Rachel S. Harris, Associate Professor of Israeli Literature and Culture in Comparative and World Literature and the Program in Jewish Culture and Society, has published a new book about Israeli cinema in the context of transnationalism.

In Casting a Giant Shadow: The Transnational Shaping of Israeli Cinema, Harris and co-editor Dan Chyutin present a collection of articles by 17 authors that address the topic of transnationalism to assess the limits of what is “Israeli” with Israeli cinema.

The book uses the idea of transnationalism to challenge the concept of a singular definition of Israeli cinema.

As the State of Israel developed, so did its film industries. Moving beyond the early films of the Yishuv, which focused on the creation of national identity, the industry and its transnational ties became more important as filmmakers and film stars migrated out and foreign films, filmmakers, and actors came to Israel to take advantage of high-quality production values and talent.

Casting a Giant Shadow offers a new understanding of how cinema has operated artistically and structurally in terms of funding, distribution, and reception.

For more about this new work, visit Indiana University Press: https://iupress.org/9780253056399/casting-a-giant-shadow/