ABSTRACT
With the recent release of several spectacular fi lms set in the ancient and medieval past, the epic has once again become a major form in contemporary cinema, providing a striking example of the resiliency of genre forms, their ability both to recall past usages and respond to the present in a new way. As Mikhail Bakhtin writes, genres serve as “organs of memory” for particular cultures; they both “remember the past and make their resources available to the present.”1 The resurgence of the epic genre in the contemporary period, a period marked by heightened and confl icting appeals to national, ethnic, and religious belonging, presents a particularly compelling subject for critical analysis and invites a broad reconsideration of the genre from a variety of perspectives. Among several questions considered here is the link between the epic and the imagined community of nation and whether this link remains the defi ning feature of the epic fi lm. Traditionally framed as an expression of national emergence and national consciousness, and strongly associated with the category of national cinemas, the contemporary epic, with its complex array of nested and overlapping production and distribution arrangements, has become the very
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exemplar of transnational and global modes of fi lm production and reception. The tension between the evolving global context of fi lm production and reception and the particular provenance of the epic as an expression of national mythology and aspirations creates what Bakhtin calls a double voice, a new social accent, which changes our understanding of epics produced in the present as well as our perception of epic fi lms from the past.
