 193 Purab aur Paschim 261 Pawlikowski, Pawel 60, 102 Pelle erobreren/Pelle the Conqueror 62 Peppermint Soda/Diabolo menthe 238 Pérez-Rosado, Pedro 115, 158 periphery 57–60 centre and 29–30, 41 Permis d’aimer/Permission to Love 179, 184, 186–7, 188, 191, 193 Persepolis 108

La Petite Jérusalem/Little Jerusalem 179–81, 184, 193 La petite voleuse/The Little Thief 238 Petrie, Duncan 63 Phillips, Trevor 136 pied noir 97, 177 Pigalle 199 Pines, Jim 34 Pintilie, Lucien 83 Placido, Michele 162 Poland, migrants from 50 Polat, Ayşe 114, 115, 117, 177, 207, 235 political repression 3, 6–7 politics of compassion 157 politics of pleasure 36 politics of resistance 36 Politiki Kouzina/A Touch of Spice 167 la politique des auteurs 77 polycentrism 40, 280 Poniente/West 117, 267–8 Ponzanesi, Sandra 153, 154, 162 positive discrimination 280 post-colonialism 3, 5–6, 13, 23, 36, 37, 51, 52–6, 132, 133, 135, 176, 257, 269 post-communism 5–6, 37, 52–6 post-ethnicity 138, 246 post-queer discourses 212 post-racial era 138, 246 post-Soviet cinema 96–111 post-Third Worldist cinema 37 post-colonial cinema 37 post-colonial diasporas 36, 37 postmemory 16, 17, 41 postmodernist theory 15 Poussiéres de vie/Living Dust 84 Powder Keg/Bure baruta 66 Powell, Michael 268 Prasad, Udayan 258 Pratt, Mary Louise 30 Preisner, Zbigniew 68 Preminger, Otto 265 Presque rien/Come Undone 204 Pressure 34, 235, 239 Princesa/Princess 159–60, 208–9, 212 Princesas/Princesses 7, 114, 115, 117–24, 127–8, 158, 159 A Private Enterprise 258 Problemfilm 32 La promesse/The Promise 60 Promised Land/Ha’aretz Hamuvtachat 102

316

Index

prosthetic memory 17, 18, 41 prostitution 7, 115, 118, 163, 165, 175 El próximo Oriente/The Near East 166–7 Pummarò 162 Pusher 58 Pushkin, Alexander 108 Putin, Vladimir 100 Les quatre cents coups/400 Blows 238 Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti/ Once You’re Born You Can No Longer Hide 165 queer diaspora 9, 178, 196–213 Qureshi, Faisal 284–6, 288 race discourse of 6, 132–3, 136, 256 and ethnicity 155 ‘race films’ 257 racialisation 140–1, 145, 156 racism 27, 135, 139, 197, 211, 239, 267 Rag Tag 211 Rage/Wut 141, 145, 235, 241 Raï 237, 241 Rajaonarivelo, Raymond 86 Rashid, Ian Iqbal 268, 270 Ray, Nicholas 236 realism 3, 32, 33, 34, 118, 141, 143, 161, 209, 217, 222, 224, 228, 262, 265 Rebel without a Cause 236, 241 Refn, Nicholas Winding 58 refugees 2, 13, 18, 20, 37 minors 118, 119, 120 Regional Screen Initiative (RSA) 146 Reise der Hoffnung/Journey of Hope 33, 85 Reisz, Karel 238 Remember Me/Souviens-toi de moi 176–7 Rene, Wendy 221 Resnais, Alain 86 Respect 141 The Return 137 return, impossibility of 98 El rey del mambo/The Mambo King 160 Rezervni deli/Spare Parts 61, 175 Rivette, Jacques 86 road movies 31, 202, 215 The Road to Love/Tarik el hob 200–2 Robins, Kevin 15, 183 Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers 168

Rocha, Glauber 35 Rodina [Votan]/The Homeland 109–10 Rohmer, Eric 86 Rollin’ with the Nines 140, 142, 145 Roma diaspora 14, 229 intolerance of 209 migratory history 51 music 9, 219, 224, 226–30 Romania/Romanians migrants 50 women 165 Rotterdam International Film Festival 88–9, 90, 276 Rowden, Terry 22, 63 Rue Cases-Nègres/Sugar Cane Alley 176 Rue des Figuiers/Fig Tree Road 179, 181–2, 184, 193, 261 Rueschmann, Eva 15 Ruf der Wälder/Call of the Wild 117 Ruggia, Christophe 235 Rushdie, Salman 40 Russia communities of émigrés 111 golden memories of Soviet era 99 nostalgia 96–111 post-Soviet cinema 7, 96–105, 111 post-Soviet migration 98–9 reversed colonisation in 54 sense of superiority 103–4 status of 99, 100, 111 Russian Pontiacs 163, 164, 168 Saadi, Jilani 286–7, 288 Saakyan, Maria 104–5 Sabbag, Randa Chahal 78 Sachs, Ira 102 Sachs, Jeffrey 52 Safe Journey/Latcho drom 229 Safran, William 14 Saïd 117, 160 Said, Edward 156 Saimir 165 Saleem, Hiner 78, 83, 104, 105 Salhab, Ghassan 81 Salis, Robert 198 Saltwater/Agua con sal 115, 158 Samia 235, 240, 243–5, 250, 252 Sanders-Brahms, Helma 33 Saniyes Lust/Saniye’s Desire 185, 189, 193

