Awards

• Winner of Author of the Year at the African Studies Awards 2024 (UK)

Overview

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.

Full Product Details

9781474474221

Table of Contents

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 How does one write about the exotic when the notion has been tainted by the legacy of colonialism? As Daniela Berghahn demonstrates in this fascinating book, by unpacking the notion's discursive baggage and unveiling its contemporary manifestations. An original and refreshing take on the study of world cinema.--Song Hwee Lim, author of Taiwan Cinema as Soft Power

Author Information

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).

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