Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Some cinematic notes on the margins! Nashent Ya Faleh (You shot me, idiot)





Watching, as a child, the classic black and white Egyptian films, made in the thirties and the forties of the twentieth century, was not only an enjoyable experience, but also an enlightening one. The weekly screening of Egypt’s classic movies introduced me and hundreds of Egyptian children and teens to a period of Egypt’s sociopolitical history we would have never otherwise, experienced. Tragic and funny tales of Egypt’s aristocracy, peasants and Sha’aby (common) people who lived in the tiny alleys of Cairo, were portrayed on the magic screen by adorable actors and actresses like actor Stephane Rosti (1891-1964), Laila Murad (1918 -1995) and others. Some of them were so influential in their performances to the extent of creating long-lived phrases used by their spectators until now.  After more than five decades, Stephane Rosti’s words when he was mistakenly shot, Nashent Ya Faleh (You shot me, idiot), is still well-alive. Rosti, himself, directed ‘Layla’ in 1927, the first silent Egyptian film to be financed by a native Egyptian, Aziza Amir, who was a theater actress. The spectators rarely question the Egyptian authenticity and ethnicity of Rosti nor think that their popular Egyptian actor and director is actually an Austrian-Italian native who migrated to Egypt with his family in the early 20th century.  The same applies to Laila Murad, one of Egypt’s prominent actresses and singers of the 1930s and the 1940s, who was not an Egyptian native, but born in Cairo to a Moroccan father and a Polish mother, as some sources claim!


Based on the fact that it was the first long feature film to be financed by Egyptian money, for many film historians, Rosti’s film ‘Layla’, though directed by a non-native Egyptian, was considered the real birth of Egyptian cinema. It was until two other feature films ‘Fi Bilad Tut 'Ankh Amu / In the Land of Tutankhamun’n’, directed by Victor Rosito's in 1923 and Qubla Fi-l-Sahra' / A Kiss in the Desert, directed by Ibrahim Lama and starring his brother, Badr, were presented later as the first long Egyptian films. Also, both Rosito and Lama were not native Egyptians: Rosito was Italian and Lama was a South American of Lebanese origins. Lama and his brother established a film production company, which financed a number of films in the 1920s and the 1930s. Their fist two films ‘A Kiss in the Desert’ and ‘A Disaster in the Pyramids’, released in 1928, were criticized for the lack of understanding of Egypt’s Arabic traditions and Muslim cultures. Press articles during this time highlighted the fact that they were not Egyptians and advised them to learn more about the Egyptian culture to be able to write films that would appeal to Egyptians.
Prior to the appearance of feature films, the first shorts produced in the history of Egyptian cinema were also made by foreigners, mostly Europeans. Viola Shafiq, who writes extensively on Arab cinema, says in her article ‘Egyptian Cinema’, “The first cinematic activities like elsewhere in the Arab world, were undertaken by foreign (mostly European) residents. Louis and Auguste Lumière ordered shootings in the so-called 'Orient', among others in Egypt. Their Place des Consuls à Alexandrie , by M. Promio, was the first film shot in Egypt in 1897. (Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film, 2001)”
It is also worth-mentioning that the first talking feature film ‘Wedad’, released in 1936, was directed by Fritz Kramp, a German native who was the head of the editing department of Studio Misr, the first film production company created in 1935 by an Egyptian businessman who founded Bank Misr in the 1920s. Kramp was not the only German native contributing to the building up of Egypt’s cinema, but Studio Misr hired many others to provide technical support and training to the budding Egyptian filmmakers. It hired the German set designer, Robert Scharfenberg and the Russian photographer, Sami Berl, who trained Egyptians while working on the production of the studio. During World War II, the production of Egyptian cinema was negatively influenced not only by economic problems caused by the war, but also by the lack of the German technical experts who were sent to British camps during the war, Hani Mustafa reported on Al Ahram Weekly, issue 337.
The fact that Egypt’s early films were not totally Egyptian-made and its early cinema industry, though sometimes financed by Egyptian money represented by Bank Misr and its Studio Misr, was run by a mix of Egyptians and foreigners, didn’t deter film scholars like Viola Shafiq, Ahmed Al Hadary and other film scholars from considering them (the early films) the beginning of a national cinema in Egypt. Perhaps Lama’s first two films well reflect this. The films were written, directed and produced by non-Egyptians, but still counted by most film historians among the early Egyptian films, for being shot and produced in Egypt. There is almost consent in their writings on considering the 1920s the age of the rise of Egypt’s national cinema, though dominated by non-Egyptian filmmakers.
The debate around the concept ‘national’ versus regional and international has been going on for decades, but the debate has made its way to the public sphere strongly twice in the 20th Century. The first time the concept ‘national’ came out strongly and arguably against others was in the 1950s and 1960s, decades labeled as ‘the postcolonial era’. These years witnessed the rise of new regimes brought to power by liberation movements across the African and Asian continents and other parts of the world that were colonized by Western powers, namely Britain, France and Italy.
The second time was towards the end of the 20th Century when the ‘national versus global’ became material for heated discussions between pro and anti-globalization observers. The discussions were not this time limited to the developing countries of the global south, who always fear the dominance of the developed north over their countries, but extended to the countries of the north itself, who feared a global monster coming from the North American continent, crossing the Atlantic and invading them with its very much appealing ideas and products to the global audience.
Such a debate around the concept ‘national’  against ‘others’ has been accompanied by another discussion over the cultural products of a certain country or  a nation, including cinema, and naturally the debate has extended from the production circles of films to the scholarly writings and debates of film academics and critics.
This article is an attempt to shed some light on the concept of national cinema around two periods of time, the 1950 and 1960s and then later in the 1990s, reveal the circumstances that led to conceptualizing national cinema, and look at how it is interpreted by film scholars and critics.

