Localizing the Global: Transnational Filmmaking at EICTV

Abstract

Balaisis examines the impact of globalization on Cuba through an analysis of the international film and media school EICTV. Building on interviews conducted with students and administrators, and on case studies from the school, Balaisis shows how EICTV embodies many of the contradictions of the late socialist period, where residual elements of Cuban socialism and Third World solidarity co-exist with the economic realities of the global media and film industries. Balaisis also explores EICTV as a site of the contemporary global imaginary. Drawing on recent theories of media and globalization, Balaisis shows how the films produced at the school give evidence of an intercultural imaginary, one that foregrounds the local as a site of cultural meaning in the context of globalization.