TY - JOUR

T1 - Cinematic perspectives on the 'war on terror' : the road to Guantanamo (2006) and activist cinema.

AU - Bennett, Bruce

PY - 2008

Y1 - 2008

N2 - Starting from the premise that Michael Winterbottom’s films exemplify a certain model of transnational cinema, because they are made with international crews and casts, shot on location around the world, financed by transnational capital, and concerned with questions of borders, immigration, imperialism and identity, this article offers a close analysis of The Road to Guantánamo (2006) in order to set out the kind of political practice it claims Winterbottom’s cinema enacts. The Road to Guantánamo appears to have been conceived as a very precise and partial intervention in the mediated public sphere: it was released simultaneously in cinemas, on broadcast television, on DVD and over the internet for streaming and downloading. By addressing multiple and overlapping publics in this particularly direct way, the film was revealing its partial and contestatory status, a status deriving as much from the multiple media of its transmission as from its content. Offering a close analysis of the heterogeneous composition of The Road to Guantánamo and the striking coolness and neutrality of its style of docudrama (also characteristic of Winterbottom’s other films), the article concludes that the film may refrain from political affect because of its concern with political effects, and addresses specific and informed publics in a new type of political practice made possible by transnational media and a recently transnationalized public sphere.

AB - Starting from the premise that Michael Winterbottom’s films exemplify a certain model of transnational cinema, because they are made with international crews and casts, shot on location around the world, financed by transnational capital, and concerned with questions of borders, immigration, imperialism and identity, this article offers a close analysis of The Road to Guantánamo (2006) in order to set out the kind of political practice it claims Winterbottom’s cinema enacts. The Road to Guantánamo appears to have been conceived as a very precise and partial intervention in the mediated public sphere: it was released simultaneously in cinemas, on broadcast television, on DVD and over the internet for streaming and downloading. By addressing multiple and overlapping publics in this particularly direct way, the film was revealing its partial and contestatory status, a status deriving as much from the multiple media of its transmission as from its content. Offering a close analysis of the heterogeneous composition of The Road to Guantánamo and the striking coolness and neutrality of its style of docudrama (also characteristic of Winterbottom’s other films), the article concludes that the film may refrain from political affect because of its concern with political effects, and addresses specific and informed publics in a new type of political practice made possible by transnational media and a recently transnationalized public sphere.

KW - borders

KW - Guantánamo

KW - transnational

KW - terrorism

KW - docudrama

KW - heterogeneity

KW - cinema

KW - war on terror

KW - Michael Winterbottom

U2 - 10.1386/ncin.6.2.111/1

DO - 10.1386/ncin.6.2.111/1

M3 - Journal article

VL - 6

SP - 111

EP - 126

JO - New Cinemas

JF - New Cinemas

SN - 1474-2756

IS - 2

ER -