Aims and Objectives
The project addresses five key questions:
- Why is diasporic cinema characterised by a preponderance of family narratives?
- How different is the diasporic family as constructed in cinema compared with the hegemonic white family in terms of its structure and its value- and belief systems? And how do these differences along the multiple co-ordinates of race, ethnicity, gender, generation, language, nationality and religion translate across the diasporic film cultures on which this research focuses?
- What role does authorship play in the depiction of the diasporic family? In what ways do the representational strategies and thematic concerns of films made by first generation migrant filmmakers differ from those of second- and subsequent generation migrant filmmakers? And how do these family narratives compare with the way non-diasporic scriptwriters and film directors image this particular type of family?
- How does diasporic cinema negotiate the aesthetic and generic conventions of film genres commonly associated with the representation of families?
- What contribution have narrative treatments of the diasporic family in cinema made to the debates about hegemonic and minority cultures in Western societies?