1st Edition

The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics

Edited By Yannis Tzioumakis, Claire Molloy Copyright 2016
    550 Pages
    by Routledge

    550 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics brings together forty essays by leading film scholars and filmmakers in order to discuss the complex relationship between cinema and politics.

    Organised into eight parts – Approaches to Cinema and Politics; Cinema, Activism and Opposition; Film, Propaganda, Ideology and the State; The Politics of Mobility; Political Hollywood; Alternative and Independent Film and Politics; The Politics of Cine-geographies and The Politics of Documentary – this collection covers a broad range of topics, including: Third Cinema, cinema after 9/11, eco-activism, human rights, independent Chinese documentary, film festivals, manifestoes, film policies, film as a response to the post-2008 financial crisis, Soviet propaganda, the impact of neoliberalism on cinema, and many others.

    This Companion foregrounds the key debates, concepts, approaches and case studies that critique and explain the complex relationship between politics and cinema, discussing films from around the world and including examples from film history as well as contemporary cinema. It also explores the wider relationship between politics and entertainment, examines cinema’s response to political and social transformations and questions the extent to which filmmaking itself is a political act.

    Introduction

    Claire Molloy and Yannis Tzioumakis

    Part 1

    Approaches to Film and Politics

    Introduction

    Philip Drake

    Chapter 1

    The Dialectics of Third Cinema

    Mike Wayne

    Chapter 2

    Geopolitics and Cinema

    Toby Miller

    Chapter 3

    Ecopolitics and Cinema

    Sean Cubitt

    Chapter 4

    The Politics of Form: A Conceptual Introduction to ‘Screen Theory’

    Warren Buckland

    Chapter 5

    Revisiting the Political Economy of Film

    Janet Wasko

    Part 2

    Film, Activism and Opposition

    Introduction

    Anthony Killick

    Chapter 6

    "New" New Latin American Cinema Manifestoes

    Scott L. Baugh

    Chapter 7

    Animal Rights Films, Organized Violence, and the Politics of Sight

    Anat Pick

    Chapter 8

    Reel News in the Digital Age: Framing Britain’s Radical Video-activists

    Steve Presence

    Chapter 9

    Film and the Politics of Working Class Representation: The Inside Film Project

    Deirdre O’Neill

    Chapter 10

    Kony 2012: Anatomy of A Campaign Video and A Video Campaign

    Leshu Torchin

     

    Part 3

    Film, Propaganda, Ideology and the State

    Introduction

    Claire Molloy

    Chapter 11

    Propaganda, Activism and Environmental Nostalgia

    Claire Molloy

    Chapter 12

    Between "Information" and "Inspiration": The Office of War Information, Frank Capra’s Why We Fight series and US World War II Propaganda

    Gregory Frame

    Chapter 13

    Striving for the Maximum Appeal: Ideology and Propaganda in the Soviet Cinema of the 1920s and 1930s

    Panayiota Mini

    Chapter 14

    ‘Victory doesn’t always Look the Way other People Imagine It.’ Post-conflict Cinema in Northern Ireland

    Stephen Baker

    Chapter 15

    Film Policy and England: The Politics of Creativity

    Paul Dave

    Part 4

    The Politics of Mobility

    Introduction

    Stephanie Hemelryk Donald

    Chapter 16

    Cosmopolitanism, Empathy and the Close-up

    Dimitris Eleftheriotis

    Chapter 17

    Regurgitated Bodies: Presenting and Representing Trauma in The Act of Killing

    Lúcia Nagib

    Chapter 18

    After Dispossession: Blackfella Films and the Politics of Radical Hope

    Felicity Collins

    Chapter 19

    The Holocaust Documentary: Sense, Meaning and Redemptive Politics

    Brad Prager

    Chapter 20

    A Bridge over Troubled Water? Loving Jews and Muslims in Two Recent Mediterranean Films

    Yosefa Loshitsky

    Part 5

    Political Hollywood

    Introduction

    Brian Neve

    Chapter 21

    Social Apocalypse in Contemporary Hollywood Film

    Douglas Kellner

    Chapter 22

    Reassertions of Hollywood Heroic Agency in the Iraq War Film

    Geoff King

    Chapter 23

    Spectacle vs. Narrative: Action Political Movies in the New Millennium

    Ian Scott

    Chapter 24

    Representing 9/11 in Hollywood cinema

    Eleftheria Thanouli

    Chapter 25

    Reaganite Cinema: What a Feeling!

