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Peter Weir

A Creative Journey from Australia to Hollywood

Intellect Ltd

Migrations and Transnationalism in the Cinema

Introduction

Migrations are not a new phenomenon: people move for social, political and/or economical reasons, often in search of better living conditions. Since migrations tend to follow the flow of capital, the destinations of migrants have traditionally been the western and northern parts of the world. In recent decades, migration patterns have changed, capital has begun to flow more freely across the globe and so have people. Whereas the migrations of the past tended to involve less educated people, especially the lower classes, more recently they also involve upper classes and people who are more educated. In other words, every member of society is a potential migrant.

The modern social, political and economic configuration of the world and the increasing scale of these phenomena have prompted social scientists to rethink migration theories. The contemporary academic discourse has called the new form of migrations, 'transnationalism', a term born within Anthropology and later applied to Film and American Studies. Indeed, as this chapter begins to show and as is analysed in the subsequent chapters of this book, filmmakers are not alien to the phenomena of transnationalism, and filmmakers' migrations, across different cinematic contexts and in particular to Hollywood, have been happening since the dawn of cinema. As people flow where the capital is, to the western and northern parts of the world, so do filmmakers going to Hollywood. However, in recent times, the flow of capital in the cinema has changed direction, or better, has enlarged its horizon, and, as the phenomenon of runaway productions show, it is becoming more common to shoot films in other English-speaking countries where economic conditions are more favourable. Through co-productions and runaway productions, transnational cinema has changed the very notion of Hollywood and the perception of it.

This chapter engages with the theories on transnational cinema, identifying their main hypothesis and considers if, and to what extent, these theories have been applied to the case studies of contemporary filmmakers who have moved to Hollywood. The chapter then takes into consideration the opinions of the direct protagonists of these migrations, the filmmakers, examining some interviews with filmmakers who have moved to Hollywood in recent decades. In the following chapters, I will attempt to apply the transnational cinema theories identified herein to the case study of Peter Weir, and I will examine o what extent he can be considered a transnational filmmaker.

Transnationalism in film studies and its implications for the notion of Hollywood

Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden – in their introduction to Transnational Cinema. The Film Reader2 – affirm that the concept of transnationalism is useful for a better understanding of the ways in which filmmakers imagine the contemporary world as a 'global system'. The authors consider transnationalism in relation to the concept of 'nation', reflect on the 'decline of sovereignty' and on the 'impossibility of assigning a fixed national identity to much cinema'. Factors that have problematized the category of 'national cinema', argue the authors, include the global flow of capital, the permeability of borders, an increased circulation of new technologies and the 'transformation of global cinematic landscape'.

The domination of the American film industry over the other national cinemas is a phenomenon as old as the industry itself, and works not only at the financial and production levels, but also at the 'level of individual performers'. Similarly, co-productions involving Hollywood and Europe go back 'at least as far as the Hollywood on the Tiber'. Interestingly, Ezra and Rowden argue that Hollywood's dominance problematizes the concept of 'foreign film', traditionally associated with 'art-house' films representative of national cinemas. 'Foreign', 'art-house' and 'non-commercial', the authors point out, have been opposed to 'Hollywood' and 'commercial cinema' (as sites of this entertainment). Now, however, 'this traditional dichotomy has been complicated ... by the fact that Hollywood has influenced cinematic traditions the world over, an influence reflected ... in the terms "Bollywood" and "Nollywood"'.

Nationalism, argue Ezra and Rowden, has played an important role in the legitimation of film studies; film is 'rapidly displacing literature' as the embodiment of a 'cosmopolitan identity', and national cinemas are celebrated in proliferating film festivals. Cinema has become a 'visual currency', and transnational cinema arises in the interstition between the local and the global. Because of the intimacy and communal dynamic in which films are usually experienced, cinema has a singular capacity to foster bonds of recognition between different groups.

Transnational cinema, moreover, according to the authors, goes beyond the discourse of 'third worldism' and 'third cinema' (many third-world filmmakers were trained in the West), and 'binary opposition' have lost their value in light of the fact that many filmmakers now have 'hybridized and cosmopolitan identities'.

