Description
Book SynopsisThis collection seeks to broaden the discussion of the child image by close analysis of the child and childhood as depicted in non-Western cinemas. Each essay offers a counter-narrative to Western notions of childhood by looking critically at alternative visions of childhood that does not privilege a Western ideal. Rather, this collection seeks to broaden our ideas about children, childhood, and the child's place in the global community. This collection features a wide variety of contributors from around the world who offer compelling analyses of non-Western, non-Hollywood films starring children.
Trade ReviewA valuable text for readers interested in cinematic representations of childhood. Comprehensive, wide-ranging and truly international in scope, it successfully moves beyond the geopolitical parochialism that has characterized much of the prior scholarship in this area. While encompassing films both iconic and relatively unknown in Western criticism, the basic question of how the screen image of childhood reflects dominant social and cultural practices remains central throughout the book. -- Noel Brown, author of "The Children's Film: Genre, Nation and Narrative"
Debbie Olson’s extensive twenty-two chapter collection The Child in World Cinema assembles a range of international scholars to examine representations of children and childhood across the globe. The work importantly extends study on Western media about children and youth to encompass the child image in non-Western cinemas, these spanning from South America, through India to New Zealand. Moving away from Western perceptions of childhood, the broad coverage of this volume not only addresses on-screen culture-specific issues in its subjects of study, including, for example, the one-child policy in China and child abandonment in Japan, but also historical traumas that have shaped portrayals of childhood. The insightful and detailed analyses comprising this anthology make a comprehensive, thorough and significant contribution to international scholarship on children and childhood in cinema and will be invaluable to scholars of child and youth representation, Third World Cinemas, and Childhood Studies. -- Fran Pheasant-Kelly, University of Wolverhamption
Table of ContentsIntroduction South America 1. “Girls on the Screen: Gender in Contemporary Argentine Cinema” Carolina Rocha 2. “Children in Brazilian Cinematography” Fabiana de Amorim Marcello 3. “From the Countryside to the City: a Boy’s Journey and a World to Know” Lucia Rabello de Castro, Paula Uglione, and Adelaide Rezende de Souza Africa 4.“Turning the Page: Memories of French Algerian Childhoods on Screen” Christa Jones 5. “Forms and Variations of Children’s Relationship to Space in Francophone African Fiction Films” Caroline Lardy 6. “Surfing to Adulthood: Childhood, Coming of Age and National Transitions in the South African Fiction Film Otelo Burning (2011)” Christine Singer Middle East 7. “Children’s Groups in the Young State of Israel: Simplicity and Complexity in the Cult Movie Ḥasamba & the Black Handkerchief Gang (1971)” Einat Baram Eshel 8. “’Stolen/Lost Childhood’ and the Inherent Failures of Cinematic Representations: The Case of Palestinian Child Labor” Yoad Eliaz,, Omri Grinberg and Walaa Ghanayim 9. “The Representation of Urban Female Teenagers in Iranian Cinema” Mina Rezaei, Negin Golravesh Fekry, and Seyyed Mohsen Habibi Southern & Eastern Europe 10. “Lost Boys of the Franco Regime: Masculinity, Memory, and Childhood in Recent Spanish Film” Jessica Davidson 11. “The Figure of the Child as a Contradictory Signifier in Russian Cinema” Michael Brodski 12. “Through a French Lens: Romanian Kids and the Western Narrative of Childhood” Onoriu Colăcel India 13. “Kaakka Muttai: Tamil Children in Global/World Cinema” Swarnavel Eswaran 14. “‘Cracking’ Nations/notions: A Study of Little Lenny in Deepa Mehta’s 1947: Earth” Paromita Deb Japan 15. “Westernization, Identity and Emerging Notions of Childhood in the Films of Ozu Yasujirō” Kelly J. Hansen 16. “Kiku and Isamu: Beyond the Shitty Realism of Mixed Race Orphans in Postwar Japan” Kaori Mori Want 17. “Abandon the Young in Tokyo: Yoshitarō Nomura’s The Demon and Hirokazu Koreeda’s Nobody Knows” Kenta McGrath China 18., “The Abducted Child Movie in Chinese Cinema” Kobe Chan Yan Chuen 19., “The Alternative Viewfinder of History: Child Vision in Chinese and Sinophone Cinema” Belinda Qian He 20. “We are all Useful People”: Useful Children and the Notion of Guai in Transnational Chinese Cinema” Shih-Wen Sue Chen, Sin Wen Lau, and Lennon Yao-chung Chang, 21. “Parable of the Lost Child: Zhang Yimou’s Not One Less” Juanita But New Zealand 22. “Talking Back to the Mainstream – Pop Culture and the Child in the Films of Taika Waititi” Caroline Grose
