Chapter 12
Mixing Monsters, Musicals and Melodrama: World Cinema
In This Chapter
Celebrating amazing cinema from around the globe
Understanding Japan’s monster movies
Enjoying Bollywood musicals and beyond
Exploring the cinema of three Latin American countries
When you browse the category lists of online distributors such as Amazon and Netflix, you find an odd mixture of groupings. Recognisable genres such as ‘comedy’ appear alongside media types, such as ‘television shows’ or ‘documentaries’, as well as broader, audience-driven categories such as ‘cult films’. But ever since the appearance of the humble video store, all distribution outlets have separated out international films into their own category of ‘world cinema’. Why is this?
In terms of the now sadly defunct video shop, the world-cinema section was kept separate for practical reasons. First, doing so allowed most video renters to avoid having to read subtitles, which is a genuine dislike of many viewers. Second, in the opposite sense, a distinct section allowed cine-literate types to go straight for those titles, which ...
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