Marxism and Film Activism: Screening Alternative Worlds / Edition 1

by Ewa Mazierska, Lars Kristensen

Overview

In Theses on Feuerbach, Marx writes, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently; the point is to change it.” This collection examines how filmmakers have tried to change the world by engaging in emancipatory politics through their work, and how audiences have received them. It presents a wide spectrum of case studies, covering both film and digital technology, with examples from throughout cinematic history and around the world, including Soviet Russia, Palestine, South America, and France. Discussions range from the classic Marxist cinema of Aleksandr Medvedkin, Chris Marker, and Jean-Luc Godard, to recent media such as 5 Broken Cameras (2010), the phenomena of video-blogging, and bicycle activism films.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781782386421
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	07/01/2015
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Film Studies at the University of Central Lancashire. She has authored nearly twenty monographs and edited collections, including Work in Cinema: Labor and Human Condition (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), European Cinema and Intertextuality: History, Memory, Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), and Jerzy Skolimowski: The Cinema of a Nonconformist (Berghahn, 2010). She is a principal editor of the journal Studies in Eastern European Cinema.

Lars Kristensen is a Lecturer in Media, Aesthetics, and Narration at University of Skövde. He has published mainly on cross-cultural issues related to Russian cinema and is the editor of Postcommunist Film: Russia, Eastern Europe and World Culture (Routledge, 2012) and co-editor, with Eva Näripea and Ewa Mazierska, of Postcolonial Approaches to Eastern European Cinema: Portraying Neighbours On-Screen (I.B. Tauris, 2014).

Table of Contents

List of Figures

Introduction
Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen

PART I: PAST ACTIVISM

Chapter 1. Between socialist modernisation and cinematic modernism: the revolutionary politics of aesthetics of Medvedkin’s cinema-train
Gal Kirn

Chapter 2. Politics and Aesthetics within Godard’s Cinema    
Jeremy Spence

Chapter 3. Marker, Activism and Melancholy: Reflections on the Radical ‘60s in the later films of Chris Marker.
Jon Kear

Chapter 4. Marx Immemorial: workers and peasants in the cinema of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet
Manuel Ramos Martinez

Chapter 5. In the Heat of the Factory: The Global Fires of The Hour of the Furnaces
Bruce Williams

PART II: PRESENT ACTIVISM

Chapter 6. Contemporary political cinema: the impossibility of passivity
William Brown

Chapter 7. Cultural resistance through film: The case of Palestinian cinema
Haim Bresheeth

Chapter 8. The Contemporary Landscape of Video-Activism in Britain
Steve Presence

Chapter 9. Marxist Resistance at Bicycle Speed: Screening the Critical Mass Movement
Lars Kristensen

Chapter 10. Tales of a video blogger
Michael Chanan

Chapter 11. Recovering the Future: Marxism and Film Audiences
Martin Barker

Notes on Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This is an excellent collection of penetrating scholarly treatments, signifying a Renaissance in the study of how activist cinema has reflected Marxist themes and influences.The whole volume is strongly influenced by contemporary French philosophers, Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou, by the dialectic between theory and praxis, by the dialectic of activism borne of theory and theory catching up with activism, and by the dialectic of ideological sophistication and broad popular impact." ·Dennis Rothermel, California State University, Chico

"An excellent and overdue (i.e., not just timely) contribution. An important source of new ideas and perspectives, filled with ideas and questions to debate" ·John Hutnyk, Goldsmiths, University of London

From the Publisher