Translating the experience of film: filmmakers, writers, and
artists explore the elements of film that make us feel "outside and
inside at the same time." "Every film is a foreign film," Atom
Egoyan and Ian Balfour tell us in their introduction to Subtitles.
How, then, to translate the experience of film-which, as Egoyan
says, makes us "feel outside and inside at the same time"? Taking
subtitles as their point of departure, the thirty-two contributors
to this unique collection consider translation, foreignness, and
otherness in film culture. Their discussions range from the
mechanics and aesthetics of subtitles themselves to the xenophobic
reaction to translation to subtitles as a metaphor for the distance
and intimacy of film. The essays, interviews, and visuals include a
collaboration by Russell Banks and Atom Egoyan, which uses
quotations from Banks's novel The Sweet Hereafter as subtitles for
publicity stills from Egoyan's film of the book; three early film
reviews by Jorge Luis Borges; an interview with filmmaker Claire
Denis about a scene in her film Friday Night that should not have
been subtitled; and Eric Cazdyn's reading of the running subtitles
on CNN's post-9/11 newscasts as a representation of new global
realities. Several writers deal with translating cultural
experience for an international audience, including Frederic
Jameson on Balkan cinema, John Mowitt on the history of the
"foreign film" category in the Academy Awards, and Ruby Rich on the
marketing of foreign films and their foreign languages-"Somehow,
I'd like to think it's harder to kill people when you hear their
voices," she writes. And Slavoj Zizek considers the "foreign gaze"
(seen in films by Hitchcock, Lynch, and others), the misperception
that sees too much. Designed by Egoyan and award-winning graphic
designer Gilbert Li, the book includes many color images and ten
visual projects by artists and filmmakers. The pages are
horizontal, suggesting a movie screen; they use the cinematic
horizontal aspect ratio of 1.66:1. Subtitles gives us not only a
new way to think about film but also a singular design
object.Subtitles is being copublished by The MIT Press and Alphabet
City Media (John Knechtel, Director). Subtitles has been funded in
part by grants from The Canada Council for the Arts, The Henry N.R.
Jackman Foundation, and the Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario
Arts Council.
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