Index 317 Sankofa Film and Video Collective 177 Sarajevo Film Festival 284 Sarkar, Bhaskar 31 Satin Rouge/Red Satin 287 Satrapi, Marjane 108 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning 238 Saura, Carlos 117 Savage, Dominic 140 Savage Nights/Les nuits fauves 198, 201Scarface 263 Scherler Mayer, Daisy von 137 Schlöndorff, Volker 68, 110, 238 Schroeter, Werner 33 science fiction 257 Scorsese, Martin 263 Second Cinema 35, 40 Second World 37, 53 second-generation diaspora 20, 241 film-makers 4, 16, 28–9, 64, 177, 284 Section 28 (Local Government Act, 1988) 210 Seeman, Sonia 226 Seeßlen, Georg 28, 114 Segura, Santiago 160 self-affirmation 9, 211 self-othering 39 self-representation 3, 20, 27, 133, 252, 270 Şenocak, Zafer 230–1 Serbedzija, Rade 69–70 Sesler, Bülent 226 Sesler, Selim 219, 222, 226, 228, 232 sexuality blackness and 157–63 and the East 163–4, 166–7 and identity 197 lesbianism 189–92 in migrant and diasporic cinema 6, 8, 196–213 sexual subjugation 165 Shabazz, Menelik 34 Shalom Salaam (BBC) 278–9 Shanghai-Belleville 287 Shapira, Assaf 282 She’s All That 245 Shirins Hochzeit/Shirin’s Wedding 33 Shohat, Ella 4, 34, 35–6, 37 Shoot the Messenger 178 Short Sharp Shock/Kurz und schmerzlos 58, 215, 237, 262, 263–4, 270–2

Show-Chun Lee 287–8 Sibirskii tsiriul’nik/The Barber of Siberia 99 Silvera, Charlotte 177 Silverstone, Roger 156 Simmel, Georg 231 Sinatra, Frank 265 Singh, Vijay 58 Singleton, John 237 Sinti 14 Sinyavsky, Andrei 98 Sissako, Abdherrahmane 81 Sisters of Mercy 221 Slovenia/Slovenians 284 Smihi, Moumen 78 Smith, Peter 258 social concerns/problems 32–4, 141, 152, 236, 239 social realism 33, 141, 146, 217 Solanas, Fernando 34–5 Soleil O 33 Soler, Llorenç 117, 160 Someone Else’s America/Tudja Amerika 58, 66 A Son/Un fils 198 Le souffle au coeur/Murmur of the Heart 238 soundtracks see music Sous les pieds des femmes 186 South America see Latin America South Asian cinema 4, 7, 12, 132, 136–8, 257–8 South–North migrations 98, 99 South Side Story/Sud Side Stori 162 Southern Europe change from emigration to immigration in 8, 152–3 as perceived by Northern Europeans 155 Southwest Nine 141, 145 Souviens-toi de moi/Remember Me 176–7 Soviet Union cinema following break-up of 5, 6–7, 50 collapse of 99 countries formerly contained in 2, 99, 100, 105 emigration from 98 impact of break-up 52, 53 internal migration 97–8

318 Index Soviet Union – continued multi-ethnic nature of 97 nostalgia 99, 100 Soviet identity 99 see also Russia space discourse of 6 time-space 97, 98, 101, 107, 108–9, 110, 111, 219, 231 tropes of 29–31 Spada, Marina 102 Spagnoletti, Giovanni 58 Spain African figures in film 160–2 Caribbean and Latin American figures in film 157–60 co-productions 84 Eastern/Eastern European figures in 165–7 historical threat from North Africa 154 immigration 8, 13, 117, 152, 153 internal migration 154 labour migration from 13, 153–4, 169 metacinematic elements 10 migrant and diasporic cinema in 7, 115, 117–23, 127–8, 152–63 state funding 76 see also Hispano-American film Spare Parts/Rezervni deli 61, 175 Spence, Louise 155 Spivak, Gayatri 156 La Squale/The Squale 235, 241 Staiger, Janet 235–6 Stalin, Josef 98 Štaka, Andrea 178, 179, 182–4 Stam, Robert 4, 34, 35–6, 37, 155 state funding 76, 77–83, 93 Steam/The Turkish Bath/Hamam 166, 207–8 Step Forward Youth 34 stereotypes challenging 34 culture clash comedies 252 Muslim 285 Sternberg, Josef von 205 Statross le magnifique 205 sub-state cinema 21, 23 sub-state level 20–1 subject matter

