The Practices and Politics of Film Subtitles

From its birth, film has always been a global phenomenon. The arrival of the talkies opened up many opportunities for the popularisation of cinema to different audiences but also posed challenges to its smooth circulation around the world.

This lecture explores the many practices of sound in Hollywood and World Cinema, focussing in particular on subtitling, on issues of multilingualism and its intersections with cinematic language and aesthetics, and the implications of translation through subtitles for local and global audiences.