Soft Power, Cinema and the BRICS

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 culture

Research 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.

1) Instituto Iniciativa Cultural will benefit from involvement in an international research network in that the institute's goals are precisely to set up information exchanges among cultural organisations, to contribute to the internationalization of research in Brazil and to promote knowledge-enriching public-facing events. CEO Meleiro will contribute to the production of a comparative report on soft power (see point 4 below), which will raise the profile of the organisation and potentially open doors to new consultancy and events management opportunities, and to a wider variety of national and state sources of funding for future projects.

2) Programmers/promoters of film in the Yorkshire region (network members Wilson; King, Lawrence, and others, eg Screen Yorkshire, Bradford Film Festival, National Media Museum) will benefit from contact with a wide range of academic and industry-related professionals. Membership of the network will facilitate the dissemination of information on local film-based activities which on an international stage are too often eclipsed by competing programmes/promotional activities in London, for example. Network research findings could inform festival programming strategy, and through contact with other exhibitor members opportunities are likely to present themselves for ad-hoc tie-in screenings and discussions over the life of the network.

3) PR company Imagem Corporativa will benefit from working with a wide range of analysts (academics, film critics, etc) with a view to expanding its own interests in evaluating the impact of representations of Brazil in the foreign press. It will co-produce, with specialists (led by Dennison) a bi-lingual comparative report on soft power and the BRICS which will contribute to raising its profile as the foremost provider of soft-power related data in Brazil. It also stands to benefit from having new opportunities for international circulation of its soft-power reports among BRICS countries.

4) BRICS filmmakers and film producers (members Acharya, Lalit - India; Yang - China; Ivanov; Ikeda - Brazil, Popogrebskii - Russia; Mkosi, Dovey - South Africa) will benefit from interaction with other professionals working in cognate areas in other nations, and from profile-raising academic and public events.

5) Film Festival programmer Almeida of Sao Paulo International Film Festival will benefit directly from the presence of HEI and non-HEI network members in Sao Paulo for tie-in events linked to the festival in 2016. Sao-Paulo based Boschi (Executive Director of CineBrasilChina) will likewise stand to benefit from access to academic and film-industry contacts, and from knowledge exchange on, for example, the varying degrees of support for film exhibition offered worldwide by Confucius Institutes.

6) Both the National Film and Video Foundation (South Africa) and the South Asian Cinema Foundation (UK) will benefit from opportunities to fulfil their strategic aims of building film culture and promoting the viewing of meaningful films from South Africa and South Asia respectively.

7) British Council Brazil will benefit directly by way of involvement in the workshop Culture, Soft Power and the BRICS: the Brazilian Perspective in Context in 2016. Involvement will enable BCB to continue to reflect on the impact of soft power, discussions on which began in 2013 when it hosted the Wilton Park event "Applying Soft Power: The Brazilian and British Perspectives".

8) Beyond the membership, which will grow over the lifetime of the network, research carried out will provide both concrete information and analysis that will be of considerable interest to national and international organisations such as FIAPF (film festival regulator), BAFTA and the BFI.