The Worldwide West

According to the United States Census Bureau, the American frontier officially “closed” in 1890—but in the popular imagination, it never did. In fact, the Western genre, capturing imaginations around the globe, would extend the frontier until it girded the entire planet as, in films shot in such far-flung locales as the flatlands of Spain’s Almería province, the slums of São Paulo, India’s rugged Ramanagara hills, and the Australian Outback, international filmmakers incorporated elements of the Yankee horse opera into their own cinematic traditions. In this wide-ranging series, we consider the “Western” as the property of no single country or culture, but rather as an exquisitely adaptable template for telling stories about order and outlawry, honor and ignobility, natural order and imposed property rights, and much else besides, all over the world.