----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Gloria Monti writes: "You mentioned India--the country that produces the largest number of films in the world: 700 to 1,000 feature films a year. Do we (who's we?) see them? No. Therefore, it is not who makes the most films who gets distributed, it is who has the economic and ideological power to impose their cultural values throughout the world(s). I am teaching Close Analysis of Film this semester--a course which is almost entirely predicated upon analyses of US films written by European men (Bellour, Heath, Aumont, etc.). I know, we also have the wonderful work of Bergstrom on *The Birds* and Thompson's book *Breaking the Glass Armor.* I decided to diversify the curriculum by including a film such as Sembene's *La Noire de...* which I was able to find with enormous difficulty. I wanted to break that Euro-American tradition. " You're quite right about availability--we have to run 90 miles up the road to the Twin Cities even to see something like DEATH AND THE MAIDEN. (Though great and obscure--to Americans--foreign films routinely run at the University of Minnesota Film Society) On the other hand, there is stuff that sneaks through on cable, pops up in a dusty corner of the video store, or is available--for the really committed-- from various mail-order video outlets. But it does take effort and some knowledge of what you're looking for. On the other hand, with that knowledge there is probably more availability of 3rd (or 1st and 2nd) Cinemas than at any time in history--they aren't just restricted to a handful of art houses any more. Re: the African films on Cinemax (which is not available in much of the world, yes). I've taped them, but haven't gotten around to viewing most yet. I had, though, already seen Sembene's CAMP AT THIAROYE, which concerns a massacre of African World War II vets who bridle at the slow pace of repatriation by their French commanders--the ironies pile up. But the film does suggest the difficulties that close analysis can run into with films outside the Euro-American mainstreams. CAMP seems somewhat slow-paced, didactic in tone, which a number of American reviewers (or I should say the few who bothered to cover it) found problematic. One of the more perceptive reviewers in a Twin Cities paper, though, did talk about the film as a kind of Pan-African fable, suggesting the need for an African unity that went beyond nation or tribe (the internees from the camp are from all over French colonial Africa). Perhaps the key scene is the one in which they break into separate caucuses to debate their course of action, and in a multitude of tongues come to a joint decision. But then they're all killed. I once suggested that Souleymane Cisse's BRIGHTNESS (YEELEN--better translated in its French title, "The Light") plays off influences by and allusions to African oral traditions and classical European mythology, the characterizations of both European art cinema and the patterns and traditions of tribal life. One scene, depicting a ceremony in the tribal cult of the "Komo," seems puzzling and too long to Western eyes, but Cisse said it would have tremendous impact to a native Mali (Bambara) viewer, connecting them to the roots of songs and ceremonies passed down but repressed. In other words, it points for the need for a prior knowledge that pure formalism cannot acknowledge--a contextual formalism can give access to some of these films, but we need to find the contexts first. When an American viewer who even lacks much of the context of the classical Western past encounters these works, there is little to anchor them. (Which is perhaps why Kurosawa--who at least *seems* more Western than other Japanese directors--has been the most accepted of Japanese directors in America. David Desser--Please correct me if I'm wrong about this!) I'm afraid I'm starting to ramble, it being Friday (on this side of the Date Line), but what do others think? On the other hand, what's the reception of THE LION KING in Africa? How does ALADDIN play in the Middle East (if at all)? --Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN