Toward a Cinema of Contact Zones: Intersecting Globalizations, Dubai, and City of Life.
Dubai is often defined by aerial shots of its landmark architecture in Bollywood and Hollywood films. By activating fantasies of seeing the whole city, the lived social realities of the city's inhabitants fade from view. With Ali F. Mostafa's City of Life (Dar al-haya, 2009, United Arab Emirates) as...
| Publicado en: | Afterimage Vol. 47; no. 4; pp. 26 - 50 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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University of California Press
Dec2020
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=148328582&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 148328582 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 03007472 ATF jtl: Afterimage issn: 03007472 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2020 vid: 47 iid: 4 pid: 414 pub: University of California Press artinfo: ui: 148328582 10.1525/aft.2020.47.4.26 ppf: 26 ppct: 24 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 3.3MB tig: atl: Toward a Cinema of Contact Zones: Intersecting Globalizations, Dubai, and City of Life. aug: au: HUDSON, DALE su: Motion picture locations City of Life (Film) Mostafa, Ali F. Bollywood Dubai (United Arab Emirates) sug: subj: Dubai (United Arab Emirates) Motion picture locations City of Life (Film) Mostafa, Ali F. Bollywood keyword: Arab film Bollywood film globalization migration space transnational ab: Dubai is often defined by aerial shots of its landmark architecture in Bollywood and Hollywood films. By activating fantasies of seeing the whole city, the lived social realities of the city's inhabitants fade from view. With Ali F. Mostafa's City of Life (Dar al-haya, 2009, United Arab Emirates) as an example, this article explores the possibility of a cinema of contact zones, drawing upon Dubai's historical interconnections with the world through intersecting globalizations. The film offers parallel narratives about different classes of residents that overlap, mingle, compete, align, and realign in spaces that are experienced differently. Stories of Emirati best friends, Indian taxi drivers and businessmen, East European flight attendants, and British "expats," as well as other less visible residents, convey how lives entangle but do not entwine into community. Rather than reducing the film to an example of "national cinema" or "world cinema," it is more productive to understand it as a film about a city that is itself produced through relationships to multiple places. The film invites audiences to think about noticing connections, rather than take comfort in confirming assumptions. It does not reward audiences with voyeuristic consumption of the city in its totality. More than a conflict zone, as the Middle East is often conceived, Dubai is a contact zone. City of Life acknowledges that Dubai is neither free of social inequities nor defined by them. Dubai is a place of possibilities and risks. It is a contact zone with all the contradictions that contact zones always contain. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Afterimage is the property of University of California Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Afterimage holder: University of California Press dt: @attributes: year: 2020 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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