This dissertation revisits a piece of forgotten history of Chinese cinema from 1930s to 1950s when Chinese filmmakers formed a cross-border, Pacific Rim network of cinematic exchanges among various Chinese diasporic communities. Through a transnational and diasporic lens, it explores new relationships between Chinese filmmakers, traditional stage culture, language differences, Chinese ethnicity, and politics. It argues that Chinese cinema, from its early age, was the product of transnational movements of capital, people, and ideas among the Chinese diaspora. The global links among various Chinese communities initiated and sustained the development of Chinese cinema. / 博士(アメリカ研究) / Doctor of Philosophy in American Studies / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University

Since the 1980s, growing international recognition for Taiwanese auteurs has placed Taiwan on the map of world cinema. However, in the new millennium popular tastes have gradually become a key concern for Taiwanese filmmakers; in the years since 2008, the dramatic box office success of Cape No.7 has further boosted their commercial production. Through four case studies, this thesis investigates four major filmmaking strategies among Taiwanese filmmakers, seeking to provide a wide-ranging picture of Taiwan cinema since the turn of the century. These case studies represent different approaches to filmmaking and indicate the different audiences that Taiwanese filmmakers may address. Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon not only demonstrates that Asian films can achieve international box office success but also raises issues of cultural authenticity and cultural translation. Chapter One describes how the global success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has promoted transnational co-production in Asia. The Hollywood-funded project Double Vision and Taiwanese filmmakers’ engagement in intraregional co-production are outlined in Chapter Two, examining the development of pan-Asian co-production in Taiwan cinema. The immense popularity of Cape No.7 in Taiwan reflects Taiwanese viewers’ demand for cultural products with local colour. Chapter Three views this domestically-produced film as a local response to cultural globalisation and revisits the significance of nativist imagination to the production and consumption of contemporary Taiwan cinema. The last chapter examines auteur-oriented filmmaking in this area and underscores the dependence of art cinema in Taiwan on the film festival economy and international niche markets. These case studies highlight the influence of transnational connections on the production, consumption and content of contemporary Taiwan cinema, showing that Taiwan cinema should be understood in a transnational context.

This thesis examines Iranian-Kurdish filmmaker, Bahman Ghobadi’s authorial strategies and cinematic aesthetics through the theoretical and methodological lens of hybridity. According to Homi Bhabha, hybridity can be understood as a “third space,” in which cultural meanings resist binary either/or logic, and are instead negotiated through a logic that is neither one, nor the other. Thus, Bhabha’s concept of hybridity as a “third space” provides a fruitful framework to analyze Ghobadi’s authorship and cinematic style. By analyzing Ghobadi’s neo-realist treatment of Kurdistan’s cultural and physical landscape and hybrid cinematic aesthetics in his first two features, A Time for Drunken Horses (2000) and Turtles Can Fly (2004), this research calls attention to intercultural processes that generate cultural meaning through indexical and material as opposed to symbolic registers. In addition, this thesis applies Hamid Naficy’s concept of “shifters” to examine how Ghobadi’s hybrid authorial strategies and narrative reflexivity garners international audiences in his two latest features, Half Moon (2006) and No One Knows about Persian Cats (2009). This project also examines how Ghobadi’s use of a digital camera and employment of digital cinematic techniques to capture Iran’s underground rock music culture in No One Knows about Persian Cats, testifies to the authenticity of this cultural space while simultaneously structuring the film as a global vehicle for these Iranian musicians’ performances. Ultimately, Ghobadi’s hybrid authorial strategies and cinematic aesthetics function as a means to enunciate and globally circulate diverse Kurdish and Iranian cultural identities. In doing so, this thesis illuminates hybrid modes of cultural production and hybrid cultural subjectivities that have emerged in the contemporary globalized landscape. / text

