Small-nations cinema (Hjort)

- Cultural Diversity Awareness - 

"In sum, for me, the emphasis on small nationhood is about:

• understanding the challenges that small-nation filmmakers face
• highlighting the extent to which a large number of these challenges are shared challenges
• encouraging filmmakers to look for the opportunities that may be implicit in the constraints they encounter
• encouraging small-nation filmmakers to look to each other for support, rather than to large nations
• encouraging solidarity across borders and through various lasting partnerships
• facilitating knowledge transfer across borders and especially the transfer of models that provide solutions to shared problems
• looking to small cinemas for approaches that warrant adoption even in the context of large cinemas, and this on social, political, and ethical (including environmental) grounds.

[..] The more capacious conception of the film scholar’s role, tasks, and contributions which is afforded by an engagement with small cinemas, is, I think, ultimately quite helpful. This is especially the case for those of us who work in university systems where the value of fields of study cannot be taken for granted but must be argued for, and defended, in terms of knowledge transfer, relevance to society, and so on. It can be hard to make the case for thematic commentaries on films. It is much easier to make the case for analyses of small-nation cinemas which aim to show that there are environmental gains (among many other things) to be won from a wider dissemination and adoption of small-nation practices."

Small Cinemas: How They Thrive and Why They Matter, 2010 (Mette Hjort; Mediascape; Winter 2011) [PDF]

Bibliography:

• The Cinema of Small Nations (co-edited by  Mette Hjort & Duncan Petrie; 2007)
• Small Nation, Global Cinema (Mette Hjort; 2005)
• Cinema at the Periphery, #4 (edited by Dina Iordanova, David Martin-Jones, Belén Vidal; 2010)
• conference “European Landscapes: Small Cinemas at the Time of Transition”, organized by Janina Falkowska; University of Western Ontario; June 2010
• World Cinemas, Transnational Perspectives (Eds. Natasa Durovicova, Kathleen Newman; 2010)

Related: 

• Cultural Diversity Awareness (series)
• Variety, Balance, Disparity (Stirling)
• Le cinema comme géographie: quels nouveaux mondes? 
• Cinema quotas 
• Artificial barriers against the circulation of World cinema 
• Presumptuous Best Film in the World
• Iranian dissidence in real life peril
• Pratique du cinéma dans le monde (France Culture) 
• BO 2009 - world cinema stats (16)
• Cambodge : culture exterminée