Revista CIDOB d'Afers Internacionals (Dec 2009)
North/south relations: Representations of the other in the construction of transnational networks
Abstract
In the modern-day process of cultural recomposition, cinema occupies an important position through the meeting spaces created by the North to help cinema in the South to develop. The increase in aid funding by the “countries of the North”, which explains the relative good health of cinema from the “South”, illustrates well the necessary internationalisation of networks, a factor that enables these films to be viewed abroad. Cinema is understood in this way, as a vector of identity and as a social and intercultural connection. As films circulate, and filmmakers and producers meet one another, an embryo of community is constituted; “a generator of exchanges in all senses and of all kinds”. Thus we are witnessing the emergence of new categories: that of the “South”, which conserves traces of an asymmetrical “geopolitics”, and that of independence, which refers to a more international “community” (and which even goes beyond national geographical limits) of resistance to the “dominant” cinema. What is happening is that an intercultural connection is being created that mixes up the old centre/periphery relations. These spaces of exchange, while they enable, in effect, cinematographic production to develop in certain countries, represent repertories administrated by the “centre”. The discourse on the “Other” reveals a tormented cartography of world geopolitical relations.
