Gendering mobility and migration in contemporary Italian cinema

Luciano, Bernadette; Scarparo, Susanna

doi:10.1179/026143410x12724449730051

Cited by 18 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Research on European films dealing with various waves of European migration in distinct national contexts by both host-country and accented filmmakers has tended to centre on the analysis of the cinematic representation of immigrant characters, and on issues of alterity, identity, racism and solidarity (Smith 1995;Sorlin 2000;Burns 2000;Naficy 2001;Lehin 2005;Berghahn and Sternberg 2010;Luciano and Scarparo 2010). Language choice as well as complex and diverse 'translational transactions' (O'Sullivan 2011) have been downplayed in this line of research.…”

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confidence: 98%

The dis/locat/ing migrant as an agent of transposition: Borensztein’sUn cuento chinoand Segre’sIo sono Li

Chung

Luciano

2014

Studies in European Cinema

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Extending the conventional understanding of polyglotism, this article explores multiple polyglossic interactions, both intra-and extradiegetic, in two films that foreground the language and culture of the Chinese migrant, Un cuento chino/Chinese Takeaway (2011) directed by Sebastián Borensztein (Argentina) and Io sono Li/Shun Li and the Poet (2011) directed by Andrea Segre (Italy.) Both films feature dislocated Chinese immigrants who, throughout the films, speak in their native languages. In both cultural contexts Chineseness represents diametrical otherness that is difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend. Both films require their primary audiences to engage with significant quantities of spoken Chinese in order to develop a meaningful comprehension of sympathetic Chinese characters. We argue that, in contrasting ways, the films' mechanisms of polyglotism break the dominance of a singular cultural/linguistic discourse. Using Rosi Braidotti's (2006) notion of transposition, we argue that polyglotism is able to explore a nomadic vision of subjectivity whereby multiple, mobile subject positions offer modes of resistance to traditional habits of thought and representation. Understood in the context of diaspora space, a point of confluence and intersectionality, transposition enables a zigzagging and crossing, which enacts a creative leap that takes the form of a change of culture both in terms of how we think about the world and of how we inhabit it.

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confidence: 98%