Chop Shop and Foreign Parts settle on the fuzzy boundary between fiction and documentary: new representations of New York City in Contemporary Cinema.

Authors

  • Fernando Canet Fine Arts College (Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2013.68

Keywords:

Chop Shop, Foreign Part, Hybridization, Realism, Contemporary Cinema, New York, Fiction, Documentary

Abstract

Capturing reality has been a constant aim of different movements throughout the history of the cinema. Historically, this challenge has been taken up by makers of both documentaries and fiction, through hybrid proposals that blended strategies from both fields. Even though these proposals have been ignored by traditional film historians, they constitute a persistent tendency from the cinema’s earliest times, as Rhodes and Springer pointed out in their book Docufictions: Essay on the intersection of documentary and fictional filmmaking (2006). There are good examples of these proposals in contemporary cinema that have even won awards at leading international film festivals, including the two movies referred to in this paper: the fictional Chop Shop made by Ramin Bahrani in 2007 and the documentary Foreign Parts by Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki in 2010. Both movies try to portray the same reality in the form of the little known Willets Point (Queens, New York City). Both films aim to show the truth behind the reality portrayed by its inhabitants in real life situations. The main goal of this paper is to reveal their manner of doing this and to show how both movies, even though belonging to different genres, share the same strategies to such an extent that their images could be interchangeable.

Author Biography

Fernando Canet, Fine Arts College (Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain)

Dr. Fernando Canet is Associate Professor in Film Studies at the Fine Arts College (Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain). He is now teaching in Master in Artistic Production and Postproduction, and in the degree of Fine Arts. He has been a visiting research fellow at the University of London (Goldsmith) and at New York University. He has taken part in several national and international research projects, and he is the author of two books, various chapters of the collective works as well as several peer-reviewed articles mainly on cinema. He is currently working in the edition of the book "New trends in Contemporary Spanish Cinema" for Intellect Ltd, in charge of editing a special issue for Hispanic Research Journal, and editing a special issue for L´Atalante: Journal for Film Studies title "Cinephile Directors in Modern Times: When the Cinema Interrogates Itself". Furthermore, he is also Reviews Editor for adComunica, L’Atalante and Archivos de la Filmoteca journals and he has been a member of the jury at different film festivals. He has been a Teaching Assistant Manager in his department and Head of the Cultural Area of the Polytechnic University of Valencia.

References

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Published

2013-06-04

How to Cite

Canet, F. (2013). Chop Shop and Foreign Parts settle on the fuzzy boundary between fiction and documentary: new representations of New York City in Contemporary Cinema. CINEJ Cinema Journal, 2(2), 38–50. https://doi.org/10.5195/cinej.2013.68

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 2 (2013): Spring 2013

Section

Articles

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