Exotic Cinema

Encounters with Cultural Difference in Contemporary Transnational Film

Author: Daniela Berghahn

A critical reassessment of the aesthetic strategies and cultural value of exoticism in contemporary transnational cinemas

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Summary

A critical reassessment of the aesthetic strategies and cultural value of exoticism in contemporary transnational cinemas

Description

Exotic Cinema is the first systematic analysis of decentred exoticism in contemporary transnational and world cinema. By critically examining regimes of visuality such as the imperial, the ethnographic and the exotic gaze, which have colonised our minds and ways of looking, Daniela Berghahn makes an important contribution to the urgent agenda of decolonising film studies.
Berghahn demonstrates that decentred exoticism's aesthetic versatility and alluring alterity are uniquely relevant for understanding the transnational appeal of world cinema. She addresses prevalent controversies surrounding exoticism and illustrates that, in contemporary world cinema, it is utilised to draw attention to new ethical and socio-political goals. Global in scope and transnational in perspective, Exotic Cinema invites students and researchers to reassess this prominent mode of cultural representation.

Critic Reviews

"Exoticism is not 'bad' by default, nor is it necessarily 'colonialist'. Daniela Berghahn's wide-ranging study of contemporary world cinema goes provocatively against the grain, arguing in favour of a 'decentred' exoticism that challenges ethnic essentialism, and that is attuned to the ethical complexities of a globalised world." -Graham Huggan, University of Leeds

About the Author

Daniela Berghahn is Professor of Film Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published widely in the areas of migrant and diasporic cinema, transnational cinema and post-war German cinema and culture. Her books include Head On (2015), Far-Flung Families in Film: The Diasporic Family in Contemporary European Cinema (EUP 2013), European Cinema in Motion: Migrant and Diasporic Film in Contemporary Europe (2010) and Hollywood Behind the Wall: The Cinema of East Germany (2005).