Deleuze and World Cinemas by David Martin-Jones (review)

• Published in: SubStance 2019, Vol.48 (1), p.102-106
• Main Author: Sim, Gerald
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Editing; Film studies; Motion pictures; National identity; Philosophers; Theaters & cinemas; Theory; Time; Writers
• ISSN: 0049-2426; 1527-2095; 1527-2095
• DOI: 10.1353/sub.2019.0007

In introducing Deleuze and World Cinemas, Martin-Jones indeed apprises us of his intellectual journey following the publication of his previous book, revealing how writing an essay for the journal Deleuze Studies had prompted him to rethink some of what he wrote in Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity (13). In Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity, for instance, Martin-Jones challenged accepted taxonomies such as the strict boundary Deleuze draws between the movement-image as exemplified by Hollywood's classical narrative forms and its use of continuity editing, and the time-images that he associates with the formal experimentation observable in forms of new wave and avant-garde filmmaking. Specifically, he acknowledges that the "claim for a global change in image of thought occurring around the time of the Second World War, expressed in the shift from movement- to time-images, must be reconsidered as an universalizing extrapolation from what can be considered a provincial European perspective" (3). [...]Martin-Jones remains true to the ultimate goal of "exploring the advantages and rethinking the limitations of Deleuze's work," of sustaining its usefulness, and of "reinvigorate[ing] his ideas and broaden[ing] their scope for future usage in the field" (7).