Post-colonial ‘national’ cinema:
The date marking the making of the first film varied from one country to another and it depended, to a great extent, on the country’s geopolitics: where it is located and what political circumstances surrounded its cultural environment. The nations of the West enjoy, relatively, a long and old history of cinema and their political and economic advantages contributed greatly to the rise and development of cinema as an art and as an industry.
Meanwhile, the nations of the East suffered politically and economically under colonization and/or pro-colonizers’ regimes, which didn’t faithfully work on developing the cultural life of the indigenous population leaving the cultural space dominated by Westerners and pro-West intellectuals. This was, for example, what the French colonization did in North Africa. “The French in 1946 created major studios in Tunisia (Studios Africa) and Morocco (Studios Souissi), but they did so as part of a strategy to ensure the creation of an Arabic-language cinema alternative (with colonialist French propaganda) that could counter the popularity of Egyptian cinema. Films emerging from these studios were all foreign-directed, produced, and written.”(Film Reference, 2009)
With very few exceptions and scattered attempts, the cinema in the East was generally dominated by non-natives who created cinema alienated from the reality of the common in the colonized countries. Western- dressed men and women living in modern houses and leading a Western life style were common scenes in films made in the colonized countries.  Themes of serious concern to the natives such as the political corruption of the pro-colonizers’ ruling  regimes, the extreme poverty, illiteracy and other underdevelopment issues were almost absent in these films.
For Galal Amin[1][1], an Egyptian writer and critic, films made in the 1920s and 1930s didn’t represent the culture of Egypt as it should have been. They were mostly focused on city life and a typical social and emotional struggle between the two classes of the city: the poor and the aristocrats. Amin questions the absence of the Egyptian peasants and the countryside in most of the films made during this time with the exception of one long silent feature film, Zeinab. Foreign words, mostly French and Italian, were heavily present in dialogues, and women dressing in a Western style and men drinking and smoking were common scenes in Egypt’s 1920s and 1930s movies. (Hisham, 2008) (Samak, 1977)
As cinema remains a popular art, its growing popularity pushed the liberation movements and the new rising regimes to take it seriously. They were very much interested in creating a new cinema, alternative to the one created by the colonizers and their agents; a cinema that mirrored the new era and its dramatic political and socio-economic changes. On one hand, it was a means to create their new national identity, through distinguishing their cultural products, including cinema, from others. In the process of defining a national cinema, Higson says, there is the establishing of some sort of unique and self-contained identity… And, as Benedict Anderson has argued, the ‘national…. cannot be imagined except in the midst of an irremediable plurality of other nations.” (Higson, 1989) & (Higson, 1997)
On the other hand, using cinema as a political tool to disseminate the new regime’s ideological thoughts was a practice of most of the post-colonial ruling regimes across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Perhaps they have imported this from well-established socialist regimes (such as the former Soviet Union and the National Socialist period in Germany) that successfully managed to deploy and direct the cinema to serve their ideologies.
As Higson notes, “It is worth underlining again the role of the state, and the terms of its intervention in the practices of a film industry, in determining the parameters and possibilities of a national cinema (as both an economically viable and a culturally motivated institution)- at least since the mid 1910s, when governments began to recognize the potential ideological power of cinema, and cinema itself could seem to be something like a national cultural form, as institution with a nationalizing function.” (Higson, 1989)
