Rethinking Genre in Contemporary Global Cinema

Rethinking Genre in Contemporary Global Cinema offers a unique, wide-ranging exploration of the intersection between traditional modes of film production and new, transitional/transnational approaches to film genre and related discourses in a contemporary, global context. This volume’s content―the films, genres, and movements explored, as well as methodologies used in their analysis―is diverse and, crucially, up-to-date with contemporary film-making practice and theory. Significantly, the collection extends existing scholarly discourse on film genre beyond its historical bias towards a predominant focus on Hollywood cinema, on the one hand, and a tendency to treat “other” national cinemas in isolation and/or as distinct systems of production, on the other.

In view of the ever-increasing globalisation and transnational mediation of film texts and screen media and culture worldwide, the book recognises the need for film genre studies and film genre criticism to cast a broader, indeed global, scope. The collection thus rethinks genre cinema as a transitional, cross-cultural, and increasingly transnational, global paradigm of film-making in diverse contexts.

Silvia Dibeltulo is Senior Lecturer in Communication, Media and Culture at Oxford Brookes University, UK. Her work centres on screen representations of identity, specifically in terms of ethnicity and gender, film genre, audience studies, cinema heritage, and digital humanities.

Ciara Barrett is University Fellow in Film Studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her research focuses on female performance, representation, and authorship in genre cinema and digital media.