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A travers l'étude des relations cinématographiques entre la France et la RDA, cette thèse met en lumière la manière dont Je cinéma constitua un espace de rencontre entre l'Est et l'Ouest. Initiés après 1945 par des professionnels du cinéma portés par un même engagement communiste, les échanges de films entre la France et la RDA se heurtent rapidement à l'actualité géopolitique et notamment à l'absence de liens diplomatiques officiels entre les deux États. Grâce à plusieurs figures de passeurs, des collaborations singulières aboutissent néanmoins, telles que la réalisation de coproductions, la diffusion de films de la DEF A à Cannes et dans les ciné-clubs et la participation régulière de Français au festival de Leipzig. Les relations cinématographiques franco-est-allemandes dépassent souvent le cadre binational et s'étendent à d'autres horizons. La Chine de Mao et la guerre d'Algérie constituent ainsi des espaces où se croisent les regards des cinéastes français et est-allemands. Si la France et son histoire inspirent plusieurs films à la DEFA, seuls deux documentaires français s'intéressent à la RDA, avant et après Mai 1968. Ce déséquilibre s'accentue encore à partir des années 1970. La reconnaissance officielle de la RDA par la France en 1973 s'accompagne de l'institutionnalisation des relations cinématographiques, qui simplifie la circulation des films de part et d'autre du Rideau de fer en même temps qu'elle en accroît l'asymétrie. Ce n'est qu'après la chute du Mur que la France s'intéressera davantage au sort de l'ex-RDA, en produisant plusieurs films sur l'après-1989 et en mettant la DEFA à l'honneur dans le cadre de rétrospectives. / Through the study of cinematographic relationships between France and the GDR from 1946 to 1992, this PhD thesis highlights how cinema constituted a meeting area between the East and the West. Initiated after the Second World War by film professionals sharing the same communist commitment, film exchanges between France and the GDR are quickly confronted with the geopolitical situation, in particular the Jack of official diplomatic relations between the two states. Thanks to several figures of conveyor, peculiar collaborations could succeed, such as the realization of co­productions, the diffusion of DEF A films in Cannes or in film clubs and the regular French participation in the festival of Leipzig. Franco-East-German film relations often go beyond the binational framework and extend to other horizons. Mao's China and the Algerian war thus constitute areas where French and East-German filmmakers look at. If France and its history inspire several DEFA films, only two French documentaries focus on the GDR, before and after May 1968. This imbalance increases even more from the l 970's onwards. The official recognition of the GDR by France in 1973 is accompanied by the institutionalization of cinematographic relationships, which simplifies the circulation of films on both sides of the Iron Curtain, while at the same time increasing its asymmetry. It is only after the fall of the Wall that France becomes interested in the fate of the former GDR, by producing several films about the post-1989 period and putting the DEFA in the limelight of festivals and retrospectives.

This thesis focuses on documentaries by North African women, who have been marginalised within the limited space of the field of African filmmaking. I illustrate how North African cinema has suffered from neglect in studies on African as well as Arab culture and particularly African and Arab cinema. I discuss the work of four pioneering women documentary makers in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Consecutively I will discuss Ateyyat El Abnoudy, Selma Baccar, Assia Djebar and Izza Génini’s work. My approach is transnational and Bakhtinian in the sense that I am an outsider looking in. I promote a constant self-awareness as a Western European and an academic interested in the area that is defined as the Middle East. Like the documentary makers, I take the nation state as a starting point so as to understand its effects, in order to be able to critique it and place the films in a transnational context. The documentaries in this thesis illustrate that films of a socio-political nature contest the notion of a singular national identity and can become a means of self-definition. Asserting one’s own cultural and national identity, and subjectively offering the spectator an individual’s interpretation of that self-definition, is a way towards female emancipation. Going against the grain and avoiding stereotypes, evading censorship and dependence on state control, these directors find ways to give a different dimension to their identity. Analysing the work of these four pioneering filmmakers, I uncover diverse female subject matters treated by a similar aesthetic. I argue that through overlooked cinematic techniques, they succeed in subverting the censor and communicating a subtle but convincing critique of the patriarchal system in their respective countries. Their preoccupation with representing ‘the other half’ puts a new and under-explored spin on perceptions of anti-establishment filming with subtly emancipating consequences. I suggest that their common aesthetic is one that develops moderation in terms of context, content and style. There is a cinematic way of implicitly subverting not only the (colonial) past but also the (neo-colonial) present which goes further than re-inscription or compensation: new modes of resistance co-exist with the more rebellious and heroic ones. These women’s films rewrite, imply and contemplate rather than denounce and attack heroically. They do not reject as much as interrogate their situations, counting on the empathic and intersubjective abilities of the spectator. A relationship of trust between director, subject and spectator is crucial if we want to believe in the subalterns’ aptitude for voicing issues and gazing back. I reveal a different approach to communication beyond the verbal, and a belief in the subjects’ capacities to speak and listen. This is echoed in the filmmaker’s sensitive analysis of the subjects’ expression and voice and the non-vocal expression – the gaze. The intended outcome is dependent on the willingness of the spectator to take part in the intersubjective communication triangle. I conclude with the idea that moderation is the foundational concept of a post-Third Cinema transnational aesthetic in North Africa. Ateyyat El Abnoudy, Selma Baccar, Assia Djebar and Izza Génini are pioneers of women’s filmmaking in North Africa, who opened up a space for underrepresented subjects, voices and gazes.

