Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Ideas of national identity, nationalism and transnationalism are now a central feature of contemporary film studies, as well as primary concerns for film-makers themselves. Embracing a range of national cinemas including Scotland, Poland, France, Turkey, Indonesia, India, Germany and America, Cinema and Nation considers the ways in which film production and reception are shaped by ideas of national belonging and examines the implications of globalisation for the concept of national cinema.
In the first three Parts, contributors explore sociological approaches to nationalism, challenge the established definitions of 'national cinema', and consider the ways in which states - from the old Soviet Union to contemporary Scotland - aim to create a national culture through cinema. The final two Parts address the diverse strategies involved in the production of national cinema and consider how images of the nation are used and understood by audiences both at home and abroad.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• List of figures (p. x)
• Notes on contributors (p. xi)
• Acknowledgements (p. xvi)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• Part I The sociology of nationalism (p. 17)
• 1 The sociological scope of 'national cinema' (p. 19)
• 2 Frank Capra meets John Doe: anti-politics in American national identity (p. 32)
• 3 Images of the nation: cinema, art and national identity (p. 45)
• Part II The concept of national cinema (p. 61)
• 4 The limiting imagination of national cinema (p. 63)
• 5 National cinema: a theoretical assessment (p. 75)
• 6 Framing national cinemas (p. 88)
• 7 Themes of nation (p. 103)
• Part III Film policy, nationalism and the state (p. 119)
• 8 Cinematic nation-building: Eisenstein's The Old and The New (p. 121)
• 9 The nation vanishes: European co-productions and popular genre formulae in the 1950s and 1960s (p. 139)
• 10 The new Scottish cinema (p. 153)
• Part IV The production of national images (p. 171)
• 11 Indonesia: the movie (p. 173)
• 12 Notes on Polish cinema, nationalism and Wajda's Holy Week (p. 189)
• 13 Deep nation: the national question and Turkish cinema culture (p. 203)
• 14 Fragmenting the nation: images of terrorism in Indian popular cinema (p. 222)
• Part V The reception of national images (p. 239)
• 15 Mimetic nationhood: ethnography and the national (p. 241)
• 16 From new German cinema to the post-wall cinema of consensus (p. 260)
• 17 Contemporary cinema: between cultural globalisation and national interpretation (p. 278)
• 18 Birthing nations (p. 298)
• Name index (p. 317)
• Subject index (p. 324)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Hjort (Univ. of Aalborg, Denmark) and McKenzie (Univ of. East Anglia, UK) bring together 18 articles from scholars in English, German, sociology, anthropology, film studies, philosophy of art, and theater. All address "the question of national cinema": whether and how films produced in the markets and "communicative spaces" of a nation reflect or construct its "national specificity." Can they do this even though they are often produced transnationally, i.e., with financing, writers, directors, and actors drawn from several nations? An excellent introduction outlines the major issues and offers a helpful survey of the literature of the past decade. Virtually all the articles are useful. Noel Carroll and Sally Banes offer a fascinating sketch of the visual and narrative innovations of a Soviet film through which Eisenstein constructed a cinematic simulacrum of a nation that did not yet exist, but which the Soviets were trying to construct. Martin Roberts provides a specific yet sug gestive study of the interaction between the Indonesian state's film policy and globalizing forces in film. Also especially helpful are contributions by Anthony Smith, Philip Schlesinger, Susan Hayward, Sumita Chakravarty, and Andrew Higson. No other volume offers comparable lucid perspectives on so many questions of national cinema. Accessible to upper-division undergraduates; strongly recommended for college libraries; indispensable for universities. K. Tololyan Wesleyan University