Asian and Black British cinema 141–7 in migrant and diasporic cinema 6 in Spanish, Italian and Greek cinemas 152 Sud Side Stori/South Side Story 162 Sugar Cane Alley/Rue Cases-Nègres 176 Sultana 221 Sunduk predkov/The Wedding Chest 105–8 supra-national level 20, 23 Surviving Sabu 268–70 Susanna 117, 160 Svoi sredi chuzhikh, chuzhoi sredi svoikh/At Home among Strangers, a Stranger at Home 107 Sweden film festivals 89 migrant communities 36 migrant and diasporic cinema 62–3 Switzerland diasporic women film-makers 8, 178, 182–4 films of migration 33 Macedonian film-makers 278, 281 sponsorship 89 Syal, Meera 140 Szabó, István 65, 67, 68 Szapolowska, Grazyna 69 Tahiri, Zakia 177, 200 Taïa, Abdellah 202 Taiwan 287–8 Talk Talk 222 Tarifa Film Festival 276 Tarik el hob/The Road to Love 200–2 Tarkovsky, Andrei 100–1, 107 Tawada, Yoko 231 Taxi 117 Taxi Driver 263 Tea in the Harem/Le Thé au harem d’Archimède 33, 198, 235, 239, 240 Téchiné, André 199 technology and media access 19–20 Teenage Wolfpack/Die Halbstarken 238 teenpics 235, 236–7, 238, 251 Les Témoins/The Witnesses 199 Tender is the Wolf/Ors el-dhib 286 Les terres froides/Cold Lands 203 Le thé au harem d’Archimède/Tea in the Harem 33, 198, 235, 239, 240

Index 319 Thessaloniki International Film Festival 89 The Thief of Bagdad 268 Things I Left in Havana/Cosas que dejé en La Habana 159 Third Cinema 5, 12, 25, 34–6, 38, 40, 132, 135, 148, 291 third generation film-makers 16, 28–9, 64 migrants 241 Third Space 30, 114 Third World 37–8 Third World Cinema 5, 34–6, 37 Three Dancing Slaves/Le Clan 198 Time of the Gypsies/Dom za vesanje 228 time-space 97, 98, 101, 107, 108–9, 110, 111 compression 219, 231 Tirana, année zero/Tirana Year Zero 85, 284 Todo está oscuro 84 Todorov, Tzvetan 156 Todorova, Maria 54 Todorovsky, Petr 63, 102 Tomándote/Two for Tea 166 Toronto International Film Festival 88 Torre, Roberta 162 Torrente 2: Misión en Marbella/Mission in Marbella 160 A Touch of Spice/Politiki Kouzina 167 Tour Abroad/Auslandstournee 206–7, 235 Touré, Moussa 78 tradition impossibility of return to 107, 108–9, 110 and modernity 185, 186, 192 mother figures and 185 projection onto homeland 105, 106 Trainspotting 238 Tran Ahn Hung 78 transculturation 7, 114–28, 132 Transe 102, 175 transitology 52–6 transnational cinema 2, 5, 21–3 and distribution and reception 139 standardised variety 22–3 studies of 61–2, 63–4 watching across borders 61–4 see also migrant and diasporic cinema

transnational film-makers see filmmakers transnational intellectuals 20, 21 transnational mobility 1, 11, 215–32 transnational networks 14, 15 transsexuals 9, 159–60, 203, 208–9 transvergence, cinema of 23, 211–13 transvestism 198, 199–200, 204, 205, 206, 208 Transylvania 229 trauma 13, 14, 16, 111, 281–3 Tressler, Georg 238 Trier, Lars von 86 Troell, Jan 62 Truffaut, François 238 Tsai Ming-Liang 90 Tudja Amerika/Someone Else’s America 58, 66 Tudor, Andrew 57 Turkey cinema 223–5 diasporic cinema 62 exotic/erotic characters from 166–7, 207–8 Greek associations with 163, 167 labour migration from 13 music 226–9, 230, 231–2 The Turkish Bath/Steam/Hamam 166, 207–8 Turkish German cinema 2, 18, 26, 28, 33, 64, 77, 92, 117, 215–23, 260, 278, 288–9 distribution 87 gay/queer film 9, 197, 205–7, 213 metacinematic reflections 260, 262–4, 265–6, 270–2 women film-makers 177, 187–9 youth film 9, 235, 237, 242–3, 249–50 Turkish Passion/La pasión turca 166 Tvrdjava Evropa/Fortress Europe 61 Twenty-nine Palms 69 Two for Tea/Tomándote 166 Udwin, Leslee 144, 251 UK Film Council (UKFC) 80, 136, 145, 146, 278, 280 Ukraine, migrants from 50 Ulzhan 110 undocumented migrants 7, 13, 37, 115, 116, 118, 120, 127, 128

