Description
Book SynopsisThis volume examines representations and explorations of travel ideals in contemporary international cinema. It assembles work from a diverse range of academic fields including anthropology, sociology, ethnography, cinema, culture, tourism, communication and language studies, with contributions from international experts such as Mary Louise Pratt of New York University, whose work on ‘contact zones’ continues to provide the framework for scholarship on travel writing around the world. The volume explores the link between filmed spaces and real locations, with one of the fundamental dynamics being the investigation of filmmaking itself, and in particular the notion that cultural authenticity may be sought and found by filming ‘on location’. Also examined are the notions of fantasy and exoticism that arise through an idealisation of the locations themselves and their transformational impact on the protagonists who travel there. Such is the impact of motion pictures on contemporary culture that these travel ideals in film will inevitably influence our understanding of cities, regions, nations and cultures; indeed, the world around us and our role in it.
Table of ContentsContents: Gemma Blackwood/Andrew McGregor: In Motion and On Location: Representing Travel Ideals in Film – Mary Louise Pratt: On Location: White SUVs, Moral High Ground, and the Politics of Re-enactment in Icíar Bollaín’s
También la lluvia / Even the Rain – Alfredo Martínez-Expósito: Barcelona’s Cinematic Image: Negotiating Place in Mainstream International Cinema – Jacqueline Dutton: Not Another Road Movie: Alternative Utopias of Travel in
Sans soleil (1982) and
Sansa (2003) – Andrew McGregor: Road Movie in Reverse or Perpetual Exile? The Mirage of the ‘Return’ in Tony Gatlif’s
Exils (2004) – Mark Nicholls/Anthony White: ‘The Film of a Provincial’: The Artist Traveller in Fellini’s
La dolce vita (1959) – Adam Doering: Freedom and Belonging
Up in the Air: Reconsidering the Travel Ideal with Jean-Luc Nancy – Gemma Blackwood: Paradise Glossed: The Representation of Backpacker Ideals in
The Beach – Michael Ra-shon Hall: Scenes of Black Masculinity and Wanderlust: Gendered Mobility and Film Diaspora in
The Emperor Jones – Roberta Trapè: Travel Ideals in Food: Cooking up an Ideal(ised) Italy in Contemporary American ‘Middlebrow’ Films – Mitchell Low/Martin Forsey: Coming to the Reel Australia: North American Exchange Student Perceptions of Australia – Paula Kelly: Farewell to Journeying: Dennis O’Rourke’s
Cannibal Tours.
