ABSTRACT

Postcolonial Film: History, Empire, Resistance examines films of the later twentieth and early twenty-first centuries from postcolonial countries around the globe. In the mid twentieth century, the political reality of resistance and decolonization lead to the creation of dozens of new states, forming a backdrop to films of that period. Towards the century’s end and at the dawn of the new millennium, film continues to form a site for interrogating colonization and decolonization, though against a backdrop that is now more neo-colonial than colonial and more culturally imperial than imperial. This volume explores how individual films emerged from and commented on postcolonial spaces and the building and breaking down of the European empire. Each chapter is a case study examining how a particular film from a postcolonial nation emerges from and reflects that nation’s unique postcolonial situation. This analysis of one nation’s struggle with its coloniality allows each essay to investigate just what it means to be postcolonial.

chapter |20 pages

Introduction

New Perspectives on Postcolonial Film

part I|91 pages

New Readings of Twentieth-Century Anti-colonial Resistance Narratives

chapter 1|24 pages

Yesterday's Mujahiddin

Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966)

chapter 2|16 pages

The Sound of Broken Memory

Assia Djebar's The Nuba of the Women of Mount Chenoua (1977)

chapter 3|24 pages

Approximate Others

Peter Weir's The Last Wave (1977)

chapter 4|25 pages

Life as an Ocean

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Puppetmaster (1993)

part II|86 pages

Millennial Tropes of Neo-empire

chapter 5|22 pages

Shifting Sands, Imaginary Space, and National Identity

Cédric Klapisch's Peut-être (1999)

chapter 6|17 pages

No Chains on Feet or Mind

Jean-Claude Flamand Barny's Nèg Maron (2005)

chapter 7|17 pages

A Cinema of Conviviality

Ray Lawrence's Jindabyne (2006)

chapter 8|28 pages

Déjà Vu All Over Again

Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg (2007)

part III|101 pages

New Imaginations of Neo-postcolonialism

chapter 9|22 pages

Identity and the Politics of Space

Fatih Akin's The Edge of Heaven (2007)

chapter 10|24 pages

Space and Cultural Memory

Te-Sheng Wei's Cape No. 7 (2008)

chapter 11|20 pages

The Postcolonial Hybrid

Neill Blomkamp's District 9 (2009)

chapter 12|15 pages

The Marginal Interventionist Cinema of Budhan Theatre

Dakxin Bajrange Chhara's The Lost Water (2010) 1

chapter 13|18 pages

Afterword

History, Empire, Resistance