In Soviet Cinema, for example, “the screenplay was thus of vital importance, as it was the main means of conveying the propagandistic method…. The supervision of the cinema industry was carried out by Goskino, the committee with sole responsibility to finance and distribute films. Goskino had the power to prevent films from being shown if they did not conform,” (Gillespie, 2005) Similarly, the Nasser’s regime in Egypt, seizing the power in 1952, “established the Supreme Council for the Protection of Arts and Letters and in 1957 the Organization of Consolidation of Cinema with the aim of achieving a higher level of cinematic art and strengthening the national cinema industry” (Samak, 1977) In Cuba, a similar version of the saga happened when Fidel Castro’s revolution took power and the Rebel Army sat up a film unit, ICAIC, with the purpose of making films explaining reforms. “Cuban writers and artists had no choice but to acknowledge and spread the image of the Cuban regime as a benefactor and to serve the regime's political agenda against the United States.” (Cuellar,1998)
The relationships among the trio: the political authority, the filmmakers and audience reflected this. The young filmmakers who supported the liberation movements in their countries and expected, in return a spacious art and cultural landscape, were shortly disappointed with regimes that wanted to use the popularity of cinema, as well as the press and other cultural tools like songs to serve their cause.
The reaction of filmmakers, writers, journalists and intellectuals to the will of the political authorities varied. Some chose the difficult path and confronted the authorities with themes calling for freedom, democracy and openness and it was a lost battle where filmmakers lost their films on the hands of the government censors. Amid such circumstances, the ruling regimes started to label some prominent cultural figures (filmmakers, writers and journalists) whose ideas were not in agreement with the authorities non-nationalist and their work, accordingly, non-national. Those whose work reflected the ideology of the ruling regimes were described ‘nationalist’ and their work is national.
The authorities’ stance of the cultural products were framed in a context similar to their stance of non-cultural products as they either closed their markets against the foreign products or incited the public to boycott these non-national products. Meanwhile, the description ‘national’ echoed among the public in the previously colonized countries who recalled years of exploitation by the colonizers and their non-national supporting regimes. The authorities managed to well-deploy the concept ‘national’ against ‘non-national’ and reinforced it by the action of nationalizing the cinema industry.  In a country like Egypt, the major industries and sources of ‘national’ income (i.e. the Suez Canal) were nationalized by Nasser’s government, and the ‘nationalization wave’ was welcomed by an overwhelming majority.
Three conclusions could be inferred from using the word ‘national-ize’ by the post-colonial ruling regimes. First, the ‘national-ization’ of cinema implicitly denounced the ‘national’ characteristic of cinema existed during the colonization period and thus casting doubts on the authenticity of films made earlier, before the new regimes took over, and presented as national films. Second, films made under the umbrella of a state-sponsored ‘nationalized’ cinema were naturally deemed national and the governments were keen to highlight these films and present them as a national product versus other imported films and films made during the colonization time. Third, the post-colonial ruling regimes contributed to the re-definition of national cinema in their own terms. State-sponsored films that carried themes reflecting the agenda of the political authority and supporting its internal and external policies were described as national cinema. The regime’s internal and external opponents were ruled out of the ‘national cinema’ umbrella and lost the protection of the state institutions. In some countries, the regime’s opponents were labeled apostates, and ended up voluntarily or involuntarily in exile.[2][2] The concept ‘National Cinema’ was then narrowly referred to films made by state-loyal natives, carrying anti-colonial themes and sponsored by the native state to be consumed by natives. Therefore, several post-colonial regimes arrogated to themselves the creation of a ‘national cinema’ and ‘a domestic film industry’ establishing their interpretation of national cinema on both economic terms and text-based approach.

