The Art and Politics of Film

This text is the third in a trilogy of critical books exploring film and modernity in the second half of the 20th century.

While the first volume, "Cinema and Modernity", looked at key transitions in the 1950s and 1960s, the second "Contemporary Cinema", analysed more recent stylistic change.

The final volume expands both dimensions. It re-examines the legacy of modernist innovation and evaluates the fascinating relationship of film and politics right up to the end of the century.The aesthetics of film must not only assess those forms of power which cinema exerts and those that constraint it, but also the conflicts its narratives portray between personal and public identities in a changing world.

Attention is focused on the work of Tarkovsky, Lynch, Cronenberg, Rivette, Jordan, Greenaway, Kieslowski and Angelopoulos as well as on changing forms of time and narrativity in science fiction, horror and conspiracy films.

Key concepts such as the time-image, reflexivity, terror and horror, wonder and the sublime are analysed.

Cinema at the turn of the century is seen as a form of hyper-modern culture which glosses the politics and technologies of the information age.

Of special interest here are the art of sexuality, the politics of virtual spectacle, the art and politics of national identity, the cinematic city and the powers of the false.