Group D answers from 3/5 reading and questions for 3/10 readings

Alea thinks that Cuban cinema’s social function in Cuba serves several purposes. The first is that it should “elevate the viewer’s revolutionary consciousness” and to prepare them for the ideological struggle they will face in terms of the reactionary tendencies they face, since much of Cuban cinema deals with social progress and realities of Cuba. The other purpose is that it should bring enjoyment to their life. Cuban cinema should bring social and political awareness to viewers’ lives, and carry on with them after they are no longer watching the movie.

Alea discusses how film originated from the bourgeoisie, and that means of film production and conventions were created in the inventions of the bourgeois taste and needs. Furthermore, film became popular in the sense that it could attract a large, diverse crowd, but it was not popular in the sense that it was a true expression of the people. Since film originated from bourgeois interests, Alea argues that it’s better for capitalism interests. This is because cinema has never been able to successfully fuse revolutionary ideology with mass acceptance that way socialist interests want cinema to do. This relates to the Revolution beause if revolutionary ideology in cinema could be accepted by the masses, it would be an effective medium to use as a tool in order to reach the broadest audience and spread a message.

Throughout his discourse, Alea repeatedly states that cinema is clearly marked by class origins. He observes that there have been small rebellions within the realm of cinema, but "cinema continues to be the most natural incarnation of the petty bourgeois spirit which encouraged cinema at its birth more than eighty years ago." Alea goes on to draw attention to a capitalist spirit associated with the cinema and broader entertainment industry. Cinema became a "cultural/cultured" art due to cinema's need for as large an audience as possible. In Alea's words: "they did not want to evaluate cinema to the category of true art. Art and the people didn't get along." Cultural art allowed cinema to appeal to the masses without the same kind of blind ignorance applied to other forms of art

Q1. How does Hayward explain the relationship between nation and state?

Q2. Does the article assert that culture is distinguished by its tangible characteristics (ie, cinema, specific films) or by the broader intangibles?

Q3. What assumptions about nationalism does Willemen’s article rest upon?

Q4. How does Willemen relate the national and the international, and identity and subjectivity in socio-cultural formations through Mikhali Bakhtin’s idea of “creative understanding”?

Q5. Why does the foundations of cinema differ between countries depending on the dynamics at work within and between industrial and governmental institutional networks?