In this, post-colonial regimes have used two of the various mobilizations of the concept ‘national cinema’ discussed by Andrew Higson in his essay “The Concept of National Cinema”. Higson says, “There is the possibility of defining national cinema in economic terms, established an conceptual correspondence between the terms ‘national cinema’ and ‘the domestic film industry’ and therefore being concerned with such questions as where are these films made, and by whom, who owns and controls the industrial infrastructures, the production companies, the distributors and the exhibitions circuits? Second, there is a possibility of a text-based approach to national cinema. Here the key questions become: what are these films about, do they share a common style or world view, what sorts of projections of the national character do they offer? To what extent are they engaged in ‘exploring, questioning and constructing a notion of nationhood in the films themselves and in the consciousness of the viewer? (Higson, 1989)

However, what seems contradictory and forces us to cast doubts on the authenticity of the native-state cinema is the fact that though films made during the colonization period were accused of being alienated from the reality of the indigenous, such disengagement had not revoked their (the indigenous) fascination of the pre-liberation cinema where they were exposed to Western lifestyle and modern modes of life. Rather, it evoked the post-colonial regimes to create films, though framed as ‘national films’ and embedded with anti-colonial ideologies,  surprisingly had images of the indigenous themselves adopting a very Western liberal lifestyle. In reality, this was not the case, as the new regimes allowed marginal space for liberal thoughts and their censors were highly active in dictating filmmakers to produce what was in conformity with the regime’s ideologies.
On one hand, this leaves us with a thought that the concept ‘national cinema’ is an ‘invention’, purposely designed and developed by the state (the post-colonial regimes) to cancel out  previously produced cultural products and their association with the colonizer and the pro-colonizer’s agents. “In the 1960s and 1970s, cinema was embraced by many nation-states as a potential tool in the struggle to reassert national autonomy in the wake of decolonization.” ( Ezra, 2007) Such simplicity in defining ‘national cinema’ was the outcome of a politicized cinema and a bi-polar post-colonial world where the notion ‘you are either with me, or with the others’ prevailed.  This comes clearly in agreement with what Higson proposed as “histories of national cinema can be understood as histories of crisis and conflict, of resistance and negotiation.” (Higson, 1989)
On the other hand, such a limited state-identification of national cinema is practically denounced by anti-colonial films made by non-natives of the colonized countries and it raises questions about where such films fit. The Italian Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 The Battle of Algiers is a clear example of a film that is made by a foreigner and still stands on the side of the colonized (the Algerians) in their liberation struggle against the colonizer (the French). ( Srivastava, 2005)  Where do we also put a film like The Lion of the Desert, directed by a US Syrian born director, Mustafa Al Akkad, and starring Anthony Quinn. The movie narrates the struggle of Libyan nationalist Omar al-Mukhtar, who led an armed revolt against the Italian occupation of Libya and executed by Benito Mussolini in 1932. 


