Looking from the border: a cosmopolitan approach to contemporary cinema

Abstract

This article proposes a cosmopolitan approach to the study of contemporary cinema. The theoretical framework outlined here aims to acknowledge the impact of global processes on filmic narratives and the changes brought about in films by the new economic, social and cultural context. At the same time, it seeks to highlight the importance of space and place in films. Specifically, it focuses on the centrality of borders, borderlands, borderwork and looking from the border for a cosmopolitan study of cinema: a cosmopolitan perspective with the border at its centre, one that explores the ways in which borders structure our thoughts and they ways in which border thinking structures filmic narratives. As an illustration of this approach, I offer an analysis of the films Io sono Li/Shun Li and the Poet (2011) and Margaret (2011) with an emphasis on formal parameters, i.e., on how films produce meanings in our globalized societies.

Keywords:

• Cosmopolitanism
• space and place
• borders and borderwork
• cosmopolitan canopy

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Marimar Azcona for her help with previous versions of this article, Ignacio Deleyto for his help with classical music and the members of my research group at the Universities of Zaragoza, Barcelona and Girona for our discussions on the theory of cosmopolitanism.

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad [grant number FFI2013-43968-P]; and Diputación General de Aragón [grant number H12].