| Diaspora was originally used to refer specifically to the Jewish people forced to leave their homeland.However,the term diaspora has taken on a broader meaning with the large-scale migration of populations after World War II,particularly with the end of the Cold War and the rise of post-colonial theoretical research.It is now used to study the political,economic,and cultural challenges resulting from the conflict and integration between different ethnic groups due to the international movement and migration of people.In 1991,Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies,a well-known academic journal,was founded,officially beginning the development of diaspora theory.This has also facilitated the integration of diaspora theory into film criticism in the 21 st century.The study of diasporic cinema has become an important academic field of cinema,with new terms such as "Accented cinema," "Beur cinema," and "Transnational cinema" enriching the perspective of this study.Over the past three decades since the end of the Cold War,economic globalization,world colonization,and local conflicts have led to the largest population movements and migrations in human history.As a result,humankind faces unprecedented levels of complexity and intensity in terms of integration and conflict.The traditional dualist approach to thinking of the East and the West,the subject and the other,and black and white people is no longer suitable for understanding the reality of the community of human destiny.Instead,we need a new perspective,thinking,and attitude to re-examine ethnic issues and population cross-border flow in the post-colonial context.In terms of structure,the entire dissertation is divided into five chapters apart from the introduction section.The introduction explains relevant Arab concepts,Arab national politics,and history,laying a cultural foundation for interpreting Arab films.The first chapter mainly concerns about the core concept of "diasporic cinema." This part first focuses on the context of the emergence of diasporic films,that is,the cross-border flow of population since the post Cold War,postcolonialism,and the rise of relevant ethnic theories.Secondly,elaborate on the connotation of diasporicness,the definition of diasporicness movies,and the paradigm and aesthetics of diasporicness movies.Finally,the creative overview of Arab diasporic films is explained from three aspects:post-colonial trauma,textual landscape,and global influence,providing a simple "guide" for the criticism of Arab diasporic cinemas.Chapter 2 adopts the framework of film history to answer the question of what "texts" Arab diasporic films have.In this chapter,the text overview of Arab diasporic films is logically connected by viewpoint,divided into Maghreb,Levant,and European viewpoints.Firstly,the Maghreb perspective refers to one of the longest-discussed,most prolific,and most influential lineages of Arab diasporic films-the Beur Cinema.This film,created by descendants of the Maghreb(starting from the second generation)in France,gradually moved from the periphery to the mainstream by promoting Western film festivals,often resulting in intergenerational conflicts.Ethnic conflicts and identity anxiety are the main themes of expression,reflecting a strong anti-colonial color.Secondly,Levant’s perspective refers to the creation of Arab diasporic films focusing on the Palestine-Israel conflict and the refugee and immigration problems caused by the Arab Spring,which mainly presents a bleak,sad,bittersweet,and paper-based exile light and shadow with the triple film landscape of nostalgia,border,and identity.Finally,I discussed the creation of Arab diasporic films from a European perspective,with white Europeans as the main body.We will examine the image of the Arab nation in the Western world,ethnic issues,and even European social symptoms from three aspects: the overview of film creation,the portrayal of otherworldly characters,and attitudes towards immigration issues.In the chapter 3 the focus is on the study of directors of Arab diasporic cinemas.The section titled "Anti-colonial Fighter: Rachid Bouchareb’s Film Studies" examines the creative process of Rachid Bouchareb,the oldest and most influential director in Beur cinema,and emphasizes his position within this cinema movement.Bouchareb’s films frequently explore political,post-colonial,and identity issues,with themes that span North Africa,Europe,and Asia.They possess distinctive transnational film attributes and often utilize a narrative structure of escape and search.Bouchareb’s characters are typically depicted as "exiles" and feature Islamic aesthetic characteristics in audio-visual aesthetics.Another director discussed in this chapter is Elia Suleiman,a world-renowned director who often silently observes the alienation and violence in the post-colonial world from the perspective of exile.Suleiman deconstructs the Palestinian reality with "postmodernism" and employs acrimony,irony,and sharpness to criticize the world’s political oppression,violence,and conflict.As an Asian film writer,Suleiman combines documentary and poetry in an absurd image.The third section of the chapter,which corresponds to the European perspective,selects three worldwide directors: Dardenne Brothers,Aki Korismaki,and Michael Hanek.These directors cut into the impact of the Arab diaspora issue in Europe and experience the speculation brought by the Arab discrete issue in the author’s personalized film style.Chapter 4 of the thesis explores the cultural aesthetics of Arab diasporic cinemas.The first section draws on theories of cultural memory,memory field,collective memory,trauma and memory,and anti-memory to analyze the cultural memory attributes within Arab diasporic films.It analyzes memory fields such as food culture,Oud,Arab song and dance,and Arab hookah,frequently appearing in these films.The paper examines the traumatic memory and suffering narration in Arab diasporic films from four perspectives:Algerian trauma,Palestinian trauma,Syrian trauma,and female trauma.Historical restatement cases support the "anti-memory" characteristics of Arab diasporic cinemas.In the second section,the emotional space of Arab diasporic cinemas is analyzed using Hamid Naficy’s theory of the "space-time body." Foucault’s "heterogeneous space" theory is also employed to understand the diverse social spaces portrayed in Arab diasporic cinemas.The "third space" of Homi Bahabha is used to examine the cultural or psychological space of the characters in these films,emphasizing the hybrid cultural identity of diaspora groups.The third section focuses on post-colonial theory,using the works of Edward Said,Spivak,Homi Bahabha,and Stuart Hall to reveal the identity discourse in Arab diasporic cinemas.Chapter 5 focuses on the industrial characteristics of Arab diasporic cinemas,particularly from the perspective of dissemination and acceptance.The first section discusses the importance of film festival mechanisms in cross-cultural communication in Arab diasporic cinemas,given their transnational nature.The section also examines the positions of the three major Western and Arab local international film festivals in the industrial chain of Arab diasporic cinemas.The film festival,along with the cinema channel of the global market and the Internet,has created three cross-cultural routes for Arab diasporic cinemas.The second section of the chapter summarizes the experience and problems of cross-cultural communication in Arab diasporic cinemas based on Chinese films.The section also offers corresponding countermeasures to address these issues.This paper comprehensively adopts interdisciplinary research methods and closely follows the era context of the " Belt and Road"and the "a community with a shared future of mankind" "combines historical theories and comments,Adopting a linear logic of context-text-author-cultural-characteristics-communication and acceptance,attempts to explore the position of the era subject of "diaspora" in Arab film culture and its worldwide impact based on close reading of a large number of film texts.It is a study that can promote cultural exchange between China and Arab countries,emphasizing the concept of a "community with a shared future for mankind". |
