The Child in World Cinema

Debbie Olson

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2018
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781978755758
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Popular Culture
• Index: Social Sciences

This collection seeks to broaden the discussion of the child image by close analysis of the child and childhood as depicted in non-Western cinemas. Each essay offers a counter-narrative to Western notions of childhood by looking critically at alternative visions of childhood that does not privilege a Western ideal. Rather, this collection seeks to broaden our ideas about children, childhood, and the child's place in the global community. This collection features a wide variety of contributors from around the world who offer compelling analyses of non-Western, non-Hollywood films starring children.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction: Childhood
• Part I. SOUTH AMERICA
• Chapter One. Girls on the Big Screen: Gender in Contemporary Argentine Film
• Chapter Two. Children in Brazilian Cinematography
• Chapter Three. From the Countryside to the City: A Boy’s Journey and the World to Know
• Part II. AFRICA
• Chapter Four. Turning the Page: Memories of French/Algerian Childhoods on Screen
• Chapter Five. Forms and Variations of Children’s Relationship to Space in Francophone African Fiction Films
• Chapter Six. Surfing to Adulthood: Childhood, Coming of Age, and National Transitions in the South African Fiction Film Otelo Burning (2011)
• Part III. MIDDLE EAST
• Chapter Seven. Children’s Groups in the Young State of Israel: Simplicity and Complexity in the Cult Movie Ḥasamba & the Black Handkerchief Gang (1971)
• Chapter Eight. “Stolen/Lost Childhood” and the Inherent Failures of Cinematic Representations: The Case of Palestinian Child Labor
• Chapter Nine. The Representation of Urban Female Teenagers in Iranian Cinema
• Part IV. SOUTHERN AND EASTERN EUROPE
• Chapter Ten. Lost Boys of the Franco Regime: Childhood, Masculinity, and Memory in Recent Spanish Film
• Chapter Eleven. The Figure of the Child as a Contradictory Signifier in Contemporary Russian Cinema
• Chapter Twelve. Through a French Lens: Romanian Kids and the Western Narrative of Childhood
• Part V. INDIA
• Chapter Thirteen. Kaakka Muttai/Crow’s Egg (dir. M. Manikandan, 2015): Tamil Children in World Cinema
• Chapter Fourteen. “Cracking” Nations/Notions: A Study of Little Lenny in Deepa Mehta’s 1947: Earth
• Part VI. JAPAN
• Chapter Fifteen. Westernization, Identity, and Emerging Notions of Childhood in the Films of Ozu Yasujirō
• Chapter Sixteen. Kiku and Isamu: Beyond the Shitty Realism of Mixed Race Orphans in Postwar Japan
• Chapter Seventeen. Abandon the Young in Tokyo: Yoshitarō Nomura’s The Demon and Hirokazu Koreeda’s Nobody Knows
• Part VII. CHINA
• Chapter Eighteen. The Abducted Child Movie in Chinese Cinema
• Chapter Nineteen. The Child as a Viewfinder of History: Vision and Blindness in Chinese Cinema
• Chapter Twenty. “We Are All Useful People”: Useful Children and the Notion of Guai in Transnational Chinese Cinema
• Chapter Twenty-One. Parable of the Lost Child: Zhang Yimou’s Not One Less
• Part VIII. NEW ZEALAND
• Chapter Twenty-Two. “Talking Back” to the Mainstream—Pop Culture and the Child in the Cinema of Taika Waititi
• Appendix. Children in World Cinema Selected Filmography
• Index
• About the Contributors