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Hollywood.
A land like no other.
Where dreams are made and broken.
A place that personifies the glitz and glamour, the rich, yet superficial culture; that is the American film industry.
To this day, it remains as a figurehead for transnational film production. Recently, however it’s dominance amongst the industry has begun to decline, due to the emergence of global “contra-flows”, which are blurring the lines and breaking the boundaries of National and Global culture.
The set reading, “Problematizing Chindia: Hybridity and Bollywoodization of Popular Indian Film”, explores the strong Hindi influence in regards to the ground breaking film, “Avatar”. However this occurrence was not simply a “one off” event, with very recent films such as Slum Dog millionaire and The Life of Pi.
These films were the work of global collaboration, a melting pot of thoughts and ideologies that birthed a true transnational film. The production team, responsible for creating Slumdog Millionaire, was largely from Britain and India; Danny Boyle (England) directing the film, Loveleen Tandan (India) co-directing. The vast majority of actors were also from India, adding a more authentic flavor to the film. (Ironically, protagonist “Jamal Malik”, played by Dev Patel, was born and raised in England and it is that his Indian accent in the film can be quite “suspect” at times).
However I would prefer to focus on “The Life of Pi”, purely because its personal impact, Chris Tookey describing it perfectly as, “Life Of Pi must be the most beautiful film of the year, a technical marvel, and magic realism at its most magical.” It transcended the norms of traditional transnational film, creating a new dimension, a fresh outlook on international film.
The production crew, hailing from countries such as the USA, Canada, India, France and Taiwan; were able to make cultural literary references not only to Western products such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”, but also to citations within Hindi, Jewish and Islamic culture.
The films international success, exemplifies the paradigm shift that is occurring within transnational film. It is able to relate to an ecology of cultures, director Ang Lee explaining that the films’ reception differed from culture to culture. He continues to state, “Asian cultures perceived the film as a ‘thinking movie’, where Western cultures saw it as a film that questions religion”.
The world is beginning to respond to transnational film with an ever increasing hunger. With the successful integration of cultures surrounding films such as Slumdog Millionaire and The Life of Pi, there really is no looking back.
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