Towards an open cinema: Revisiting Alain Bergala's The Cinema Hypothesis within a global field of film education

Abstract

This paper reconsiders The Cinema Hypothesis and the propensity of Alain Bergala's cine-pedagogy to serve as an agent of interconnectivity within a slowly emergent global field of film education. Drawing upon some of the debates surrounding de-Westernizing film studies (Bâ and Higbee, 2012), this study explores notions of the global before situating a re-evaluation of The Cinema Hypothesis within that frame. Analysis focuses in particular on Bergala's: (1) particularized approach to cinema; (2) insistence upon a proximity between theory and practice; (3) asystematized approaches to analysis; (4) problematic relationship with canons; and (5) theory of disruption.