Postcolonialism, according to the authors, is the closest attempt to recuperate a sense of national identity. 'The concept has not proved to be a flexible tool. Tied to imperial oppression, it is difficult to use the concept to define situations that have not been defined only by imperialism'. However, the concept of postcolonialism, in turn, is rendered more problematic by the idea of transnationalism. The authors argue that transnationalism is determined by the permeability of national borders, and discuss the asymmetrical relation between the global diffusion of Hollywood products and the limited distribution of other national cinemas. Only the films that are better financed enjoy an international distribution, and they tend to be those that are more 'western friendly, adopting familiar genres, narratives, or themes in their hybrid productions'.

Modern technology such as digital filmmaking has accelerated the rise of transnational cinema, allowing everybody to make, produce and circulate their own films, and is also posing a threat to national forms of censorship. Such a crossing of national borders has weakened states' authority over national cinema, leading to an increased availability of works by previously inaccessible filmmakers: 'Cinema will become', according to Ezra and Rowden, 'increasingly prominent as means of global legitimation and cultural critique'.

With transnationalism films 'migrate' more freely, and diasporic populations are at the same time audiences of transnational cinema and objects of their representation. The experience of migrations, say the authors, complicates the notion of 'home', and transnational cinema is often 'generated by a sense of loss' that is counteracted by the 'emotional construction of the homeland', as represented in Wolfgang Becker's Goodbye Lenin (2003). An increasing number of films depict people who live with displacement as a sort of permanent condition (such as Makhmalbaf's Blackboards, 2000). Nostalgia for the mother country is expressed in films such as East is East (1999) and Bend it Like Beckham (2002), which represent the generational clash between first- and second-generation migrants (the first still attached to the home traditions, the second attracted by the customs of the host country). Ezra and Rowden continue their review of cinema representing diasporas with those films that depict the paradoxical situations of 'non-places', in which the displacement of the subject is embodied by the impossibility of being at home and by the simultaneous impossibility of settling in another country, such as The Terminal, or by films that represent the ultimate 'non place, cyberspace'.

From this analysis of Ezra and Rowden's work, it emerges that on the one hand, transnational cinema is the cinema made by transnational filmmakers, and, on the other hand, is the cinema that has transnationalism as its object. Moreover, the concept of 'transnationalism' is used by these authors as a conceptual umbrella that encompasses all those phenomena (diasporas, migrations of goods and people). Ezra and Rowden point out that transnationalism refuses to privilege the top (like capitalism does) or the bottom (like Marxism). Transnationalism 'both reflects and mediates power relations in the postindustrial digital age'. 'Is the world really "borderless"?' Ezra and Rowden finally ask. The presence of workforce flows across the world, from southern and eastern to northern and western parts of the world, suggests otherwise.

Although Ezra and Rowden identify the traits that define transnational cinema (it works across borders, it both pre-supposes national cinema and transcends it, and it lies at the intersection between the global and the local), they do not provide a definition of the term. This lack of a definition could be due to the very nature of the concept itself, which, as the suffix 'trans' suggests, is something in permanent evolution. Another interesting factor that emerges from this analysis is that the authors do not apply their theory to any particular case study of transnational films (they only briefly mention, as shown, some films that have transnationalism as their subject) or, to the case study of transnational filmmakers.

Some of the defining traits of transnationalism according to Ezra and Rowden are also pointed out by Andrew Higson. In his essay 'The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema', the author problematizes the concept of national and concludes that, taken on its own merits, it does not account for the role of globalization in the modern world.

The collection of essays Contracting out Hollywood: Runaway Productions and Foreign Location Shooting, edited by Elmer and Gasher, considers issues of transnational cinema (albeit without using this term, and I will return to this issue below), through the perspective of 'runaway productions'. In the introduction, Elmer and Gasher argue that 'Hollywood' is an 'inappropriate label for a film and television production industry that comprises a global network of locations, technical services, acting pools, even remote affiliate studio facilities'. The major Hollywood studios have scattered their production in locations worldwide, and the very notion of 'location shooting' has changed its meaning (no longer defining only a film shot on location). According to Elmer and Gasher, a number of factors have to be taken into account to understand this concept, such as economic and aesthetic factors, the fact that new methods of production affect not only film but also policy-makers, and ultimately that location shooting has to be considered from a variety of points of view.

