London Seminar: Fall 2007

Cinematic Globalization and the British Empire

Led by Professor Jim Udden, IDS/Film Studies

����������� When cinema was invented around 1895, the British Empire was still at the peak of its political, economic and cultural influence across the globe. Surprisingly, however, Great Britain itself would not become the driving economic force in the globalization of this medium - instead that honor would eventually go to its former colony, the United States. This seems to repeat itself over and over with British cinema: the colonies of the British Empire (including former ones) historically have outperformed the United Kingdom itself when it comes to cinema. India and Hong Kong, in fact, have produced local cinemas of commercial prowess which producers in Great Britain would not even begin to dream of. Even Australia and New Zealand managed at various time to show more vitality in their own local cinemas than could be found in London and elsewhere on the island kingdom. How do we account for this surprising pattern? How do we explain that, unlike in literature and theater, Great Britain has not been a leader when it comes to cinema? How it is that in this area it has become not so much the colonizer as the colonized? This interdisciplinary seminar in London will explore these questions, looking at them from aesthetic, cultural, political and most of all, economic angles. It will also probe these issues from both a historical and a contemporary perspective. The students themselves will even investigate the living film culture that exists in London during the four weeks the seminar takes place.