Ute Fendler

Train to Busan : das Zombie-Genre als filmisches Dispositiv zwischen Ost und West

Im Sommer 2016 kam der Film Train to Busan von Yeon Sang-ho in die sudkoreanischen Kinos und erzielte in kurzester Zeit Rekordbesucherzahlen. Wenig spater kam er als einer der wenigen koreanischen Filme auch in den amerikanischen Verleih und sowohl Hollywood als auch Frankreich haben bereits im Herbst desselben Jahres Interesse an einem Remake angemeldet. Train to Busan war von vornherein als transnationaler Genrefilm angelegt, der Erzahlversatzstucke aufgreift und fur einen aktuellen Kontext neu arrangiert, der aber Anknupfungsmoglichkeiten weit uber den sudkoreanischen Kontext hinaus bietet

Roots and Routes: Hip-Hop from South Korea

With the growing success of hip-hop in South Korea, the discussions about the authenticity of this genre increase and create cleavages between the mainstream and the underground rappers. The paper intends to analyze three examples of the contemporary music scene that are representative of different positions. Taking Simon Frith’s work on popular music as a means to construct identity, the paper suggests questioning the concept of authenticity (“roots”) and proposes instead conceiving hip-hop in South Korea as a movement at the crossroads (“routes”) of various influences and practices.

Cinema in Mozambique: New Tendencies in a Complex Mediascape

A consideration of recent developments in cinema in Mozambique bears in mind present conditions alongside those leading up to them, and the complexity of elements that are inescapably particular to the nation. More specifically, the advances in Mozambique’s cinema scene discussed here are best understood within a diachronic perspective, illuminating first the impact of international influences from Mozambique’s independence, second the tumultuous social, political and economic shifts of the 1990s at the end of the civil war, and third a new positioning between regional and African networks on the one hand and new international support for Mozambican cinema production on the other. For these reasons, Arjun Appadurai’s conception of the “mediascape” is useful, seizing on the complex interaction and interdependence between facets like production conditions, financing structures, distribution, publics and film studies education. While recent studies on Mozambican cinema have concentrated primarily on the evolution of film in political contexts, only sparse attention has been paid to phenomena of the recent years and of the future: that of the rise of film festivals in the country, and that of the growth of institutions that presently train future filmmakers. This consideration of the rapidly changing cultural politics at work begins with an assessment of historical changes in national and international context. PRELIMINARY ASPECTS: OF THE EXTRAORDINARY HISTORY OF CINEMA IN MOZAMBIQUE

France and its DOM: the Ambivalence of European Identity

While discussing European identity, one is very often inclined to forget the French West Indies, which are geographically far away from France but whose inhabitants are French citizens. The ambivalence of the European identity of the French West Indian can only be understood in the historical context. The main events of West Indian history are genocide of the natives committed by the European discoverers and settlers and, consequently, the slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean Islands, which was started in order to ensure the supply of plantation workers. At the end of the nineteenth century, after the abolition of slavery, other waves of migration followed: Indian and Chinese workers were hired to continue the work after the freed African slaves had fled. Although slavery was abolished, the living and working conditions did not change. As a consequence, the French played an ambiguous role: as colonizers, they were committed to bringing European civilization and its ideals and values like liberty, equality, fraternity to other peoples so that they could ‘profit’ from the benefits of European civilization. At the same time, colonization in the Caribbean meant enslavement and oppression of the non-European people and, therefore, negated these European ideals to which the non-European peoples should have adhered.