Soft Power, Cinema and the BRICS

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Coined by political scientist Joseph Nye at the end of the 1980s, but only in the last 10 years "making it out of academia and onto the front pages of newspapers and into world leaders' speeches" (Nye), soft power refers to the ability of a country to influence through attraction rather than persuasion. It implies recognising what those from other countries already find attractive about a given country, creating new attractive features (as a way of countering unattractive features associated with one's country) and producing a coherent narrative that incorporates these attractive features, so that they might be mobilised in an effort to gain favour. The growing interest in soft power is, for Nye, a reflection of geo-political shifts brought about by globalisation, which themselves are notably illustrated in the formation and formal association of the BRICS group of emerging nations.There is, then, an explicit connection between the growing interest in soft power and emerging nations (namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). However, while Nye suggests that there are three aspects to soft power: foreign policy, political values and culture, it is notable that nation-branding indexes (such as Monocle's) pay rather less attention to the impact of cultural factors in their assessment of nations' soft-power assets. Likewise, to date academic interest in the issue of soft power has tended to focus on its impact on international relations. Yet, at least anecdotally, we know that attractive features of emerging nations are often linked to popular culture (Brazil has carnival and football, India has Bollywood, etc).Perhaps as a result of a widespread awareness of such expressions of popular culture, they are taken as read by soft power observers and not scrutinised to any extent, as if serving merely as the window-dressing for other, more easily quantifiable soft-power manifestations, such as globally recognised brands, tourism revenue, membership of international organisations, etc. The proposed network seeks to redress the balance, by bringing culture, and specifically film, to the centre of discussions on soft power, and bringing together for the first time scholars who will explore these connections. Specifically, it aims to achieve the following:1) To investigate how non-state actors in the BRICS nations understand and are influenced by soft-power strategies, by focusing on the nature and function of the film industry. 2) To look comparatively at the engagement by filmmakers, producers, distributors and funders in the soft power/nation-branding agendas of their country in order to ascertain whether this engagement is explicit or implicit, what forms it takes, and with what results.3) To bring culture, and specifically film, to the centre of discussions on soft power, by focusing on big-screen narratives, and their on-and off-screen stories, with a view to analysing the extent to which film industries are being harnessed in the exercise of cultural diplomacy and the generation of soft power.4) To develop a methodology to evaluate the success of soft-power strategies in relation to film cultureResearch outputs, which include an edited collection of essays, a bilingual co-produced report on BRICS film-making and soft power, and a regularly updated website will be of interest to academics in a number of fields, to culture industry professionals, and to the wide body of state- and super-state-level institutions with a vested interest in both soft power and the BRICS.