The research focus of this Q-team will be immigration and cinema, where we will study the ways
in which immigrant filmmaking differs from the dominant style and how
the nostalgic, at times melancholic aspect, of the immigrant experience are expressed
cinematically. Intersecting with multiple disciplinary fields such as
anthropology, migration studies, cultural studies, gender and intersectionality, and
postcolonial studies, this research course will examine the ideological and ethical
implications of immigrant filmic representation and practice.
The enquiry fields of this course are
- Role of dislocation in shaping cinematic expression
- The role of institutions and platforms such as film festivals, funding organisations and
archives in shaping and curating films by and about immigrants.
- Identification of experiences such as (but not limited to) nostalgia, alienation and
marginality as constitutive of the intercultural, immigrant subjectivity on film.
Multiple labels and categories, such as exilic cinema, diasporic cinema, accented
cinema, intercultural cinema and following my own research, evacuee cinema, express the
various modalities of migration with respect to cinema. Each of these encapsulate a specific
relationship to cinema production and territorial location, which in turn shapes the
questions we ask. What memories and truths emerge in intercultural cinema (Laura Marks),
which might be elusive in diasporic communities? What do different genres such as reveal
about an exilic subjectivity? What is exactly an interstitial mode of production? How does
film policy and institutions of the host country influence narrative choices of displaced
filmmakers? Who are the refugee filmmakers of Germany? These are just a few of research
questions that Q-team “Immigration and Cinema” will work with. |
