Multilinguality and nationality in exile-produced films

Abstract

Products of the dual postcolonial displacement and postmodern scattering, exilic and diasporic filmmakers in the West have created a dynamic new global cinema · an accented cinema. However, this cinema is by no means established or cohesive since it has been in a state of prefomation and emergence in disparate and dispersed pockets across the globe. It is, nevertheless, an increasingly significant cinematic formation in terms of its output, which reaches into the thousands, its variety of forms and diversity of cultures, which are staggering, and its social impact, which extends far beyond exilic and diasporic communities to include the general public as well. If the dominant cinema is considered universal and without accent, the films that diasporic and exilic subjects make are accented. This accent emanates not so much from the accented speech of the diegetic characters as from the displacement of the filmmakers, their interstitial and sometimes collective modes of production, and the stylistic features of the films. This talk examines the interstitial production mode and the multilinguality of the films.