320 Index Ünel, Birol 229 Üner, Idil 226 United Kingdom co-productions 83, 138 diasporic women film-makers 8, 177, 191–2 ethno-national perspectives 26–7 funding and policy 76, 79–80, 135–6, 145–6, 147 gay/queer film 9, 197, 209–11 hybridity 132, 133–4 long-established diasporas 7 metacinematic elements 10 migrant and diasporic cinema 132–48, 284–6 mixed-race Britons 141 post-colonial migrations 13, 132, 133, 135, 176, 177, 197 see also Asian British cinema; black British cinema United States cultural dominance 22 migrant and diasporic cinema in 31–2, 156–7 resistance to dominance of 78 urban (youth) cinema 133, 142, 144–7, 237, 262 Uribe, Imanol 117, 160–1 Utvandrana/The Emigrants 62 Uzbekistan 100, 109–10, 111 Vengo 86 Venice Film Festival 287 Verdura, Hugo di 202 Vesna va veloce/Vesna Goes Fast 165 victim complex 103, 111 victimisation 152, 157, 161 Vienna Film Festival 89 Vienna Film Fund (Filmfonds Wien) 278 Vietnamese, in Eastern Europe 50 Villaverde, Teresa 102, 175 Vion, Raphaël 81 Visconti, Luchino 168 Vitali, Valentina 63 Vodka Lemon 104 Volga Germans 98 Voulgaris, Pantelis 168 Vse budet khorosho/Everything Will Be OK 104

Wajda, Andrzej 68 Walia, Yugesh 139 The War Is Over 281–3, 284 Wargnier, Régis 81, 98 The Warrior 137, 140 A Way of Life 139–40, 178 The Way to the West/O dromos pros ti dissi 165 Wayne, Mike 78, 87 We Have No War Songs 229 The Wedding Chest/Sunduk predkov 105–8 Weingartner, Hans 238 Welcome II the Terrordrome 140 Wenders, Wim 207 Werbner, Pnina 135 West/Poniente 117, 267–8 West Indies Story 78 Westerns 29, 257 The Wild One 236 Wild Side 60, 203–4, 209, 212 Wildenhahn, Klaus 117 Wildi, Ingrid 178 Willemen, Paul 63, 91 Williams, Ken 141 Window on Paris/Okno v Parizh 103–4 Winterbottom, Michael 61 With Raised Hands/Z pdoniesionymi rekami 281 The Witnesses/Les témoins 199 Wolff, Larry 54 women diasporic film-makers 8, 175–93 diasporic lesbian relationships 189–92 diasporic mother figures 184–9 exploitation by capitalist society 102–3 independence through work 193 migrant, as victims 175, 193 place in the community 178–84 women’s films 178, 179 youth films 243–5 Wong Kar Wai 38 Wooding, Jeremy 140, 261 World Cinema at film festivals 276 and genre 236 migrant and diasporic cinema as 18, 36, 39–40, 90–1, 286

Index 321 World Cinema – continued synonymous with ‘foreignlanguage’ 38 transnational connections of 38 turn in European cinema 5, 12, 34, 37–40, 41 World Cinema Fund (WCF) 89, 276 World Literature 39 World Music 39 World War II film generated by 290 migrations arising from 51, 64, 97 Wut/Rage 141, 145, 235, 241 Yahiaoui, Yasmina 177, 179, 181–2, 261 Yasemin 187, 235, 239, 242–3 Yavuz, Yüksel 114, 117, 118–19, 125, 126, 235, 265–6

Yiddish cinema 257 Young Soul Rebels 34, 210, 211 The Young Törless/Der junge Törless 238 youth film 9–10, 235–52, 261–5 Yugodivas 178 Yugoslavia break-up and wars 50, 53 migration from 13, 178, 179, 182–4, 281–4 Z pdoniesionymi rekami/With Raised Hands 281 Zabala, Carlos 84 Zaomoğlu, Feridun 224 Zemmouri, Mahmoud 78, 83, 85, 199 Zilnik, Zelimir 61 Zinoba 222 Zozo 62 Zulawski, Andrzej 65, 66