    Gary Needham

    Part 6

    Alternative and Independent Film and Politics

    Introduction

    Yannis Tzioumakis

    Chapter 26

    Film Festivals: Mediating the Mainstream and Marginal Voices

    Marijke de Valck

    Chapter 27

    Politics, ‘Indie-Style’: Political Filmmaking and Contemporary US Independent Cinema

    Yannis Tzioumakis

    Chapter 28

    Dismantling the System from Within: The Early Films of Robert Altman and the Politics of Anti-Establishment

    Jacqui Miller

    Chapter 29

    Ethical Time, Ethical History: Recent Israeli Film

    Nurith Gertz

    Chapter 30

    The Way of Seeming

    Rob Nilsson

    Part 7

    The Politics of Cine-geographies

    Introduction

    Ewa Mazierska

    Chapter 31

    African Cinema in an Age of Postcolonialism and Globalization

    Kenneth Harrow

    Chapter 32

    Nationalist Geopolitics and Film Tourism in India's Hindi Cinema

    Peter C. Pugsley

    Chapter 33

    Political Cinema in Latin America: From Nation-building to Cultural Translation

    Armida de la Garza

    Chapter 34

    European Cinema: Spectator- or Spect-actor-driven Policies

    Petar Mitric and Katharine Sarikakis

    Chapter 35

    Minor Cinema – The Case of Wales

    Ruth McElroy

     

    Part 8

    The Politics of Documentary

    Introduction

    John Corner

    Chapter 36

    21st Century Political Documentary in the United States

    Betsy A. McLane

    Chapter 37

    Documenting Dissent: Political Documentary in the People’s Republic of China

    Luke Robinson

    Chapter 38

    Politics and Independence: Documentary in Greece during the Crisis

    Lydia Papadimitriou

    Chapter 39

    Secret City (2012) A Reception Diary

    Michael Chanan and Lee Salter

    Chapter 40

    Interactive Documentary: Film and Politics in the Digital Era

    James Lyons

    Biography

    Yannis Tzioumakis is Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at the University of Liverpool. He is the author and editor of six books, most recently of Hollywood’s Indies: Classics Divisions, Specialty Labels and the American Film Market (2012). He is also co-editor of the ‘Hollywood Centenary’ and the ‘Cinema and Youth Cultures’ book series (both for Routledge).

    Claire Molloy is Professor of Film, Television and Digital Media, and Director of the Centre for Human Animal Studies at Edge Hill University. Her recent publications include the books Memento (2010), Popular Media and Animals (2011), Beyond Human: From Animality to Transhumanism (2012) and American Independent Cinema: Indie, Indiewood and Beyond (2013).

    ‘With its epic scope, this daring book expands the equation of cinema and politics into a more dynamic, complex, multi-layered international terrain through the lenses of theories, activism, propaganda, ideology, the state, mobility, Hollywood, alternative film, documentaries, cine-geographies, digitalities, and practices. A staggering, field-defining achievement, The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics blasts open any reductionist correlation between the two terms with a necessary, urgent, and compelling polyphonic approach entailing multiple methodologies and theoretical locations. This important volume recalibrates the terms "cinema" and "political" by ruthlessly and brilliantly multiplying theories and arguments.’

    Patricia R. Zimmermann, Professor of Screen Studies, Ithaca College, New York, USA

    ‘Cinema could matter more for understanding politics than usually acknowledged, especially when one takes into account that it travels beyond national borders. After all, so many films are made out of political concerns. And so many political matters — migration, trafficking, trauma, genocide — are best tackled through the medium of cinema. This volume brings together essays by some of the finest writers who discuss film in a way that can be adopted across a range of disciplines, from political science and international relations through to sustainable development and tourism studies.’

    Dina Iordanova, Professor of Global Cinema and Creative Cultures and Director of the Institute for Global Cinema and Creative Cultures, University of St Andrews, UK