Shakespeare and World Cinema

Shakespeare and World Cinema radically re-imagines the field of Shakespeare on film, drawing on a wealth of examples from Africa, the Arctic, Brazil, China, France, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore, Tibet, Venezuela, Yemen and elsewhere. Mark Thornton Burnett explores the contemporary significance of Shakespeare cinema outside the Hollywood mainstream for the first time, arguing that these adaptations are an essential part of the story of Shakespearean performance and reception. The book reveals in unique detail the scope, inventiveness and vitality of over seventy films that have undeservedly slipped beneath the radar of critical attention and also discusses regional Shakespeare cinema in Latin America and Asia. Utilising original interviews with filmmakers throughout, it introduces new auteurs, analyses multiple adaptations of plays such as Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet and pioneers fresh methodologies for understanding the role that Shakespeare continues to play in the international marketplace.

Introduction; Part I. Auteurs: 1. Alexander Abela; 2. Vishal Bhardwaj and Jayaraaj Rajasekharan Nair; Part II. Regional Configurations: 3. Shakespeare, cinema, Latin America; 4. Shakespeare, cinema, Asia; Part III. Plays: 5. Macbeth; 6. Romeo and Juliet; Epilogue.

Mark Thornton Burnett is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen's University, Belfast. He is the author of Masters and Servants in English Renaissance Drama and Culture: Authority and Obedience (1997), Constructing 'Monsters' in Shakespearean Drama and Early Modern Culture (2002) and Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace (2007; 2nd edition 2012) and the editor of The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe (1999) and The Complete Poems of Christopher Marlowe (2000). His co-edited publications include Screening Shakespeare in the Twenty-First Century (2006), Filming and Performing Renaissance History (2011) and The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts (2011). He is the Director of the Kenneth Branagh Archive, has held fellowships at the Huntington Library and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre and has taught on the NEH-programme, 'From the Globe to the Global: Shakespearean Relocations', at the Folger Institute.