The terminology used to indicate 'location shooting' depends on who uses it and the context in which it is used. This difference is reflective of a different attitude towards these types of production. Elmer and Gasher give the example of Canada, where these productions are called 'foreign service production'. The use of 'foreign' distinguishes 'these projects from indigenous film and television productions and "service" denot[es] the fact that the Canadian contribution is primarily execution, rather than creation, of the project'. In Hollywood, 'location shooting' productions are called 'runaway productions', where the adjective 'runaway' designates both the anxiety of below-the-line workers whose job is at risk (an argument that echoes Miller's discourse) and the fact that these productions are seen as a kind of 'cultural affront' for those who employ 'nationalism ... as a political and economic strategy'.

Elmer and Gasher underline that American professionals oppose runaway productions (such as the protests against a production about Rudolph Giuliani and the series The X-Files, both shot in Canada) and at the same time indicate the benefits brought to host countries by these productions, not only in terms of injection of cash in the local film industry but also as means of promotion of the locations featuring in such productions (as in the case of New Zealand featuring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy). Elmer and Gasher recognize that 'location shooting' is not entirely new, having been used since the early days of cinema, and point out that 'by the 1980s, Hollywood had a "split locational pattern", with pre-production and post-production work concentrated in the greater Los Angeles area and production activity scattered all over the globe'. The authors dwell on both the 'push' and the 'pull' factors that determined the scattering of production, identifying the breakdown of the studios in the first category:

[T]here are both creative and economic pull factors. Creative reasons for taking a production on location include, scenery, topography, weather conditions. ... For host sites, location production requires little investment and holds the promise of significant benefits from a nonpolluting [sic] industry.

Taking the television series The X-Files as a case study of runaway production, Elmer and Gasher observe that the 'cultural anxieties over the dissemination of generic or pan-American landscapes on the screen have focused on the erasure of national signifiers' and conclude their work with the (worried) reflection that 'runaway' or 'foreign service productions' 'could very well reinforce Hollywood's global dominance'.

In their essay 'The Policy Environment of the Contemporary Film Studio', Goldsmith and O'Regan analyse the relationship between national and international. The authors analyse what they call 'international productions' from the point of view of the producers and, in particular, from the point of view of the host countries. They highlight that the countries that successfully bid to host an international production have suitable locations, good film service infrastructures, and, more importantly, the backing of the local government, who encourage such production to take place.

Goldsmith and O'Regan argue that the presence of

'studio complexes' in the host countries ... strengthen the competitive advantages of places competing for international production and ... provide an opportunity for a place to win as much of a production as possible by offering the full range of production and post-production services in one location.

Studio complexes are the evidence that Hollywood has truly become global.

According to the authors, it is important to stress that international productions are not only a Hollywood invention, as they put it, but also an invention of those places that seek these types of productions. In their analysis, Goldsmith and O'Regan concentrate on the pull factors that encourage Hollywood to contract out its productions and believe in the need to rethink the relationship between the local and the international production, and stress the importance of what they call the 'ecology' of the cities, the regions and the countries where international production takes place.

What is important to highlight in the economy of this chapter is that, while the productions analysed by Elmer and Gasher, and Goldsmith and O'Regan share the traits of transnational productions as identified above (international productions take place across borders, pre-suppose the national element, lie at the intersection between the global and the local), they actually never use the term 'transnational', preferring the expression 'international'. This further problematizes the concept of 'transnational'. Is transnational synonymous with international? Why use two terms instead of one? This book does not aim at answering these questions (nor does it aim at providing a definition of transnational cinema), but is more interested in pointing out that transnationalism is all but a straightforward and easy concept to deal with.

From a film studies perspective, transnationalism is not only changing the cinematic representations of the world, but also, at a deeper level, it is modifying the traditional notion of Hollywood and our understanding of it. 'Where is Hollywood?' ask Toby Miller and co-authors in their work, Global Hollywood 2. This question, together with 'what is Hollywood?', has become important to understand the changed dynamics of this film industry. It is important to examine briefly these issues and the answers that scholars have given to these questions.

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Excerpted from Peter Weir by Serena Formica. Copyright © 2012 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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