This thesis explores the films produced in the francophone Belgian region of Wallonia as a case study for the configuration of what will be termed a ‘transnational regional’ cinema. The first section of this dynamic is considered in relation to film and cultural policy, which problematizes the possible formation of a clearly delineated regional or ‘national’ cinema. This presupposes a reconfiguring of the transnational along the lines of the regional and the linguistic communities of Belgium, which, in essence, pertains to how production, distribution and exhibition mechanisms function within the devolved region of Wallonia. This section therefore focuses on film policy as well as a macro- and micro- economic analysis of the industry in order to consider the perceived imbalance between Belgian and French cinema. In the second half, the thesis develops a textual analysis of a series of case study films to consider how cultural film policy and francophone Belgian identity is imagined and then imaged on screen. The interplay between the transnational and the regional is then nuanced by the approaches to the ‘transnational regional’ aesthetic. This aesthetic includes the visualization of the rural and urban Walloon landscape in Eldorado (Bouli Lanners, 2008) and Ultranova (Lanners, 2006) and the ‘marked’ regional landscape in Cages (Olivier Masset-Depasse, 2006). The shift in location across the conterminous border with France due to the logic of film funding engenders the approach to the ‘marked’ regional space in Masset-Depasse’s film. The final chapter tracks this aesthetic through to the works of the Dardenne brothers and in particular Le gamin au vélo (Dardenne brothers, 2011) in order to approach the construction of a peripheral spatial formation through corporeal movements. This therefore necessitates a consideration of how the Dardenne brothers’ film chimes with waves of European filmmaking, thereby revealing a regional space that is conceptualized as de-centred.

Cette recherche part d’un double intérêt. Pour la spiritualité, dont on entend beaucoup parler dans un 21e siècle inquiet et en quête de nouveaux repères. Et pour le cinéma, ou 7e art, phénomène culturel phare des temps modernes, qui reflète abondamment les problématiques et questionnements du monde. À une époque où on observe une tendance à l’homogénéisation culturelle, résultat de la mondialisation économique, cette thèse traite du « cinéma transnational ». Elles aussi, les œuvres de ce cinéma traversent l’espace planétaire, mais tout en conservant un solide ancrage local et une singularité artistique. Ce sont en bonne partie les films que l’on retrouve dans les festivals internationaux, tels Cannes, Venise et Berlin. Le cinéma traduisant toutes les interrogations possibles du présent, plusieurs films apparaissent donc porteurs d’un questionnement à portée spirituelle. Et ce, avec des moyens non discursifs, propres à l’art cinématographique. Ils invitent aussi à la rencontre de l’autre. L’objectif de la thèse consiste à décrire comment, par l’analyse d’une douzaine de films transnationaux, on peut dégager de nouveaux concepts sur la façon avec laquelle se vit la spiritualité à notre époque, en relation avec l’autre, et pourquoi cette spiritualité s’accompagne nécessairement de considérations éthiques. Pour accomplir cette tâche, la thèse s’appuie sur les travaux de deux philosophes, Gilles Deleuze (France) et Stanley Cavell (États-Unis), qui ont marqué les études cinématographiques au cours des dernières décennies, par des approches jugées complémentaires pour cette recherche. Le premier a développé sa pensée à partir de ce qui distingue le cinéma des autres arts, et le second, à partir de l’importance du cinéma pour les spectateurs et les spectatrices. Enfin, la thèse se veut une théologie, ou pensée théologico-philosophique, indépendante d’une tradition religieuse et au diapason des réalités du 21e siècle. / This research is based upon two fields of interest. For spirituality, a concept very much to the fore in this troubled 21st century in search of fresh yardsticks. And for cinema, aka the 7th Art, a beacon on the cultural scene, with its insights in today’s issues and questionings. In this era of cultural homogenization, itself the result of economic globalization, this thesis probes “transnational cinema” for fresh answers. Transnational films cross the global space while keeping their local roots and own artistic identity. Very often one will find these works featured in the big film festivals, such as Cannes, Berlin or Venice. Focusing on today’s questionings and issues, many of these movies appear to be bearing a spiritual imprint, with non-discursive methods. They promote openness to others. The goal of this thesis is to describe, through an analysis of a dozen transnational films, how new concepts defining ways to live a spiritual life today can be found. Further the thesis will underline why this spirituality is linked with ethics. To reach that goal, the thesis relies strongly on the works of philosophers Gilles Deleuze (France) and Stanley Cavell (USA). Both have been judged to have complementary approaches for this research, and have made a strong mark on cinematographic studies in the last decades. Deleuze has developed his philosophy on what distinguishes cinema from the other arts. Cavell has focused his thoughts on the importance of cinema for its viewers. Finally, this thesis is in the form of a theology, or theologic-philosophic thought, not linked to a religious tradition and in synchronicity with its times.