Hollywood-izing national cinema:
Moving towards the end of the 20th Century carrying perspectives inherited from the post-colonial period, the national cinema had remained for a while referred to as films produced within a certain territory and with boundaries separating them from films produced in different nation-states. (Tawil, 2005) However, these boundaries shortly started to collapse by forces of globalization[3][3], allowing new ideas, themes and styles to flow from other territory/ies threatening the national culture. “The 1980s and 1990s have put further pressure on the national, with the global spread of corporate capital, the victory of finance over industrial capital, the consolidation of global markets, the spread and range of electronic communications, and the further weakening of national cultural and economic boundaries….Half a century after 1945 it is difficult to imagine a nation-state retaining the congruence of polity, culture, and economy which characterized most nation-states before then.” (Crofts, 1998)
And, if post colonialism led, to a considerable extent, to forging  national cinema, then globalization and neocolonialism have done a similar job. Globalization is seen by some scholars as the driving force of neocolonialism and cultural imperialism where certain cultures dominate, taking over whatever local on the way. The new communication revolution, enriched by global trends to enhance the free flow of products (and ideas), has brought the concept ‘national’ once more under the spotlight.
At government and non-government levels and in previously colonized countries as well colonizing countries, the notion ‘national versus global’ has become a significant issue. In vast areas of the previously colonized world, globalization has been seen as neocolonialism, where countries, despite their political independence, feel the domination by a powerful, usually Western nation over their weak economies. The neocolonialism is usually accompanied by the concept ‘cultural imperialism’ where domination and control is practiced over the cultural aspects of life, including cinema. Countries that suffered for decades under colonization and struggled to create their own national identity and used all possible cultural products, particularly national cinema, to assert their identity, are the first to feel that their own national culture is vulnerable and do their best to strengthen their national culture against an American global one. “The concept of a national cinema has almost invariably been mobilized as a strategy of cultural (and economic) resistance; a means of asserting national autonomy in the face of (usually) Hollywood’s international domination.” (Higson, 1989)
The notion ‘national versus global’ has been cinematically translated into ‘national cinema against American cinema’, which is globally dominant, and ‘American’ has become the equivalent of ‘Global’. Perhaps the Tunisian film critic, Hassouna  Mansour, has summed all up in his interview with De Filmkrant in Rotterdam", the daily festival edition of the Dutch film magazine "De Filmkrant, saying, 
“We have to consider that African Cinema, especially in its early days right after independence, was part of the great enterprise of desalienation. As it grows, the task does not become easier. African filmmakers have to face other challenges, in particular that of the historical rift between the West and the Third World, between the colonizer and the colonized. Furthermore, they are confronted, just like their Occidental colleagues, with the ogre called globalization, which threaten to flatten tastes. The Hollywood system keeps growing, forcing everyone, the Western independent as well as the Southern directors,  to play by its rules.” (FIPRESCI, 2004)
‘The ogre’  Mansour has called ‘globalization’  and’ the pressure on the national’ that Croft has referred to have generated visible concerns about the national cultural products and have invoked efforts to highlight the concept of ‘national cinema’ to assert its existence once again against others. The challenge facing the national cinema advocates this time is different since it is not confronting with a defined known others (as it was the case with the post-colonial regimes against the colonizers). Rather, they are confronted with abundant global forces invading and affecting every aspect of the national culture.
The former colonizing countries, mostly of Europe, are not excluded from the globalization effect and the threat it has brought on its cultural products. In this regard, the European experience is note-worthy as it is quite linked to the strong re-emergence of the concept ‘national cinema’. At a time when there are  attempts to define ‘European Cinema’ and a European film heritage, the well-established European art cinema seems to be losing the box office battle against Hollywood cinema. The Hollywood wave of entertainment films that are very much appealing to the audiences wherever they are has renewed the urgency to protect what Tim Bergfelder describes in his article ‘National, transnational and supranational cinemas? as ‘a vaguely defined yet strongly perceived European film heritage, which supplied the major rhetorical tool for European member states (led by France), to resist American media dominance during the GATT talks in 1993 and 1994.” (Bergfelder, 2005)
Not for the benefit of the advocates for a pure definable national cinema, both the former colonizers and colonized have not been able to stand strongly against the neo-colonizer, and its widely popular cinema. Thomas Elsaesser argues that Hollywood is now “a major component of most national film cultures where audience expectations,  shaped largely by Hollywood, are exploited by domestic producers. Many national cinemas translate Hollywood genres into their own national contexts.” (Film Reference, 2009) Bergfelder also agrees with Elsaesser noting that “one of the most interesting developments since the GATT talks (and deeply ironic, given the fervent rhetoric of the preceding political discussions) has been the gradual erosion of art cinema as the master narrative of European cinema, both in terms of industrial practice and in terms of academic debates and preferences. In the 1990s, many European filmmakers moved increasingly towards popular genres and narratives previously considered the domain of Hollywood.” (Bergfelder, 2005)
Sung Kyung Kim, in his article titled, ‘Renaissance of Korean National Cinema’ as a Terrain of Negotiation and Contention between the Global and the Local”, has put it quite straightforward, saying, “National cinema and its relationship with Hollywood film exemplifies the dialectical processes[4][4]. Unlike the belief of an essential-ized, pure, national cinema, it is almost impossible to find a real ‘authentic national cinema’ due to the massive dominance of Hollywood films across the world and increasing interactions between the national and Hollywood…. Hollywood has indeed become part of each national cinema.” (Kim, 2006)

