Subtitles On the Foreignness of Film

"Every film is a foreign film," Atom Egoyan and Ian Balfour tell us in their introduction to Subtitles. How, then, to translate the experience of film-which, as Egoyan says, makes us "feel outside and inside at the same time"? Taking subtitles as their point of departure, the thirty-two contributors to this unique collection consider translation, foreignness, and otherness in film culture. Their discussions range from the mechanics and aesthetics of subtitles themselves to the xenophobic reaction to translation to subtitles as a metaphor for the distance and intimacy of film. The essays, interviews, and visuals include a collaboration by Russell Banks and Atom Egoyan, which uses quotations from Banks's novel The Sweet Hereafteras subtitles for publicity stills from Egoyan's film of the book; three early film reviews by Jorge Luis Borges; an interview with filmmaker Claire Denis about a scene in her film Friday Nightthat should not have been subtitled; and Eric Cazdyn's reading of the running subtitles on CNN's post-9/11 newscasts as a representation of new global realities. Several writers deal with translating cultural experience for an international audience, including Frederic Jameson on Balkan cinema, John Mowitt on the history of the "foreign film" category in the Academy Awards, and Ruby Rich on the marketing of foreign films and their foreign languages-"Somehow, I'd like to think it's harder to kill people when you hear their voices," she writes. And Slavoj Zizek considers the "foreign gaze" (seen in films by Hitchcock, Lynch, and others), the misperception that sees too much. Designed by Egoyan and award-winning graphic designer Gilbert Li, the book includes many color images and ten visual projects by artists and filmmakers. The pages are horizontal, suggesting a movie screen; they use the cinematic horizontal aspect ratio of 1.66:1. Subtitlesgives us not only a new way to think about film but also a singular design object. Subtitlesis being copublished by The MIT Press and Alphabet City Media (John Knechtel, Director). Subtitleshas been funded in part by grants from The Canada Council for the Arts, The Henry N.R. Jackman Foundation, and the Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Council.

Atom Egoyan is an internationally acclaimed film director whose works include The Sweet Hereafter, Ararat, Exotica, and Calendar.

Ian Balfour is Associate Professor of English and Social and Political Thought at York University in Toronto and the author of The Rhetoric of English Poetry.

Atom Egoyan is an internationally acclaimed film director whose works include The Sweet Hereafter, Ararat, Exotica, and Calendar.

Ian Balfour is Associate Professor of English and Social and Political Thought at York University in Toronto and the author of The Rhetoric of English Poetry.

Atom Egoyan is an internationally acclaimed film director whose works include The Sweet Hereafter, Ararat, Exotica, and Calendar.

Atom Egoyan is an internationally acclaimed film director whose works include The Sweet Hereafter, Ararat, Exotica, and Calendar.

Slavoj Žižek, a philosopher and cultural critic, is Senior Researcher in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and International Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London. He is the author of more than thirty books, including Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core of Christianity, The Parallax View, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic (with John Milbank), and Žižek's Jokes (Did you hear the one about Hegel and negation?), these five published by the MIT Press.

Ian Balfour is Associate Professor of English and Social and Political Thought at York University in Toronto and the author of The Rhetoric of English Poetry.