what is world cinema

1 Yao Yangnan's Essay on Film Studies

World Cinema as Samsara 世界电影若轮回

Yao Yangnan

2011.11

2 Yao Yangnan's Essay on Film Studies

Table of Contents Introduction ........................................................................... 3

Main Body .............................................................................. 4

Conclusion ............................................................................. 7

References ............................................................................. 7

3 Yao Yangnan's Essay on Film Studies

Introduction

Samsara is a term used in Buddhist and Hindu theories to represent the cycle of birth,

life, death, rebirth or reincarnation. In modern parlance, samsara refers to a place, set

of objects and possessions, but originally, the word referred to a process of continuous

pursuit or flow of life. In accordance with the literal meaning - continuous flow, the

word should either refer to a continuous stream of consciousness, or the continuous

but random drift of passions, desires, emotions, and experiences. In the meantime,

films are like small fragments of our life. By that means, films can be surly counted as

an element of samsara. And films also constitute world cinema, therefore, world

cinema is somehow samsara.

However, this cannot completely answer the question: "What is World Cinema?". It

has unarguably many definitions, and each of them is quite solid and reasonable. For

the purpose of this essay though, I am going to pick up the understanding from Lucia

Nagib: "World cinema is simply the cinema of the world. It has no centre. It is not the

other, but it is us. It has no beginning and no end, but is a global process. World

cinema, as the world itself, is circulation."

This definition plays a vital role in this essay, since it has much to say about what I

am going to talk about. World cinema involves the circulation of not only film but

also parts of the world through the film.

All these above make my following statement understandable: World cinema...