Slumdog Millionaire: “an Expression of Globalization”:
For someone who lives in Dubai, a true cosmopolitan city with more than 200 nationalities living together, it is interesting to observe the film preferences of the city’s residents. The cinema theaters in Dubai usually show an amalgam of Hollywood, Bollywood and Arabic films (mostly Egyptian, some Lebanese and very few Emirati films) catering to such an extremely cultural mixture of the city’s dwellers. Normally, Bollywood movies are recommended by my Indian friends, but this was not the case with the Oscars award winning film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Counting on its global recognition and the amounts of international awards it received, I went to see the movie. Looking around to see who was there to see the movie, surprisingly there was no Indian audience (Indians form the biggest expat community in Dubai, outnumbering the local population of the city). The majority of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ spectators were Westerners and Arabs. The film, which narrates the story of the young man, Jamal, from the slums of India, who loses his mother as a child in a violent sectarian strife, and then managed his way to participate and win the top award in the Indian version of the popular TV show ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’
Also, it seems that the film was not received differently in India. Sadanand Dhume says in his article: “Slumdog Paradox”, “The unexpected international success of Slumdog Millionaire has pleased some Indians while provoking unusually strong protests from others. The critical and commercial success of the film, contrasted with sharp criticism and a lackluster run in Indian theaters.” ( Dhume, 2009) Some Indian critics received the film with a warm welcoming for being an Oscar award Indian film. Other critics including the Indian critic Meenakshi Shedde, who dismissed the film as “a laundry list of  India’s miseries.” heavily criticized it due to its focus on the ugly face of India, from their own perspective, and the film was shown in half-empty theaters. (ibid)
Slumdog Millionaire represents a unique case of a film that narrates a very local story and in its very realistic depiction of the poor indigenous of India, the film has lost its local spectators in what seems to be in favor of its international audience. “Amitabh Bachchan fired a salvo on his blog that the film “projects India as a third world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations.” (Shekhar Deshpande, 2009)
Much of the fuss about Slumdog Millionaire was because of its foreign sources of funding and the foreign crew of the film. The director was the British Danny Boyle and the screenwriter was the British Simon Beaufoy. The foreign elements of the film have casted doubts on the authenticity of the film and put it in a point of condemnation by the Indian spectators. Would it be acceptable to categorize Slumdog Millionaire as a national film of India? Shekhar Deshpande believes that “the trouble with the Slumdog Millionaire for many people is the fact that it was produced by Britishers, with “foreign money” employing Indian actors and set in India. This kind of filmmaking breaks the traditional concepts of national films, national cinemas and stories that belong to one people. It is increasingly popular trend among the world and Danny Boyle’s intervention with Slumdog Millionaire may just launch that trend on Indian sub-continent.” (ibid)
Summing up the unique case of Slumdog Millionaire, Atticus Narain, in an article titled “Rethinking post-colonial representation after Slumdog Millionaire”, says “The American and British film industries acclamation of Slumdog Millionaire has raised media debates. Issues of authenticity, cultural ownership, ‘burden of representation’, the nationality of its director, its content and stylistic aesthetic, and Eurocentric and/or re-Orientalist visions, have created a vast contact zone for analyzing cinema, identity, and nationalism.” (Narain, 2009)
Slumdog Millionaire leaves us with the same questions that have been raised from the beginning of the paper. Is the concept ‘national cinema’ definable’? Does it really exist or is it imposed and highlighted at certain points of time to serve a certain cause?


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BFI Publishing
Williams Alan Larson & Williams, Alan (2002) Film and Nationalism, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, N.J.


[1][1] Galal Amin is an Egyptian writer and a professor of Economics with the American University in Cairo. He wrote ‘The Social Justification of the Egyptian Cinema in the 1930s’ in Hashem Nahas’s book ‘The Egyptian Cinema: Beginning and Development’
[2][2] “In Lebanon, from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s ( the beginning of the Lebanese civil war), an influx of Egyptian filmmakers and film personnel fleeing the constrictions placed on their work by the nationalization of various branches of the film industry helped create a hub for film production investment and activity.” (Film Reference, 2009)
[3][3]  “Globalization usually Refers to the Declining Significance of National Borders Brought About by Increased Trade, the Spread of Information Technology, Cross-Border Financial Flows, and Cultural Transfers.”( Terrill )

[4][4] “In this process, globalization is characterized by “the dialectic of the local and the global” (Giddens, 1991:22). In order to grasp the dialectic relationship between the local and the global, Robertson proposes the term ‘glocalization’ to explain the on-going processes of globalization.” (Kim 2006)

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