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The World Leaders Forum was begun in 1993 by the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) to convene international leaders to examine global challenges and explore cultural perspectives.
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No other form of art or
entertainment today could be said to have
cast as wide a net as American cinema, with
its 60 percent dominance of the world's
film market. But what impressions do films
about the United States leave on people
in other countries? And can the perspectives
of foreign film critics and directors enrich
our understanding of what it means to be
American?
These were just a few of the questions addressed
during the panel discussion "Seen from
Abroad: International Film Critics Look
at American Film Today," held in Low
Rotunda this spring. Moderated by New Yorker
film critic David Denby, the panel featured
Irene Bignardi, film and culture critic
for Italy's La Repubblica; José Carlos
Avellar, noted Brazilian film scholar and
critic for Jornal do Brasil; Mohamed El-Assyouti,
film critic at Al-Ahram Weekly and instructor
at American University in Cairo; and Pritish
Nandy, chief film critic for The Times of
India and founder of Pritish Nandy Communications.
The event was part of the World Leaders
Forum, which for the first time broadened
its scope to include artistic and cultural
topics.
Bignardi showed a clip from Nine Lives,
a 2005 film made by Columbian film director
Rodrigo García, which follows nine
American women facing emotional crises.
Bignardi said that for her, the story showing
a young girl acting as the messenger between
her parents, who barely speak to one another,
conveys a powerful message about the "terrible
solitude" afflicting the American family.
Unlike European families, who gather in
the town square or piazza, the majority
of American families on screen -- and in
life -- live in suburban areas with no common
areas and very little interaction with other
classes, races or even each other, she said.
Avellar spoke of the significance of three
pivotal scenes he finds in nearly every
major American film: a car crash or large
explosion resulting in a ball of fire; a
character falling down, and another extending
his hand to pull him up; and a window broken
in the direction of where a character is
standing.
"For me, the real stories lie in such
images," he said. "It's a sort
of nightmare."
Avellar showed clips from Syriana, an
epic about the state of the American oil
industry, to make a point about the father-son
relationship in North American cinema, which,
he said, tends to be "more connected
with the father," whereas South American
film identifies with the son. A scene featuring
Matt Damon's character right after the death
of his son depicts Damon gleeful about his
potential business partnership with a corrupt
oil prince, in whose pool the little boy
died. "These are destroyed men who
put work before family life," Avellar
observed.
El-Assyouti played clips from Martin Scorsese's
Gangs of New York and said he was struck
by its exploration of the tensions among
various immigrant groups in America, giving
the lie to the country's "melting pot"
ideal. "The notion of street fighting,
to my mind, is very American," he remarked.
The film also interested him, he continued,
for the parallels he perceived between the
street gangs of that era and modern Islamic
fundamentalists. The film's protagonist,
Bill "The Butcher" Cutting, played
by Daniel Day-Lewis, leads a gang of "native"
criminals. As a Protestant, he has nothing
but disdain for the streams of Irish Catholics
coming off the boats into "his"
homeland.
That said, El-Assyouti remarked, it is
wrong to attribute the fighting for control
of the Five Points neighborhood to religious
differences, just as religion is not the
primary force driving many Islamic radicals.
"It is not a conflict of religion;
it is a conflict of power interests,"
he said.
Responding to the panelists' presentations,
Denby noted that at the moment, "we're
having a hard time imagining an American
hero," pointing to labyrinthine movies
like Syriana, which features not one but
several major characters, all of whom have
facets of both good and evil. He also named
Capote - a cinematic account of the research
that would make writer Truman Capote one
of America's most controversial literary
figures -- as another example, noting that
Capote was no hero.
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