Transnational Metacinemas

Abstract

Transnational metacinema describes a range of films that depict film production across borders. The diverse corpus includes fictional works explicitly addressing the ethics of film crews working between nations, hybrid nonfictions that reflexively consider their own use of archival footage and re-enactments, cannibal horror films featuring documentarian protagonists, and Hollywood satires. This article considers themes of colonization and exploitation that traverse these examples. Each case complicates the sustaining, modernist notion that reflexivity disrupts viewing pleasure, inviting more politically aware spectatorship. Many examples promote self-awareness in the filmmaker-audience relationship at the expense of concern for the Indigenous and marginalized populations represented.