Cas à part dans le cinéma britannique contemporain, depuis 30 ans la société de production Working Title Films connaît un succès régulier sur la scène internationale. Son box-office cumulé se compte en milliards de dollars pour une centaine de longs métrages, qui lui ont valu des dizaines d'Oscars et de BAFTA, ainsi que quelques distinctions à Cannes, Berlin ou Venise. Ce succès attire pourtant les critiques de certains commentateurs, qui lui reprochent de se laisser submerger par les conventions du cinéma hollywoodien et de manquer d'ambitions culturelles, notamment à cause de son contrat avec la major Universal et de ses stratégies de distribution. Ils déplorent les représentations stéréotypées de la « britannicité » de certains de ses films, à l'instar des comédies de Richard Curtis ou de Rowan Atkinson. En effet, si Working Title a débuté avec un film audacieux, My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985), son premier grand succès commercial est Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell, 1994). Néanmoins, malgré leurs ambitions commerciales mondiales, Tim Bevan et Eric Fellner, les directeurs de Working Title, revendiquent leur britannicité et une « sensibilité européenne ». Celle-ci est concrétisée par un partenariat avec PolyGram Filmed Entertainment puis avec StudioCanal. Cette dimension transnationale – plutôt que transatlantique – n'est pas sans influence sur les films eux-mêmes, et concourt également à leur succès international. Plusieurs intrigues mettent même en scène des relations interculturelles. Les films affichent des stratégies de compromis entre spécificité culturelle et universalité, avec des équilibres changeants. En effet, on ne peut nier la diversité déconcertante de la filmographie, tant du point de vue des contenus culturels que du degré de créativité. Working Title collabore avec des réalisateurs britanniques d'horizons variés, comme Richard Curtis, Stephen Frears, Edgar Wright ou Joe Wright. De plus, elle franchit souvent les frontières nationales, essentiellement outre-Atlantique, en particulier grâce à son partenariat avec les frères Coen, mais aussi en Australie, en Afrique du Sud ou dans d'autres pays européens. Tout cela place donc Working Title au cœur des débats sur les enjeux du cinéma britannique actuel, concernant son identité (cinéma national / post-national), l'équilibre entre les aspects économiques et artistiques, les relations avec Hollywood, ou encore le rôle des politiques culturelles. Ainsi, cette thèse tâche de comprendre l'évolution et le succès de cette société phare du cinéma britannique, en s'attachant autant à l'étude de son fonctionnement (partenariats, développement, production, distribution) qu'à l'analyse textuelle de ses films. / A unique entity in today's British film industry, production company Working Title Films has been responsible for many international hits since its creation in 1984. Its films have earned billions of dollars, and they have won many film awards, including dozens of Academy Awards and BAFTA Awards, but also accolades in Cannes, Berlin or Venice. Yet, some commentators criticize Working Title for being excessively influenced by Hollywood, hence lacking cultural ambitions. They blame the company's partnership with Universal and underline that some of its films broadcast a stereotypical view of Britishness, especially successful comedies by Richard Curtis, or the ones starring Rowan Atkinson. Indeed, the company's first film was My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985), a creative, committed film, but its more recent films tend to be more mainstream and its first international hit was Four Weddings and A Funeral (Mike Newell, 1994). However, Working Title seems to draw some of its strength from its British identity. Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, the two producers behind Working Title, also defend its “European sensibility”. The latter is reinforced by a partnership with PolyGram Filmed Entertainment in the nineties, and then with StudioCanal. So it is a transnational rather than a transatlantic company. Its films are transnational too, and some plots even include intercultural relationships. They use various strategies to broaden their audience, such as crossover and polysemy, and they try to balance cultural specificity with universality. However, most importantly, one cannot deny the incredible diversity of the films – regarding both their national identity and their level of creativity. Therefore, Working Title offers a fascinating case study to learn more about the issues of British cinema, about its identity (national / post-national cinema), the balance between art and industry, its relationship with Hollywood, and the role of cultural policies. In other words, this dissertation will study the evolution of Working Title Films, focusing on its methods, its strategies and also on the textual analysis of its diverse films, as a way to investigate contemporary British cinema and its issues.

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