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From Self-fulfilment to Survival of the Fittest
Work in European Cinema from the 1960s to the Present
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Book Presentation:
Contrary to the assumption that Western and Eastern European economies and cinemas were very different from each other, they actually had much in common. After the Second World War both the East and the West adopted a mixed system, containing elements of both socialism and capitalism, and from the 1980s on the whole of Europe, albeit at an uneven speed, followed the neoliberal agenda. This book examines how the economic systems of the East and West impacted labor by focusing on the representation of work in European cinema. Using a Marxist perspective, it compares the situation of workers in Western and Eastern Europe as represented in both auteurist and popular films, including those of Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrzej Wajda, DušanMakavejev, Jerzy Skolimowski, the Dardenne Brothers, Ulrich Seidl and many others.
About the Author:
Ewa Mazierska is Professor of Film Studies at the School of Journalism, Media and Performance, University of Central Lancashire. Her publications include European Cinema and Intertextuality: History, Memory, Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Jerzy Skolimowski: The Cinema of a Nonconformist (Berghahn, 2010), Masculinities in Polish, Czech and Slovak Cinema (Berghahn, 2008) and with Laura Rascaroli,Crossing New Europe: The European Road Movie (Wallflower, 2006) and From Moscow to Madrid: Postmodern Cities, European Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2003). She is principal editor of the journal Studies in Eastern European Cinema.
Press Reviews:
"What Mazierska’s invaluable book demonstrates…[is] the importance of expanding our investigations of work into unemployment, leisure and idleness, in order to help us understand the ongoing privileging of precarisation by capital, as well as to help us dismantle the unquestioned edification of today’s ‘labour idols.’" • Studies in European Cinema
"One hopes that scholars like Mazierska will continue to keep pace with developments, not only to provide much-needed analysis and critique, but also to remind filmmakers and film scholars alike about film’s potential." • Alphaville. Journal of Film & Screen Media
"Ewa Mazierska has written an important book…[it] is original and fascinating scholarship. The range of films is broad, with a special emphasis on British, former Yugoslav, Polish and French cinema, and the book cuts across art house and popular cinema – from cult films to Carry On– all in the name of bringing our attention to one of cinema’s otherwise most notable absent figures: work and working." • William Brown, University of Roehampton
See the publisher website: Berghahn Books
> From the same author:
Poland Daily (2022)
Economy, Work, Consumption and Social Class in Polish Cinema
Marxism and Film Activism (2018)
Screening Alternative Worlds
Dir. Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen
Subject: Sociology
Contemporary Cinema and Neoliberal Ideology (2017)
Dir. Ewa Mazierska and Lars Kristensen
Subject: Sociology
The Cinematic Bodies of Eastern Europe and Russia (2016)
Between Pain and Pleasure
Dir. Ewa Mazierska, Matilda Mroz and Elżbieta Ostrowska
Red Alert (2016)
Marxist Approaches to Science Fiction Cinema
Dir. Ewa Mazierska and Alfredo Suppia
Subject: Genre > Science Fiction
Masculinities in Polish, Czech and Slovak Cinema (2010)
Black Peters and Men of Marble
Crossing New Europe (2006)
Postmodern Travel and the European Road Movie
by Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli
The Cinema of Nanni Moretti (2004)
Dreams and Diaries
by Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli
Subject: Director > Nanni Moretti
> On a related topic:
The Cinema Makers (2013)
Public Life and the Exhibition of Difference in South-Eastern and Central Europe since the 1960s
by Anna Schober
Screening Modernism (2008)
European Art Cinema, 1950-1980
Transnational Cinema in a Global North (2005)
Nordic Cinema in Transition
Dir. Andrew Nestingen and Trevor Elkington
Cinema and the Environment in Eastern Europe (2023)
From Communism to Capitalism
Dir. Masha Shpolberg and Lukas Brasiskis
Music, Authorship, Narration, and Art Cinema in Europe (2024)
1940s to 1980s
Dir. Michael Baumgartner and Ewelina Boczkowska
The Routledge Companion to European Cinema (2024)
Dir. Gábor Gergely and Susan Hayward
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