14. Cinema and the Mythical
Convenors:
Birgit Meyer, University of Amsterdam
Ulrike Davis-Sulikowski, University of Vienna
ulrike.davis-sulikowski@univie.ac.at
Discussant:
Patricia
Spyer, University of Leiden
Since the
beginning of cinema the mythical has been a central trope situated in themes as
well as in cognitive forms of filmic expression. Equally well established is
the use of cinema for diverse political purposes. In recent years especially
postcolonial countries have witnessed a significant change in the relationship
between cinema, politics and popular culture. As a result of global processes
of media deregulation and the growing accessibility of diverse visual
technologies, it has become increasingly difficult to control cinema
industries, which had often played a central role in state and other hegemonic
politics of representation, only small numbers of independent film-makers had
succeeded in using cinema as voice of critique.
The
current situation is characterized by new possibilities in the field of
production, technological shifts, and the emergence of new circuits of
circulation and new publics on national as well as international scale. One
result is a growing emphasis on hitherto neglected themes in general, and the
mythological or spiritual in particular. These changes have also strongly
affected dominant Euro-American cinema and its political-cultural strategies.
The existence of new privatised film industries and the creative appropriation
of the new communication technologies signal a different politics of
representation – no longer hegemonically controled and feeding into, as
well as reflecting, alternative imaginations of community and agency.
The workshop seeks to explore these developments based
on detailed ethnographic and theoretical research. The central focus is on
cinema’s role and place in current politics of representation and on the
significance of the mythical in these processes as central venue of cinematic
articulation between documentation and fiction.
Lotte
Hoek, University of Amsterdam
Stephen
Hughes, School of Oriental and
African Studies
Margit Wolfsberger, University of
Vienna
Pirates,
Tricksters and the State. The Magic of Captain Jack Sparrow
Elke Mader, University of
Vienna
Feature, Fiction and Refraction
Jorge Grau Rebollo, Autonomous
University of Barcelona
Allen Feldman, New York University
Film and
Revelation. On the Convergence of Technology and Religious Practices of Looking
Birgit Meyer, University of
Amsterdam
Ulrike Davis-Sulikowski, University of
Vienna
ulrike.davis-sulikowski@univie.ac.at