Contemporary Political Cinema
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Book Presentation:
Explores political films that have emerged on the global film festival circuit (1990s-2010s)
The political films that have emerged on the global film festival circuit since the 1990s mark a shift in cinematic strategies for critically addressing dominant, militant, or otherwise repressive ideologies. From a focus on the representation of oppression in films like The Battle of Algiers, films such as Timbuktu, Nobody Knows About Persian Cats and Chop Shop now contribute to the active formation of political characters and viewers, a form not fully realized until the 21st century due to shifts in information technologies and resulting political organization. This book demonstrates that a contemporary form of political cinema has emerged, centered on the production of subjectivity and networks of protest, which depicts the active formation of political identities that resonates with off-screen protest movements.
Key Features
• Documents global political cinemas 1990s–2010s
• Argues for a contemporary shift in understanding political cinemas, beyond Third Cinema and political modernism
• Offers a new approach to cinematic independence by looking at understudied films, such as North/West African films and Kurdish films
• Revisits the cinematic politics of Gilles Deleuze
About the Author:
Matthew Holtmeier is a Fixed-Term Assistant Professor of Screen Studies at Ithaca College. His research focuses on the production of cinematic subjectivity in response to globalization and in bioregional media through its focus on specific environments. Previous publications on global cinema and bioregional media have been published in journals such as Screen, Film-Philosophy, the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and The Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication.
Press Reviews:
Matt Holtmeier’s original and elegantly illuminating study brilliantly explores what ‘cine-politics’ looks like on today’s screens. Using well-chosen recent films primarily from the global south, Holtmeier makes, through lucid textual analysis, thoroughly grounded theory and judicious contextual notes, a valuable, fresh and significant contribution to the literature on political cinema.– Professor Brian Winston, University of Lincoln
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
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