Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere

Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere proposes a new paradigm for Nordic film studies, as well as for other small national, transnational, and world cinema traditions. This book re-imagines Nordic cinemas as international, cosmopolitan, diasporic, and planet-connected from their beginnings in the early silent period on forward to their present 21st-century dynamics more than a century later. By identifying and engaging with a wide range of unknown, repressed, and overlooked stories (e.g., narratives of movement, mobility, interaction, synthesis, resistance, loss, reclamation, humanistic questing, etc.) inside and outside of established Nordic film traditions, this book introduces a new model of inquiry into a specific Scandinavian cultural lineage and into small nation and pan-regional cinemas more generally. In this way, the book also speaks to a range of traditions in world cinema. Its overarching goal is to breach entrenched structures and to invite more exploratory, rigorous, and unexpected readings. The volume advocates the intellectual and cultural ethos of cinemas of elsewhere, expanding on previous progressive, interpretive traditions such as cinemas of diasporic, exilic, postcolonial, accented, post-industrial, and existential identities. It is therefore not a study of Nordic cinemas comfortably situated within national brackets or self-enclosed borders. Drawing on the specificities, dynamics, and ambitious reach and scope of Scandinavian cinema production, circulation, and influence for over a century, Nordic Film Cultures and Cinemas of Elsewhere navigates and narrates a parallel, alternative history.